The luggage of life

UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA
AT LOS ANGELES

GIFT OF

luR. CHARLES H. T

OTHER BOOKS BY MR. BOREHAM

A BUNCH OF EVERLASTINGS
A HANDFUL OF STARS
A REEL OF RAINBOW
FACES IN THE FIRE
MOUNTAINS IN THE MIST
MUSHROOMS ON THE MOOR
THE GOLDEN MILESTONE
THE HOME OF THE ECHOES
THE OTHER SIDE OF THE HILL
THE SILVER SHADOW
THE UTTERMOST STAR
SHADOWS ON THE WALL

THE LUGGAGE
OF LIFE

BT

F. W. BOREHAM

THE ABINGDON PRESS
NEW YORK CINCINNATI

Printed in the United States of America

First American Edition Printed September, 1918

Reprinted March, August, December, 1919; March, 1920; June, 1921;

November, 1922

A .

TO
MY WIFE

BY WAY OF INTRODUCTION

THESE leaves are of Australian growth. It is both
unnecessary and impossible to disguise it. The
breath of the bush is on them. There were, how-
ever, so many who found them good, either for
food or for medicine, in these Britains of the South,
that it was suggested that the plant might survive
the ordeal of transplantation to a northern clime.
England is a land of noble hospitalities. And,
after all, men are built pretty much the same way
all the world over. A thing that is true under these
soft southern skies is no less true where northern
constellations burn. A word that wakens thought
beneath the shadow of the wattle may lead a man
to rub his eyes under a spreading English oak. A
message that brings back the smile of courage to
the bronzed face of a disheartened squatter may re-
lieve a bruised spirit in London's central roar. And
so I venture ! I only hope that I may take the sob
from one throat, or make one song more blithe.
FRANK W. BOREHAM.

Vll

CONTENTS

PAGE

BY WAY OF INTRODUCTION vii

PART I

I. THE LUGGAGE OF LIFE 3

II. OUR DESERT ISLANDS , , 10

III. OUR HIGHWAY ROBBERIES 18

IV. Two — OR THREE' 25

V. THE CAPTAIN OF THE SHIP — . 33

VI. THE SUPREMACIES OF LIFE. 40

VII. THE PRUDENTIALITIES OF LIFE.. 46

VIII. THE FACE AT THE WINDOW 52

IX. BACK MOVES 61

X. THE TIRELESS TRUDGE , 70

XL SUNSET ON THE SEA 78

PART II

I. CLEAN BOWLED ! 89

II. MAD DOGS AND MOSQUITOES 96

III. ON FALLING IN LOVE 105

IV. IPECACUANHA 112

V. SEASIDE LODGINGS 120

ix

x Contents

PAGE

VI. THE CLIFFS OF DOVER , 128

VII. THE ORGANIST 134

VIII. THE JACKASS AND THE KANGAROO. 140

IX. OUR RUBBISH-HEAPS 147

X. LIFE'S INVISIBLE CONSTABULARY 154

XI. 'So MANY BEDS IN THE WARD'. 161

PART III

I. THE LAW OF THE LANE 171

II. A TONIC OF BIG THINGS.. ,. . 178

III. SERMONS AND SANDWICHES , 185

IV. THE CHALLENGE OF THE HEIGHTS 193

V. THE FURNITURE-VAN 201

VI. ON THE WISDOM OF CONDUCTING ONE'S OWN

FUNERAL , ,. . 209

VII. OUR BETTER HALVES 216

VIII. THE CONQUEST OF THE POLES 224

IX. HAT-PINS AND BUTTON-HOOKS. . . ., 232

X. THE BROW OF THE HILL 239

PART I

THE LUGGAGE OF LIFE

LIFE is largely a matter of luggage. So soon as
a child can toddle he displays an insatiable
passion for carrying things. He is never so happy
as when he is loaded. His face beams with delight
when his back is burdened to the point of breaking.
A few months later he cries for a wooden horse and
cart, that he may further gratify his inordinate long-
ing for luggage. And, if these appetites be not hu-
moured, he will exhaust his unconsecrated energies
in pushing the chairs, tugging at tables, and carry-
ing the cat. The instinct is there. You can no more
deny him his load than you can deny him his lunch.
The craving for both is born in him. In his auto-
biography, Thomas Guthrie tells how the blood of
the Scottish lads in his native village was stirred as
the echoes of Waterloo reached that remote hamlet.
'Many a time,' he says, 'did we boys tramp a mile
or two out of town to meet troops marching to the
war, and proud we were to be allowed to carry a
soldier's musket, which the poor fellows, burdened
with all the heavy accoutrements of those days, and
wearied with a twelve-hour march on a hot sum-

3

4 The Luggage of Life

mer's day, were glad enough to resign to us.' Here
is the same subtle law in operation, Man often loves
without knowing that he loves ; and, little as he sus-
pects it, he is deeply in love with his load. He groans
beneath it, as a man grumbles at the wife of his
bosom, but, if it were taken from him, he would be
almost as disconsolate as if she were taken from him.
When we were boys at school we learned ludicrous
lessons about the weight of the air. How we
laughed as we listened to the doctrines of Torricelli,
and heard that every square inch of surface has to
sustain a weight of fifteen pounds ! How we roared
in our rollicking scepticism when our school masters
assured us that we were each of us being subjected
to a fearful atmospheric pressure of no less than
fourteen tons ! But Mr. H. G. Wells has drawn for
us a picture of men unladen. His heroes — Mr.
Cavor and Mr. Bedford — have found their way to
the moon. The fourteen tons of air are no longer
on their shoulders. The atmospheric pressure is
removed; they have lost their load, and they nearly
lose their lives in consequence. They cannot control
themselves. They can scarcely keep their feet on
the soil. The slightest spring of the foot, and they
bound like a ball into mid-air. If they attempt to
leap over an obstructing boulder, they soar into space
like larks, and land on a distant cliff or alight on an

The Luggage of Life 5

extinct volcano. Life becomes weird, ungovernable,
terrible. They are lost without their load. Which
things are symbolic. It is part of the pathos of
mortality that we only discover how dearly we love
things after we have lost them. We behold with
surprise our affections, like torn and bleeding ten-
drils, hanging desolate, lamenting mutely the com-
monplace object about which they had entwined
themselves. So is it with the lading and luggage of
life. We never wake up to the delicious luxury of
being heavily burdened until our shoulders miss the
load that galled them. If we grasped the deepest
philosophy of life a little more clearly we might per-
haps fall in love with our luggage. The baby in-
stinct is perfectly true. Our load is as essential to
us as our lunch. Very few people have been actually
crushed in this old world of many burdens. And
those who have were not the most miserable of men.
It will not be at all astonishing if the naturalists of
to-morrow assure us that the animal world knows
no transport comparable to the fierce and delirious
ecstasy of the worm beneath the heel. It would
only be a natural, and perfectly logical, advance upon
our knowledge of Livingstone's sensations beneath
the paw of the lion. At any rate, it is clear that man
owes as much to his luggage as a ship owes to her
keel. It seems absurd to build her delicately, and

6 The Luggage of Life

then burden her dreadfully. But the sailor loves the
heavy keel and the full freight. It is the light keel
and the empty hold that have most reason to dread
the storm. Blessed be ballast ! is a beatitude of the
forecastle.

Such is the law of life's luggage. But the New
Testament gives us a still loftier and lovelier word :
'Bear ye one another's burdens, and so fulfil the
law of Christ.' And these laws — the law of nature
and the law of Christ — are not conflicting, but con-
cordant. The one is the bud, the other is the blos-
som. For Christ came, not to remove life's luggage,
but to multiply our burdens. It is true, of course,
that He said : 'Come unto Me, all ye that labour and
are heavy laden,' but He only invited them that
He might offer them His yoke and His burden.
Here is something worth thinking about. Christ
gives rest to the heart by giving burdens to the
shoulders. And, as a matter of fact, it is in being
burdened that we usually find rest. The Old Testa-
ment records the sage words of an old woman
in addressing two younger ones: 'The Lord grant/
said Naomi, 'that ye may find rest, each of you, in
the house of her husband!' Who ever heard of a
woman finding rest in the house of her husband?
And yet, and yet — ! The restless hearts are not
the hearts of wives and of mothers, as many a lonely

The Luggage of Life 7

woman knows. There is no more crushing load
than the load of a loveless life. It is a burden that
is often beautifully and graciously borne, but its
weight is a very real one. The mother may have a
bent form, a furrowed brow, and worn, thin hands ;
but her heart found its rest for all that. Naomi was
an old woman; she knew the world very well, and
her words are worth weighing. Heavy luggage is
Christ's strange cure for weary hearts.

The law of life's luggage — the 'law of Christ' —
has a racial application. It is notorious that a
Christian people is not physically more robust than
a savage people. Readers of Alfred Russel Wal-
lace's Travels on the Amazon will remember that,
the farther the intrepid voyager proceeded up the
great waterway, the finer became the physique of the
natives. And at last, when Dr. Wallace reached a
point to which no white man had ever before pene-
trated, he discovered men and women any of whom
might have posed as models for Grecian sculptors.
The reason is obvious. The savage knows nothing
of 'the law of Christ.' He will bear no other's
burden. The sick must die; the wounded must
perish; the feeble must go to the wall. Only the
mightiest and most muscular survive and produce
another generation. 'The law of Christ' ends all
that. The luggage of life must be distributed. The

8 The Luggage of Life

sick must be nursed ; the wounded must be tended ;
the frail must be cherished. These, too, must be
permitted to play their part in the shaping of human
destiny. They also may love and wed, and become
fathers and mothers. The weaknesses of each are
taken back into the blood of the race. The frailty
of each becomes part of the common heritage. And,
in the last result, if our men are not all Apollos, and
if our women do not all resemble Venus de Medici,
it is largely because we have millions with us who,
but for 'the law of Christ/ operating on rational
ideals, would have had no existence at all. In a
Christian land, under Christian laws, we bear each
other's burdens, we carry each other's luggage. It
is the law of Christ, the law of the cross, a sacrificial
law. The difference between savagery and civiliza-
tion is simply this, that we have learned, in our very
flesh and blood, to bear each other's burdens and so
fulfil the law of Christ.

We set out with Dr. Guthrie. Let us return to
him. He is excellent company. He is describing,
with a glow of satisfaction, one of the ragged-
schools he established in Edinburgh. 'I remember/
he says, 'going down the High Street early one
morning and seeing a number of our children com-
ing up. One of them was borne on the shoulders
of another, and, on my asking the reason, he said

The Luggage of Life \ 9

that the little fellow had burned his foot the night
before, and he was carrying him to school. That,'
said the doctor emphatically, 'would not have hap-
pened in any other school in Edinburgh.' It is a
parable. It is the law of life's luggage. It is the
law of Christ.

II

OUR DESERT ISLANDS

IN childhood's golden hours we all of us squandered
a vast amount of sympathy upon Robinson Crusoe.
And in later years we have caught ourselves shed-
ding a silent tear for the sorrows of poor Enoch
Arden, imprisoned on his 'beauteous, hateful isle.'
In imagination, too, we have paced with the beloved
disciple the rugged hills of Patmos. We have even
felt a sympathetic pang for Napoleon in his cheer-
less exile at St. Helena. And all the while we have
clean forgotten that we ourselves are each of us
cast upon lonely, sea-girt islands. We are each one
of us hopelessly cut off, isolated and insulated.
Moreover, unlike the heroes of Defoe and Tenny-
son, we shall never sight a sail. Our beacon-fires
will never bring down any passing vessel to our
relief. It is for ever. At our very birth we were
chained, naked, like Andromeda, to our rock in mid-
ocean; and no Perseus will ever appear to pity and
deliver us. The links of the chain by which we are

10

Our Desert Islands n

bound are many and mighty. At one or two of
them it may do us good to look more particularly.

And by far the mightiest of these insulating
factors is the mystery of our own individuality.
Each several ego is dreadfully alone in the universe.
Each separate T is without counterpart in all
eternity. In the deepest sense we are each father-
less and childless; we have no kith or kin. When
God makes a man He breaks the mould. Heaven
builds no sister-ships. We may establish relation-
ships of friendship and brotherhood with other
island dwellers across the intervening seas. We
may hear their voices shouted across the foam, and
read and return their signals ; but that is all. The
most intense sympathy can never bridge the gulf.
No man can enter into the soul of his brother man.
'I was in the isle,' says John. And he says it for us
all. 'In all the chief matters of life/ says Amiel in
his Journal, 'we are alone: we dream alone; we
suffer alone; we die alone.' 'We are all islands,'
says George Eliot in one of her beautiful letters to
Mrs. Bray; 'each in his hidden sphere of joy or
woe, our hermit spirits dwell and roam apart.'
'There is nothing more solemn,' says Dr. Alexander
McLaren, 'than that awful loneliness in which each
soul of man lives. We stretch out our hands and
grasp live hands ; yet there is a universe between the

12 The Luggage of Life

two that are nearest and most truly one/ And
perhaps Matthew Arnold has said the last word
when he sings :

Yes, in the sea of life enisled,
With echoing straits between us thrown,

Dotting the shoreless, watery wild,
We mortal millions live alone.

We have shed our tears over the terrific solitude
of Robinson Crusoe and of Enoch Arden; and, in
return, Robinson Crusoe and Enoch Arden urge us
to weep for ourselves. For their partial and
temporary solitude was as nothing compared with
the absoluteness and permanence of our own.

But there are other insulating elements in life.
Our very circumstances, being peculiar to ourselves,
tend, of course, to cut us off from others. Our con-
sciences, too, for there is nothing in the solar system
so isolating as a secret, and especially as a guilty
secret. A man with a secret feels that it cuts him
sheer off from his fellows. A man with a guilty
secret feels lonely in the densest crowd. A murderer
can never find a mate. Civilization, therefore, tends
to isolate us. Savages have but few secrets; they
know each other too well. But we make secrets of
everything. Our wealth, our poverty, our joys, our
sorrows, are our own private affairs. The simplest
question becomes an impertinence. To ask your

Our Desert Islands 13

next-door neighbour the dimensions of his bank
balance, the sum of his weekly earnings, or the age
of his wife, would stagger him more than a blow
with a walking-stick. The conventionalities of
civilized etiquette all separate us from each other,
and we move in stately and solitary dignity through
life to the watchword of 'Mind your own business!'
But by far the most tragic contributor to our
isolation is our pitiful and pitiless lack of sympathy
with each other. We may not altogether understand
each other ; and we have our revenge by taking some
pains to misunderstand. Let me cull a pair of
illustrations from familiar pages of our literature,
(i) Robert Louis Stevenson tells a famous story of
two maiden sisters in the Edinburgh of long ago.
'This pair/ he tells us, 'inhabited a single room.
From the facts, it must have been double-bedded;
and it may have been of some dimensions ; but, when
all is said, it was a single room. Here our two
spinsters fell out — on some point of controversial
divinity belike; but fell out so bitterly that there
was never a word spoken between them, black or
white, from that day forward. You would have
thought that they would separate; but no, whether
from lack of means, or the Scottish fear of scandal,
they continued to keep house together where they
were. A chalk line drawn upon the floor separated

14 The Luggage of Life

their two domains ; it bisected the doorway and the
fireplace, so that each could go out and in, and do
her cooking, without violating the territory of the
other. So, for years, they co-existed in a hateful
silence; their meals, their ablutions, their friendly
visitors, exposed to an unfriendly scrutiny; and at
night, in the dark watches, each could hear the
breathing of her enemy. Never did four walls look
down upon an uglier spectacle than these sisters
rivalling in unsisterliness.' Here are desert islands
for you! (2) In the Romance of Religion, Olive
and Herbert Vivian tell a strange story of two
nuns. They were Bernardines, and lived side by
side for five years in two adjoining cells, and so thin
a partition divided them that they could even hear
the sound of each other's breathing. All this time
they ate at the same table and prayed in the same
chapel. At last one of them died, and, according to
the rule of the Order, the dead nun was laid in the
chapel, her face uncovered, and the Bernardines
filed past, throwing holy water upon the remains as
they went. When it came to the turn of the next-
door neighbour, no sooner did she catch a sight of
the dead nun's face than she gave a piercing shriek
and fell back in a swoon. She had just recognized
her dearest friend in the world, from whom she had
parted in anger years before. Each had misunder-

Our Desert Islands 15

stood the other, and thought the other unaffected
by the quarrel. And for five years the two friends
had lived side by side, neither having seen the
other's face or heard the other's voice. So true are
the tragic words of poor Tom Bracken — words that
have an added pathos for those of us who knew
something of the poet himself :

Not understood. We move along asunder;

Our paths grow wider as the seasons creep
Along the years ; we marvel and we wonder

Why life is life, and then we fall asleep —
Not understood.

Not understood. How many breasts are aching
For lack of sympathy. Ah, day by day,

How many cheerless, lonely hearts are breaking.
How many noble spirits pass away —
Not understood.

O God ! that men would see a little clearer,
Or judge less harshly when they cannot see!

O God ! that men would draw a little nearer
To one another! — they'd be nearer Thee,
And understood.

'We are like islands/ says Rudyard Kipling, 'and
we shout to each other across seas of misunder-
standing.'

But there is another side to all, and happily a
brighter one. Island life has its compensations.
'I was in the isle,' says John. But in the very next
sentence he adds, 'I was in the Spirit.' Insulations

i6 The Luggage of Life

have their inspirations. The world is not ruled by
its continents. Wide continental areas, like China
and Russia, count for little in the world's history.
The continents are ruled by the islands, not the
islands by the continents. 'The ancient Grecians
and Phoenicians/ says Lamartine, 'imbibed some-
thing of the perpetual agitation and insubordination
of the sea. The spectacle of the ocean renders man
more free and impatient of restraint, for he con-
stantly beholds the image of liberty in its waves, and
his soul imbibes the independence of the element/
With which agrees a great American writer. 'It is
this fluid element/ he says, 'that gives fluidity
and progress to the institutions and opinions of the
race. It is only in the great inland regions of the
world — in Central Africa and Asia — that bigotry
and inveterate custom have their seat. In these vast
regions that never saw the sea men have lived from
age to age without progress or the idea of progress,
crushed under despotism and superstition, rooted
down like their trees, motionless as their mountains.
It was never a Babylon or a Timbuctoo or any city
of the inland regions that was forward to change or
improvement. It was a Tyre, Queen of the Sea ; a
Carthage, sending out her ships beyond the Pillars
of Hercules to Britain and the Northern Isles; an
Athens, an Alexandria, — these were the seats of

Our Desert Islands 17

thought, of art, of learning, and literal improvement
of every sort.' Island life has therefore compensa-
tions peculiar to itself.

All of which is an allegory. Every isolation is a
preparation for the conquest of a continent. Think
of the isolation of John Milton, represented by his
blindness; and think, at the same time, of Paradise
Lost. What an island Bedford Jail seemed to
Bunyan! And what continents has he won by his
Pilgrim's Progress*. John fretted like a caged lion
on his rock at Patmos; but his visions there have
enriched every time and every clime. We are
isolated in the loneliness of our own individuality
that each individual may contribute out of his
peculiar experience to the wealth of the whole
world. There is no charge committed to our care
so mysterious and so sacred as the development
and diffusion of our own selves. And every other
insulating element is designed, not as an exile for
the one, but as an enrichment for the whole. The
islands are the masters of the continents in this
world and in every other. And thus it has come to
pass that the dreariest, most desolate, and most
awful isolation of which men have ever heard — the
loneliness and dereliction of the Cross — is issuing,
and must issue, in the conquest and redemption of
the world.

Ill

OUR HIGHWAY ROBBERIES

POOR Mr. Little-Faith was violently assaulted and
robbed in Deadman's Lane. So Bunyan tells us.
But the remarkable thing about the crime was this,
that, when he recovered his senses and was able to
investigate his loss, he found that his assailants had
taken only his spending-money. 'The place where
his jewels were, they never ransacked ; so those he
kept still.' There is a subtle philosophy about the
episode in Deadman's Lane. Prebendary Carlile,
the head of the Church Army, tells a delightful
story of a Welsh miner who, in the great days of the
Revival, avowed himself a disciple of Jesus Christ.
He had previously exhibited an amazing facility in
the use of expletives of the baser kind. With his
changed life, however, it became customary for him
to meet the most exasperating treatment with a
manly smile and a homespun benediction. His
mates, disapproving the revolution in his behaviour,
one day stole his dinner. But all they heard their
transformed comrade say was: Traise the Lord!

18

Our Highway Robberies 19

I've still got my appetite \ They can't take that!'
The good collier only emphasized, in his own quaint
way, the lofty logic of Deadman's Lane. The truth
is embedded in the very essence of Christian teach-
ing. The robbers always leave the best behind
them ; they cannot help it. The writer of the Epistle
to the Hebrews commends his readers for having
taken joyfully the spoiling of their goods. And he
adds : 'Ye are well aware that ye have in your own
selves a more valuable possession, and one which
will remain.' Life's spoilers leave the best of the
spoil after all.

The pilgrims to the Celestial City must all of them
pass through the eerie shades of Deadman's Lane.
And they alone can enter that darksome avenue
with a song on their lips who are first assured of the
absolute security of their best possessions. In one
of the noblest passages of Sesame and Lilies, Ruskin
deals with that great saying in the Sermon on the
Mount concerning the treasures of the Court, which
a moth can destroy; the treasures of the Camp,
which rust can defile; and the treasures of the
Counting-house, which a thief can despoil. These,
then, are the desperadoes of Deadman's Lane — the
moth and the rust and the thief ! And these are the
only things that they can steal — the treasures of
Place and of Power and of Pelf ! But there must, as

20 The Luggage of Life

Ruskin argues, be a fourth order of treasure — a web
made fair in the weaving, by Athena's shuttle (a
web that no moth can destroy) ; an armour forged
in divine fire by Vulcanian force (an armour that no
rust can defile) ; a gold to be mined in the very
sun's red heart, where he sets over the Delphian
cliffs (a gold that no thief can steal) ; deep-pictured
tissue; impenetrable armour; potable gold. Yes;
there is, there is! And it was to this fourth order
of treasure that Jesus pointed in His great sermon.
It was treasure of this fourth order that Mr. Little-
Faith safely retained, after his robbery, in 'the place
where his jewels were.' These 'the robbers never
ransacked ; so these he kept still.'

Now it so happened that Peter was standing by
that day, and heard that great word about the robes
of office that moths cannot eat, about the swords of
power that rust cannot defile, and about the shining
hoard that thieves cannot steal. And long afterwards
the three sets of treasures were running in his mind
when he himself wrote to scattered and persecuted
Christians concerning the inheritance that is incor-
ruptible, because no moth can corrupt it, and unde-
filable, because no rust can defile it, and unfading,
because no thieves can steal it. These are the jewels
that the brigands of Deadman's Lane can never
touch.

Our Highway Robberies 21

Oh the night was dark and the night was late,

And the robbers came to rob him ;
And they picked the locks of his palace-gate,

The robbers that came to rob him —
They picked the locks of his palace-gate,
Seized his jewels and gems of state,
His coffers of gold and his priceless plate, —

The robbers that came to rob him.

But loud laughed he in the morning red !

For of what had the robbers robbed him?
Ho ! hidden safe as he slept in bed,

When the robbers came to rob him,
They robbed him not of a golden shred
Of the radiant dreams in his wise old head —
'And they're welcome to all things else !' he said,

When the robbers came to rob him.

The lines inevitably recall the well-known story
of Jeremy Taylor. His house had been pitilessly
plundered; all his choicest possessions had been
squandered; his family had been turned out of
doors. Yet, in face of his sore trial, the good man
kneeled down and gave humble and hearty thanks
to his God that his enemies had left him 'the sun and
the moon, a loving wife, many friends to pity and
relieve, the providence of God, all the promises of
the gospel, his faith, his hope of heaven, and his
charity towards his enemies!' Life's burglars and
bandits can make but poor headway against a man
of that temper.

22 The Luggage of Life

But of all those whose pockets have been rifled,
and whose houses have been robbed, none have
suffered more heavily than Paul. He knew the
skill of the robbers better than any of us. Here is
his own record : 'In stripes above measure, in prisons
more frequent, in deaths oft. Of the Jews five
times received I forty stripes save one. Thrice was
I beaten with rods, once was I stoned, thrice I suf-
fered shipwreck, a night and a day I have been in
the deep; in journeyings often, in perils of waters,
in perils of robbers, in perils by mine own country-
men, in perils by the heathen, in perils in the city,
in perils in the wilderness, in perils in the sea, in
perils among false brethren ; in weariness and pain-
fulness, in watchings often, in hunger and thirst, in
fastings often, in cold and nakedness.' Yes, 'in
peril of robbers/ The sea had robbed him once,
and the land had robbed him often. He knew what
the robbers could steal, and he knew what they could
not. 'Whether there be prophecies, they shall fail;
whether there be tongues, they shall cease; whether
there be knowledge, it shall vanish away.' These
are life's 'spending-money,' which we may lose by
violent hands in Deadman's Lane. But the apostle
goes on : 'But now abideth faith, hope, love — these
three; and the greatest of these is love/ These are
the jewels that the robbers cannot ransack.

Our Highway Robberies 23

I had a friend,

Whose love no time could end ;
That friend didst Thou to Thine own bosom take ;

For this, my loss, I see no reparation ;

The earth was once my home — a habitation
Of sorrow Thou hast made it for this sake.

I had a love

(This bitterest did prove) ;

A mystic light of joy on earth and sky;

Strange fears and hopes ; a rainbow tear and smile,
A transient splendour for a little while ;

Then — sudden darkness ; Lord, Thou knowest why !

What have I left?

Of friend and love bereft;

Stripped bare of everything I counted dear.
What friend have I like that I lost? What call
To action? Nay, what love? Lord, I have all,

And more besides, if only Thou art near !

In Florence visitors are shown the doors which
Michael Angelo declared to be fit for the gates of
Paradise. They are covered with exquisite pictures,
and picked out with noble imagery in bronze. But
those gates were once gilded, and Dante speaks of
them as the 'golden gates.' The centuries have
eaten away the gilt, but have been unable to touch
one particle of the magnificent work of the immortal
master. Let us put on a cheerful courage, there-
fore, as we enter Deadman's Lane. The best always
abides after the gleam and the gloss have worn off.

24 The Luggage of Life

Tjhat is for ever and for ever the strong consolation
of the Christian gospel. The robbers steal the
glitter ; they cannot touch the gold. They take Mr.
Little-Faith's spend ing-money ; but his jewels are
still his own after the brigands have decamped.

IV
TWO— OR THREE'

A BLIND man can always tell when there is a poor
congregation. In such a case the minister invariably
quotes a certain text: "Where two or three are
gathered together in My name, there am I in the
midst of them.' But the text is as much out of
place as the missing worshippers. We have no right
to drag it in drearily, dolefully, dismally, whenever
the empty pews are particularly conspicuous. It is
not an apology for human absence. It is a trium-
phant proclamation of the divine presence. And it
raises a most interesting question. Who are the
TWO? And who is the possible THIRD.?

'TWO OR THREE/

Who are the TWO ?

Who can they be but Euodias and Syntyche,
those two wrangling sisters in the church at Philippi,

25

26 The Luggage of Life

and all their still more quarrelsome daughters in all
the churches of the world? Who can they be but
Paul and Barnabas, so sharply contending; and
all their contentious sons the wide world over?
Wherever and whenever two daughters of Euodias
and Syntyche — poor ruffled creatures who have
judged rashly and spoken hastily — meet together
that they may kiss each other for Christ's dear sake,
and 'be of the same mind in the Lord/ 'there/ says
their great Master, 'am I in the midst of them/
Wherever and whenever two sons of Paul and
Barnabas — poor inflamed disciples who have con-
tended sharply and divided suddenly — meet to-
gether that they may love each other for the gospel's
sake (until they come once more to love each other
for their own) there, says their Lord, am I in the
midst of them. It is at such times as it is at the table
of the Lord. There is the same real Presence, the
same thrill of the heart ; the same 'thoughts that do
lie too deep for tears.' He is there, forgiving, and
teaching them the high art of forgiveness; forget-
ting, and showing them how to forget.

But the THIRD — the possible THIRD? 'Two — or
three' Who is he? The third, if there be a third,
is clearly that blessed one of the Seventh Beatitude :
'Blessed are the peacemakers, for they shall be called
the children of God/ The possible third is some

'Two — or Three' 27

lovely and gracious spirit who has wept in secret
over the pitiful estrangement of poor thin-skinned
Euodias and poor quick-tempered Syntyche. And,
by her beautiful ministry, she, like an angel of peace,
has brought them to this place of the Holy Presence.
The possible third is some strong, sane, saintly
soul who has grieved over the sharp contentions of
Paul and Barnabas, and has tactfully helped them
each to a discovery of the other's excellences.
Where Euodias and Syntyche and such an angel
meet, where Paul and Barnabas and such a Great-
heart kneel, we take our shoes from off our feet, for
the place whereon we stand is holy ground. It is
hallowed by the Presence. 'Where two or three are
gathered together in My name, there am I in the
midst of them.' 'These words,' says Professor
Simon, 'were spoken primarily of those who were
assembled for the settlement of quarrels.' So be it.

II

Who are the TWO ?

Who can they be but a husband and a wife?
Following upon the excellent example of Paul,
Peter addresses himself to all hubsands and to all
wives till wedding-bells shall chime no more. But
Peter goes just one step beyond Paul, in that he

28

takes all his husbands and wives into his confidence,
and tells them the profound reason for his earnest
solicitude on their behalf. 'That your prayers be
not hindered/ he says. 'I have so carefully warned
and admonished and instructed you as to your atti-
tude and behaviour to each other that your prayers
be not hindered/ Happy is that bridegroom who,
when all the confetti has been thrown, when the
chattering, giggling throng is at last excluded, when
he finds himself at length alone with his bride,
kneels with her, and lays in prayer and adoration the
foundation of the new home. 'Except the Lord
build the house, they labour in vain that build it.'
Wherever and whenever a man and his wife bow in
the presence of the Highest, that they may sweeten
and strengthen and sanctify their happy union by a
common fellowship with God, there, says the
strange Guest who blessed the marriage at Cana,
there am I in the midst of them. These are the TWO.
But the THIRD — the possible THIRD? 'Two — or
three.' Who is he? Let us consult, in our per-
plexity, one of the fathers of the Church. Let
Clement of Alexandria tell us. 'Who are the two or
three gathered together in Christ's name, and in
whose midst the Lord is? Is it not husband and
wife and child f To be sure. In the days of love's
young dream we say that 'two's company, three's

'Two — or Three' 29

none.' But when God sends a little child into a
home the early theory stands exploded, and three
become company, and two become none for ever
after. There is hope for Christianity so long as
these three gather in His name, and He is in the
midst of them. The family altar is the hub of the
spiritual universe. Every husband who does not
daily enjoy the benediction of the 'two or three'
should straightway read the fragrant life-story of
Thomas Boston. And every wife whose domestic
drudgeries and social niceties are not glorified by the
blessing of the 'two or three' should hasten to the
nearest library for the life of Susanna Wesley. And
after he has read the tale of Thomas Boston, and
after she has read the story of Susanna Wesley, not
a word will be said. They will rise and look into
each other's faces with a glance of perfect under-
standing. And 'a possible third' will be brought in
from a cot or from a kitchen, and that home will be-
come the gate of heaven. They will meet together,
and read together, and pray together on that day
and on every day that comes after it. And where
those two — or three — gather together in His name,
there He will be in the midst of them.

That was a great word which fell the other day
from the lips of King George V: 'The foundations
of national glory,' he said, 'are set in the homes of

30 The Luggage of Life

the people. They will only remain unshaken while
the family life of our nation is strong and simple and
pure.' It was right royally spoken. Herein lies
life's wealthiest enrichment and finest fortification.

Ill

Who are the TWO?

Who can they be but those torch-bearers and
testifiers whom He has sent in pairs to the uttermost
ends of the earth ? He sent them forth two by two,
and wherever any two of them sit by the wayside, or
kneel in the shadow, or, like the men of Emmaus,
talk as they walk, there will He be in the midst of
them. And so men have paired off ever since — Paul
and Silas, Mark and Barnabas, Luther and Melanch-
thon, Franciscan friars, Dominican monks, Lollard
preachers, Salvationist officers, travelling evan-
gelists, and a host beside. Nor are the minister and
his wife in their manse, or the missionary and his
wife at their remote outpost, any exception to the
rule. And wherever and whenever His ambassa-
dors, persecuted as Paul and Silas were persecuted,
meet together in His name, as Paul and Silas in
their prison 'prayed and sang praises unto God/
there will He be in the midst of them, as He was
most manifestly in the midst of them on that never-

'Two — or Three' 31

to-be-forgotten night at Philippi. It is ever so.
This great saying concerning the 'two or three' is
the watchword of the faith. It is the pledge that,
however isolated the scene, however remote the
station, however lonely the toilers, He is always
there.

But the THIRD — the possible THIRD? 'Two — or
three.' Who is he? Who can he be but the first
convert? Lydia, for example, that winsome soul
who, as the 'Lady of the Decoration' would have
said, 'had a beautiful big house, and a beautiful big
heart, and took us right into both.' Paul never for-
got when he and Silas and Lydia — happy three!
— met together in His name. It was the very joy
that is in the presence of the angels overflowing
into the hearts of mortal men. There was not a
shadow of doubt about it. He was clearly there in
the midst of them. Or the jailer, for example.
Paul and Silas and their jailer ! What a triad ! But
what a night was that! No Christian knows what
Christianity really means until he has experienced
such days as that day of Lydia' s and such nights as
that night with the jailer. Religion catches fire and
becomes sensational. The moment when two weary
workers kneel with their first convert has all eternity
crammed and crowded into it. Ask Robert and
Mary Moffat if that is not so. Wherefore let every

32 The Luggage of Life

minister and his wife, and every missionary and his
wife, and every pair of Christian comrades every-
where, keep an eye open day and night for the pos-
sible Number Three. 'Two — or three,' the Master
said. Three's company ; two's none !

V
THE CAPTAIN OF THE SHIP

THE unvarnished fact is that even the skipper does
not know everything. He sweeps the horizon with
his glasses, but there are signs in the sky that elude
his wary observation. He may quite easily be
beaten at his own game. The seer in the cabin may
decipher the language of the clouds more accurately
than the bronzed and weather-beaten mariner on
the quarter-deck. That was the mistake the cen-
turion made. 'The^centurion believed the master of
the ship more than those things which were spoken
by Paul.' It is a purely nautical matter. The cap-
tain of the ship predicts fair weather and urges an
early clearance. Paul, the prisoner and passenger,
foretold angry seas, and advised remaining in
shelter. The centurion believed the captain of the
ship. But Paul was right; the captain was wrong;
and the ship was lost. Sooner or later, all life re-
solves itself into a desperate struggle for human
credence between Paul and the captain of the ship.
The point is that the captain of the ship is the man
33

34 The Luggage of Life

who might be supposed to know. He is a specialist.
And Paul sets over against his nautical erudition the
unsatisfying words, 'I perceive.' It is a case of
Reason on the one hand and Revelation on the
other; and the centurion pins his faith to the vigi-
lant captain rather than to the visionary Paul. That
is the exact point at which the world has always
missed its way. That was the trouble at the very
start. Could it be that to eat of the fruit of the tree
would be to die? Was it reasonable upon the face
of it? And Adam believed the captain of the ship.
Later Noah predicted a flood. Where were the phe-
nomena to warrant such an alarming forecast? Did
it appeal to common sense? And again the insistent
voice of Revelation was scouted. Visit the melan-
choly sites of Edom and Babylon, of Tyre and
Sidon, of Sodom and Gomorrah, of Greece and
Rome, and everywhere, on crumbling pillar and
broken arch, seeing eyes may discern these signifi-
cant words, deeply graven on the ruins that are
splendid even in decay: They believed the captain
of the ship. These magnificent empire-builders of
yesterday scouted the nebulous perceptions of the
prophets, and they fell. National shipwreck always
comes along that line.

It is wonderful how little the practical man really
knows. A grey-headed old theorist is tapping away

The Captain of the Ship 35

with his geological hammer among the stones and
. strata on the hill-side. As he leaves he remarks
casually that there is coal in the mountain. The
practical man smiles' incredulously at the poor old
fellow as he packs his hammers and glasses and
specimens and strolls off home; but, a year or two
later, when the hill-side is riddled with shafts, grimy
with coal-dust, and black with smoke, the 'practical
man' bites his lips in disgust at his failure to take
the old dreamer's hint. The meteorologist shuts him-
self up in his laboratory among phials and chemicals.
Presently he opens his door and gravely predicts a
storm. The masters of the craft down at the port
smile knowingly and put to sea ; but when their ships
are in the pitiless grip of the gale they grimly re-
member the forecast. Only the other day Professor
Belar, Director of the Larbach Observatory, warned
miners of seismic unrest that seemed likely to
liberate fire-damp. He was not taken very seri-
ously; and within a day or two all Europe stood
aghast at the horror of the Lancashire colliery ex-
plosion. Paul generally knows what he is talking
about.

It would be an appalling calamity if we were left
at the mercy of the captain of the ship. He may
be true as steel, and good as gold, but, as in
the case under notice, he makes mistakes. Those

56 The Luggage of Life

who are inclined, like the centurion, to trust the
captain of the ship rather than those things that
are spoken by Paul will do well to consult a second
captain. There are more ships than one, and the
opinion of the second captain will diverge from
that of the first. Doctors differ. I have recently
been reading the biographies of some of our greatest
English judges, and few things are more curious
than the way in which two distinguished judges,
equally able and equally conscientious, will hear
the selfsame evidence, and listen to the selfsame
speeches, and then arrive at diametrically opposite
conclusions. The same phenomenon is common in
politics. Great and gifted men, trained to wrestle
with the problems of political economy, developing
by long experience all the instincts and functions
of statesmanship, will divide sharply and oppose
each other hotly on the most simple issues.

Clearly the captain of the ship is unreliable. In a
world like this, on which so many worlds depend, it
would be the climax of misfortune if the captain of
the ship had it all his own way. There are visions,
perceptions, revelations. God speaks from without.
He speaks plainly, so that wayfaring men may not
err. Paul rises and says grandly, 'Sirs, I per-
ceive. . . .' And that centurion is foolish indeed
who believes the captain of the ship more than

The Captain of the Ship 37

those things that are spoken by Paul. The dusty
and travel-stained pilgrims of eternity would be of
all men most miserable if, amidst the babel of many
advisers, no clear guidance had reached them from
the haven of their desire. Happily, the Lord of
the Pilgrims does not leave His Christians and
Hopefuls to find the way to the Celestial City as
best they may. There are the 'things spoken by
Paul.'

Yet it must be admitted that there is a certain
glamour and fascination about the captain of the
ship. It is restful to believe him rather than to
venture everything upon the verdict of a visionary.
In one of the biographies to which we have referred
an interesting situation occurs. It is in the Life
of Sir Henry Hawkins (Baron Brampton). At the
very climax of his fame as a judge, accustomed
every day to weighing conflicting evidence, and
deciding between opposing claims, the great judge
gave himself to the study of religion, and, as a
result, he joined the Roman Church. Newman's
Apologia is a similar case. How can these 'con-
versions' be explained? The answer is obvious.
Considered from the strictly judicial point of view
of Hawkins, or from the coldly intellectual stand-
point of Newman, their decisions are perfectly
intelligible. They simply believed the captain of

38 The Luggage of Life

the ship. In the Roman Church they find a com-
mander, a head, a pope. He speaks plainly, he is
invested with the glamour of authority, and his
decisions are final; he is the captain of the ship.
But there are other voices that do not yield to
such icily critical investigation. They are subtle,
silent, spiritual. But they satisfy, and lead to safety.
'The centurion believed the captain of the ship
more than those things which were spoken by Paul.'
That is exactly what, moving along purely logical
and coldly intellectual lines, Hawkins and Newman
would have done.

But when all is said and done, Paul is right. A
leading English minister, the other day, drew aside
the veil of squalor and filth, and revealed to an
eminent scientist the raw material on which he
worked — the very refuse and wreckage of society.
'Is there any hope for these people?' he asked.
The old professor took his time, and answered sagely,
'Pathologically speaking, there is none!' Just so.
That is the verdict of the captain of the ship. But
Paul cries, 'Sirs, I perceive . . . ,' and tells a vastly
different tale. And which is right? Ask your
ministers; ask your city missionaries; ask General
Booth. Or, if you suspect these of bias, consult
the works of Professor William James, the eminent
psychologist, or Rider Haggard, the eminent

The Captain of the Ship 39

novelist. Professor James, in his masterpiece, con-
fessed that, in ways altogether beyond psychological
explanation, the activities of the Church have again
and again made bad men good. Spiritual energies
have wrought the most amazing moral transforma-
tions. And still more recently Rider Haggard raises
his hat in reverence before the astonishing phe-
nomenon of conversion as he has seen it for himself
in his investigations of the work of the Salvation
Army. There can be no doubt about it. The un-
seen world is the triumphant world. The spiritual
is, after all, the sane and the safe. The only way of
avoiding shipwreck in Church and in State is clearly
to pay good heed to 'the things spoken by Paul/

VI

THE SUPREMACIES OF LIFE

LIFE has a wonderful way of tapering majestically
to its climax. It narrows itself up towards its su-
premacies, like a mountain rising to its snow-capped
summit in the skies. Our supreme interests assert
themselves invincibly at the last. Our master pas-
sions are 'in at the death.' Let us glance at a pair
of extraordinarily parallel illustrations.

Paul is awaiting his last appearance before Nero.
The old apostle is caught and caged at last.
He is writing his very last letter. He expects, if
spared, to spend the winter in a Roman dungeon.
'Do your very best,' he says to Timothy, 'to come
to me before winter.' 'And/ he adds, 'the cloke
that I left at Troas with Carpus, when thou comest,
bring with thee, and the books, but especially the
parchments' !

Under circumstances almost exactly similar Paul's
great translator, William Tyndale, was lying in his
damp cell at Vilvorde awaiting the fatal stroke

40

The Supremacies of Life 41

which set his spirit free a few weeks later. And,
as in Paul's case, winter was coming on. 'Bring me/
he writes, 'a warmer cap, something to patch my
leggings, a woollen shirt, and, above all, my Hebrew
Bible' !

Especially the parchments!

Above all, my Hebrew Bible!

The emphasis is upon the especially and upon the
above all. Paul knows how isolated he will feel in
his horrid cellar, and he twice begs his young com-
rade to hurry to his side. He knows how cold he
will be, and he pleads for his cloke. He knows how
lonely will be his incarceration, and he says, 'Bring
the books'! Yet he feels that, after all, these do
not represent the supremacies of life. It is not on
these that he is prepared to make his final stand.
'But especially the parchments' ! Much as he
yearns for the clasp of Timothy's hand, he is pre-
pared, if needs be, to face the stern future alone.
Much as he longs for his warm tunic to shelter his
aged limbs, he is prepared, if needs be, to sit and
shiver the long winter through. Gladly as he would
revel in his favourite authors, he is prepared, if
needs be, to sit counting the links in his chain and
the stones in the wall. But the parchments ! These
are life's supreme, essential, indispensable requisites.
These represent life's irreducible minimum. 'Espe-

42 The Luggage of Life

cially the parchments'! 'Above all, my Hebrew
Bible' ! These are the supremacies of life.

The hero of romance erects a pyramid upon its
apex. He sets out in life with one or two friends.
He soon multiplies the number. He counts them,
as the years pass, by the score and by the hundred.
And he dies at last in the possession of friendships
which can be numbered by the thousand. It is a
false note. The thing is untrue to experience. 'The
first true gentleman that ever breathed' found His
path thronged with friends at the outset. But, as
time wore on, they wore off. 'Many of His disciples
went back, and walked no more with Him/ Twelve
remained, such as they were ; but even that remnant
must be sifted, and of the twelve a selection had
to be made. And into the chamber of death, and up
to the Mount of Transfiguration, and into the Gar-
den of Gethsemane 'Jesus taketh with Him Peter
and James and John.' The pyramid is narrowing
up towards its apex. And when He passes from
Gethsemane to Golgotha John alone stands by the
cross, and even he had wavered. 'And Jesus said
unto John, Son, behold thy mother.' It had tapered
sharply to the unit at last. 'Especially John.'

Sir William Robertson Nicoll has a story of an
old Scotsman who lay a-dying. His little room was
crowded with friends. Presently a number of them

The Supremacies of Life 43"

rose and quietly left. There remained his old wife,
Jean, and the trusted companions of a long pilgrim-
age. As his frame became more feeble and his eye
more dim one after another reverently rose, lifted
the worn old latch silently, and left the room. At
last the old man pressed the withered hand in which
his own was clasped, and whispered faintly: 'They
will a' gang : you will stay !' And at last he and she
were the sole occupants of the little chamber.
'Especially Jean/ Which things are an allegory.
The pyramid narrows to its apex. Life contracts
towards its supremacies. 'Especially the parch-
ments'! 'I have hosts of friends,' wrote Lord
Macaulay in one of his beautiful letters to his sister,
'but not more than half a dozen the news of whose
death would spoil my breakfast.' And of that half-
dozen he would probably at a later stage have made
a selection. Friendship has its supremacies.

The same is, of course, true of our libraries. Like
the apostle, we are all fond of books ; but our book-
shelves dwindle in intensity as they grow in ex-
tensity. As life goes on we accumulate more and
more volumes, but we set more and more store on a
few selected classics of the soul. The number of
those favourites diminishes as the hair bleaches.
We have a score ; a dozen ; and at length three. And
if the hair gets very white, we find the three too

44 The Luggage of Life

many by two. 'Especially the parchments'! Sir
H. M. Stanley set out upon his great African ex-
ploration with quite a formidable library. One can-
not march eighteen hours a day under an equatorial
sun, and he gave a prudent thought to the long en-
campments, and armed himself with books. But
books are often heavy — in a literal as well as in a
literary sense. And one by one his native servants
deserted him (the pyramid towering towards its
apex). And, as a consequence, Stanley was com-
pelled to leave one treasured set of volumes at this
African village, and another at that, until at last he
had but two books left — Shakespeare and the Bible.
And we have no doubt that, had Africa been a still
broader continent than it actually is, even Shake-
speare would have been abandoned to gratify the
curiosity of some astonished Hottentots or pigmies.
It all comes back to that pathetic entry in Lockhart's
diary at Abbots ford : 'He [Sir Walter Scott] then
desired to be wheeled through his rooms in the bath-
chair. We moved him leisurely for an hour or more
tip and down the hall and the great library. "I have
seen much," he kept saying, "but nothing like my
ain hoose — give me one turn more !" Next morning
he desired to be drawn into the library and placed by
the central window, that he might look down upon
the Tweed. Here he expressed a wish that I should

The Supremacies of Life 45

read to him. I asked, from what book. He said,
"Need you ask? There is but one!" I chose the
fourteenth chapter of St. John's Gospel.' He lis-
tened with mild devotion, and, when Lockhart had
finished reading of the Father's house and the many
mansions, he said, "That is a great comfort !' The
juxtaposition of phrases is arresting: 'In the great
library' — 'there is but one book I' The pyramid
stood squarely upon its solid foundation, but it
towered grandly and tapered finely towards its nar-
row but majestic summit. Come/ says Paul the
Aged, 'for I am lonely; bring the cloke, for I am
old and cold ; bring the books, for my mind is hun-
gry; but, oh, if all these fail, send the parchments!'
Especially the parchments! Life's supremacies
must always conquer and claim their own at the last.

VII
THE PRUDENTIALITIES OF LIFE

BENEATH cloudless Italian skies Paul is painfully
but patiently enduring, in a stifling cell, the suffocat-
ing fervours of the sultry summer days. And, with
the fierce heat at its insufferable maximum, he casts
a prudent thought ahead of him, and contemplates
the severe rigours of a stern Roman winter. 'Do
thy best/ he writes to Timothy, 'to come to me be-
fore winter; and the cloke which I left at Troas
bring with thee.' Superficial observers have often
considered these personal trivialities beneath the
dignity of Scripture. The trifling is subjective; it is
not objective. It is their criticism that lacks dignity.
'Eyes have they, but they see not/ The microscopic
is often as eloquent and as revealing as the majestic.
Divinity often trembles in a dewdrop. A trifling
incident may reflect a tremendous principle. A
psychologist would at least discover in the story of
Paul and his summer call for his winter cloke a fine
instance of the amazing detachment of which the

46

The Prudentialities of Life 47

human mind is capable. It is a strange and wonder-
ful thing that we are able, amidst summer scenes, to
project our thoughts so realistically into the coming
cold that we give an involuntary shiver and cast our
eyes over our wardrobes. The same power, of
course, enables us to project our minds, not merely
from our summer cells to our winter wardrobes,
but from our own summers to other people's winters.
It is by this extraordinary faculty of the mind that
we sympathize. My lady, wrapped snugly in rugs
and furs, detaches herself from herself, and projects
herself into the wretched rags of her sister in the
slums. No one can read Charles Dickens without
feeling that, even as he sat in his comfortable room
and wrote, he endured all the agonies of the poverty
which he so passionately portrayed. Mrs. Harriet
Beecher Stowe could never have written Uncle
Tom's Cabin unless she had first projected herself,
in uttermost detachment from herself, into the
anguish of Cassy and Eliza. The iron entered into
her own soul by this weird and awful power of in-
tellectual abandonment. It makes even loftier
flights: it explores moral territories. Lovers of
Oliver Twist will remember how the pure, sweet
girlhood of Rose Maylie came into touch with the
soiled soul of poor Nancy, and for one awful mo-
ment the mind of Rose projected itself into the sins

48 The Luggage of Life

and sorrows of Nancy ; and, in the presence of that
marvel, Nancy burst into tears. 'O, lady, lady!'
she cried, clasping her hands passionately before her
face, 'if there were more like you, there would be
fewer like me — there would, there would!' And,
travelling along this road, we should soon come to
that culminating example of mental and moral de-
tachment by which the redemption of a lost world
was effected. From the summer-time of His glory
and holiness He detached Himself from Himself —
emptied Himself — and wept with us in the winter of
our raggedness and shame. 'He had compassion' !
The ages can know no greater miracle or mystery
than that.

But the purely psychological phenomenon pre-
sented by Paul's summer call for his winter cloke has
led us a little astray. A wayfaring man will recog-
nize it as an illustration of the prudentialities of life.
Paul anticipates in summer the demands of winter.
Such prudentialities are everywhere. The great
mountain heights store up in winter their millions
upon millions of tons of snow ; and when early sum-
mer suns have dried up the lower springs, and when
otherwise the plains would be scorched beneath a
pitiless glare, the welcome streams come flowing
down from the heights, and the grateful cattle
quench their thirst. In the same way, the soft green

The Prudentialities of Life 49

mosses along the banks of the rivulet saturate them-
selves with moisture like sponges, conserving and
protecting it, and in the later days of drought, when
else the bed of the stream would be dry, they release
their precious burthen, and the thirsty bless them.
In animate creatures the faculty is, of course, much
more pronounced. Everybody knows how ants and
beetles make elaborate preparations for days as yet
far ahead of them. The mice and the squirrels
make hay while the sun shines, and lay up in store
against frost and snow. The bee provides her
honey when the earth is gay with flowers with the
intention of living upon her hoard when no blossoms
are to be seen. We remember reading in Parkman's
Conspiracy of Pontiac, of the folly of the Algonquin
Indian who, 'in the hour of plenty, forgets the sea-
son of want,' until, 'stiff and stark, with haggard
cheek and shrivelled lip, he lies among the snow-
drifts; till, with tooth and claw the famished wild
cat strives in vain to pierce the frigid marble of his
limbs.' There is a more excellent way. And Paul,
following the example of mice and squirrels and
bees, thinks of winter cold while as yet he perspires
beneath summer suns. The most obvious applica-
tion of the principle is, naturally, the most practical
one. Those who are too dense to catch our mean-
ing had better inquire for an interpretation of it at

50 The Luggage of Life

a savings bank, a building society, or an insurance
office. It is true, of course, that, concerning many
things, to-morrow must not obtrude upon to-day;
but the future has its certainties, and it would be
both impious and absurd to neglect them. Since it
is certain that winter must follow summer, it is
certain that it is the duty of Paul to arrange for his
cloke. A man must provide for his home whilst as
yet he is single ; he must make his will whilst in the
best of health — the applications are simply innum-
erable. But the truth has its deeper aspects. In
the heyday of spiritual prosperity we must lay up in
store against days of darkness and doubt. In
the days of opened heavens and answered prayers
let us record the experience on the tablets of mem-
ory, to feed upon when the heavens are as brass and
prayer as a tinkling cymbal. 'When infidel thoughts
come knocking at my door/ wrote good old Thomas
! Shepard, 'I send them away with this answer : Why
should I question that truth which I have both seen
'and known in better days?' There is a world of
sagacity and shrewdness there !

It was an awful night in Scotland. The snow was
deep ; the wind simply shrieked around the little hut
in which a good old elder lay dying. His daughter
brought the family Bible to his bedside.

'Father/ she said, 'will I read a chapter to ye ?'

The Prudentialities of Life 51

But the old man was in sore pain, and only
moaned. She opened the book.

*Na, na, lassie,' he said, 'the storm's up noo; I
theekit [thatched] my hoose in the calm weather!'

We can learn no loftier philosophy than that from
the story of Paul's summer call for his winter cloke.
We must thatch our houses in the calm weather, and,
later on, smile at the storm. Life's truest pru-
dentiality lies just there !

VIII
THE FACE AT THE WINDOW

are living in a very wistful world. It is all very
well to say that people are irreligious, callous, in-
different That is true ; but it is not the whole of the
truth. When Mr. H. G. Wells' First Men in the
Moon reached their lunar destination the moon
seemed to them to be lifeless, derelict, desolate; but
when they probed beneath the surface they found
it teeming with pulsing life, and furious thought,
and industrial activity. And the more deeply they
penetrated into its cavernous tunnels and mysterious
subways the more populous the place became.
Which is, as Mr. Wells very possibly meant it to be,
an allegory. It is when we look with superficial
eyes upon the world that we are pessimists. When
we scratch the surface we begin to behold the truth.
One of those noble and graceful Hebrew metaphors
which, for sheer literary beauty, have never been
surpassed, reflects most perfectly the whole position.
'My soul doth wait for the Lord more than they that
watch for the morning; I say, more than they that

52

The Face at the Window 53

watch for the morning/ The image is one of ex-
quisite tenderness and pathos. The night is long
and dreary, and the tired watchers press their faces
every now and then against the window-pane, eager
to discover beyond the rugged ranges some grey
glimmer of the coming dawn. The soul of many a
man has its eastward aspect. There are great num-
bers who dwell in chambers like that in which Chris-
tian was lodged in the Palace Beautiful, 'whose
window opened toward the sun-rising.' The soul of
the psalmist is in the darkness, but his face is to-
wards the dawn. We are in grave peril, in our
pessimistic moods, of forgetting the face at the
window. It is the essential feature in the present
situation. There are pilgrims 'asking the way to
Zion with their faces thitherward.'

Let my meaning mirror itself in a pair of illustra-
tions. Here are two such faces peering wistfully
out from the dark.

The first is that of Frank T. Bullen. In With
Christ at Sea, he says, 'Arriving in Sydney, I soon
succeeded in getting a berth as lamp-trimmer in one
of the coasting steamers, and for the next twelve
months made a pretty complete circuit of the Aus-
tralasian colonies, living on the best of everything,
earning good wages, learning all manner of things
harmful to me, but never by any chance coming

54 The Luggage of Life

across any one who was Christianly disposed, and
feeling myself less and less anxious to seek after
God. Often I would stand on deck, when anchored
in Sydney Harbour on Sunday morning, and listen
to the church bells playing 'Sicilian Mariners,' with
a dull ache at my heart, a deep longing for some-
thing, I knew not what.' Thus ends the quotation;
but the tragic fact is that there were excellent peo-
ple, with Bibles and hymn-books, passing along the
quay on the way to church, who glanced at the grimy
young lamp-trimmer and thought him irreligious,
callous, and indifferent! They failed to see the
wistful face at the window.

The other occurs in the memoir of Dr. H. Grattan
Guinness. On one of the earliest pages we read:
'Never shall I forget one evening, when the ship was
anchored in a calm off Lowestoft, near Yarmouth,
looking at the sun slowly setting in the west over the
peaceful scene, the outline of a church spire rising
among trees showing distinctly against the glowing
sky. I was longing unutterably to be permitted to
dwell in some quiet spot where, out of the reach of
evil society and the voice of blasphemy, I might
worship God and walk with Him in unhindered
fellowship/

'Longing unutterably !' 'More than they that watch
for the morning.' That is it !

The Face at the Window 55

The fact is that we are too superficial. We glance
at a man and at once tie an imaginary label round
his neck. We classify him as a Christian, or as a
heretic, or as a sceptic, or as a backslider; and we
think that that settles it. But our work of classifi-
cation is very much more complicated than we think.
We forget that a saint and a sceptic can dwell to-
gether in the same skin. Lord, I believe — there you
have the saint! Help Thou mine unbelief — there
you have the sceptic! The prophets loved to talk
of a time when the wolf should lie down with the
lamb; but in many a heart the wolf and the lamb
dwell together even now. Great wickedness and
great wist fulness often lodge in the self -same heart.
The room may be very dark indeed, but the face
is at the window looking towards the light. We are
slow to learn the lesson that Robert Louis Stevenson
tried to teach us in his allegory of Dr. Jekyll and
Mr. Hyde. As the years go by we learn to econo-
mize our labels.

Dr. Campbell Morgan was recently asked by an
interviewer for his view of the spiritual condition
of London. 'On the one hand/ he replied, 'I see
evidence of awful indifference, but on the other I
see remarkable wistf ulness. I find that, when I get
into touch with the most indifferent men, there is
a great wist fulness that was absent a few years ago.

56 The Luggage of Life

The man who then told me that he was an agnostic
still says that he is an agnostic, but he adds now
that he dearly wishes he could believe as I do.' That
testimony is significant. It means that the men who
sit in thick darkness are moving towards the window
and longing for the dawn.

Dr. Douglas Adam has told us a striking story of
Professor Huxley. 'A friend of mine,' says Dr.
Adam, 'was acting on a Royal Commission of which
Professor Huxley was a member. One Sunday he
and the great scientist were staying in a little coun-
try town. "I suppose you are going to church," said
Huxley. "Yes," replied the friend. "What if, in-
stead, you stayed at home and talked to me of your
religion ?" "No," was the reply, "for I am not clever
enough to refute your arguments." "But what if
you simply told me of your own experience — what
religion has done for you?" My friend did not go
to church that morning. He stayed at home and told
Huxley the story of all that Christ had been to him.
And presently there were tears in the eyes of the
great agnostic as he said, "I would give my right
hand if I could believe that!" Huxley's face was
at the window, in spite of everything.

But, of course, the peerless illustration of our
point is the infinitely pathetic case of Professor
Sidgwick. Has any minister ever read that life-

The Face at the Window 57

story with dry eyes? If so, we are sorry for his
congregation. To enter into the cheerless realm of
Sidgwick's scepticism is a more chilling experience
than to penetrate polar solitudes. And yet no one
can read that throbbing story without seeing a tear-
stained face at the window. Long and wistfully
the brilliant doctor strained his eyes, looking east-
ward, but saw not the roseate flush of the dawn.
He felt, through it all, that his doubt was his shame ;
and his soul ached for faith. He literally longed
for the light 'more than they that watch for the
morning; I say, more than they that watch for the
morning.' There was unbelief in his brain, but a
wonderful wistfulness shone in his yearning eyes.
Beneath his intellectual uncertainties he carried a
pitifully hungry heart. Others such as Mill and
Tyndall, Professor Clifford and Viscount Amberley
might, of course, easily be cited to swell this cloud
of witnesses ; but there is no need.

Let us, however, before laying aside the pen, cross
the ocean in order to inquire whether this strange
and wistful craving is confined to grimy lamp-trim-
mers like Frank Bullen, and to brilliant University
professors like Henry Sidgwick; or is it to be dis-
covered also in the regions beyond? And so soon
as we step ashore it becomes manifest that, without
an exception, the peoples who sit in darkness have,

$8 The Luggage of Life

nevertheless, their faces to the window. In every
land 'there be many that say, Who will show us any
good?' On continents and. on islands blind souls
are everywhere groping after the light. It must be
so. If, as Principal Iverach argues in his Christian
Message, the Founder of Christianity be in very
deed the Son of God, it is inconceivable that the hu-
man heart can find its home in Mohammedanism or
Buddhism. Only recently a great All-India Con-
vention of Religions was held at Allahabad. Hin-
duism, Islamism, Jainism, Zoroastrianism, Judaism,
and Theosophy were all strongly represented. But it
was agreed, by general consent, that the only mes-
sage that 'struck warm' was the witness of the
Indian Christians to the love and power of Christ.
To that testimony a sympathetic chord of response
vibrated in all hearts. And, at the close of the Con-
vention, the Hindu secretary exclaimed, 'The one
thing we could not have dispensed with was the
Christian contribution!' It was like a streak of
dawn streaming in upon the tired watchers of the
night. 'The Lady of the Decoration' tells us that
she saw in Japan 'a wist fulness that I have never
seen anywhere else, except in the eyes of a dog.'
The letters of our missionaries on every field often
remind us of that unforgettable cartoon which ap-
peared in Punch in the dark days of 1885. It repre-

The Face at the Window 59

sented General Gordon on the roof of his palace
at Khartoum, shading his eager eyes with his hand
and gazing with a look of unutterable wistfulness
towards the sandy horizon, watching for that reliev-
ing column that ultimately came too late. He waited
for their coming more than they that watch for the
morning. So do the nations.

Sudden, before my inward open vision,
Millions of faces crowded up to view,

Sad eyes that said: 'For us is no provision,
Give us your Saviour, too!

'Give us,' they cry, 'your cup of consolation ;

Never to our outreaching hands 'tis passed;
We long for the Desire of every nation,

And, oh, we die so fast!'

These are the faces at the window. When little
Bilney made his historic confession to Hugh
Latimer, which lit that candle in England that has
never been put out, an image akin to this haunted
his imagination. 'Oh, Father Latimer/ he said,
'prithee, hear me: when I read in the Latin Testa-
ment of the great Erasmus these strange words —
"Christ Jesus came into the world to save sinners,"
it was with me as though in the midst of a dark
night, day suddenly broke !' That is the daybreak
for which the faces watch at the windows of the

60 The Luggage of Life

world 'more than they that watch for the morning ;
I say, more than they that watch for the morning.'
The exquisite winsomeness of the Christian evangel
and the wondrous wist fulness of a waiting world
are the two strong pillars on which we build our
serene confidence in the day after to-morrow.

IX

BACK MOVES

I WAS enjoying the rare blessedness of an evening
free from engagements. I was revelling in the
luxury of a glorious arm-chair, a blazing fire, and a
fascinating book. The children were seated at the
table behind me, absorbed in the desperate hazards
of the game that lay between them. The only noise
was the rustle of the leaves of my book. But at
length the silence was broken. 'You can't do that !'
I heard one of the players cry, 'there are no back
moves !' I read on; but had not gone far when I
came upon this sentence: 'The unseen opponent in
the great game of life, while scrupulously fair, will
allow no back moves, and makes us pay in full for
every blunder.' The words, of course, are Huxley's.
I wonder if he is right ! I am not at all sure that he
has spoken the last word.

So many men find their lives entangled, prej-
udiced, compromised, that unless you can promise
them something in the nature of a back move the
most you can offer seems so paltry and small. Go to

61

62 The Luggage of Life

an almshouse, for example, and the eld people will
remind you that you can't give them their lives over
again. Visit a jail, and, in some form or other, the
terrible question will present itself in every cell:
'Can I begin again at the point at which I went
astray?' Talk to a man who is in the grip of the
drink fiend. He does not doubt for a moment the
willingness of God to forgive. He is even inclined
to think it possible that the power of God might be
able to keep him from the dreadful snare. But see
the stain on his life! He thinks with unspeakable
horror of his tarnished name, his humiliated wife,
his trembling hand. Have you nothing to say to him
about a fresh start, a clean sheet, a back move? If
not, you will lose him in spite of everything.

Now I imagine that most of us have passed
through three distinct phases of thought on this sub-
ject. I confess that I have. They are three in-
evitable stages of development. First of all, there
was the period at which we assured men, with the
most sublime confidence, that their sins, like a dark
cloud, could be blotted from the face of the sky and
wiped into oblivion. The ugly stain, we told them,
could be perfectly and eternally erased. We
boasted, in our fine evangelistic fervour, that a
sinner might not only be pardoned, but be justified.
For a sinful man to be justified, we elaborately ex-

Back Moves 63

plained, was for a wicked man to be made as though
he had never been wicked at all. Sin is not only
forgiven; it is annihilated, cast behind God's back,
hurled into the depths of the sea. Salvation, under
that first interpretation, was nothing less than a
magnificent back move.

Then came doubts, suspicions, and the second
phase. We found it was not all so simple as we
thought. The jail-bird is converted; but who will
trust him? The old record is so damning! The
drunkard kneels in a tempest of tears at the penitent-
form; but the bloated face, and the palsied hand, and
— worse still — the awful craving are there still. We
recalled John B. Cough's bitter, bitter cry: 'The
scars remain!' he lamented, 'scars never to be
eradicated, never to be removed in this life. I have
been plucked like a brand from the burning; but the
scar of the fire is on me !' And George Mac Donald
emphasizes, with a very tender but a very telling
touch, another aspect of the same problem. The
passage occurs in Wilfrid Cumbermede. 'Do you
know, Wilfrid, I once shot a little bird — for no good,
but just to shoot at something. I knew it was
wrong, yet I drew the trigger. It dropped, a heap
of ruffled feathers. I shall never get that little bird
out of my head. And the worst of it is that, to all
eternity I can never make any atonement.' 'But

64 The Luggage of Life

God will forgive you, Charley!' 'What do I care
for that/ he rejoined almost fiercely, 'when the little
bird cannot forgive me?' Yes, there is just that
element in life that makes back moves very difficult.
And, unhappily, the wreckage men have wrought
is not always confined to a heap of ruffled feathers.
What if, whilst Heaven absolves, earth finds it hard
to entertain kind thoughts of us? What if, instead
of little birds, our own flesh and blood rise up in
judgment against us? There is, undoubtedly, a
good deal to give pause to our early theology; a
good deal to enforce the cheerless philosophy of
Omar Khayyam:

The Moving Finger writes ; and, having writ,
Moves on: nor all your piety nor wit

Shall lure it back to cancel half a line,
Nor all your tears wash out a word of it.

We abode among these sombre thoughts for many
years, and fancied that we had reached finality. We
pitched our tent in this dismal wilderness and re-
garded it as home. We foolishly imagined that this
was the last phase, and that there was no more to
be said. And when the felon looked eagerly up into
our eyes, as he sat in his lonely cell, and asked about
the new start, the clean sheet, the back move, we
were dumb.

Back Moves 65

Then came emancipation, and the third phase.
And, as usual, the Bible brought it. We were brows-
ing among the prophecies ; we came upon Jeremiah's
story of the potter. 'Then I went down to the
potter's house, and, behold, he wrought a work on
the wheels. And the vessel that he made of clay
was marred in the hand of the potter: so he made
it again another vessel, as seemed good to the potter
to make it. Then the word of the Lord came to me
saying, O house of Israel, cannot I do with you as
this potter? saith the Lord.' He made it again!
That is surely as near to a back move as it is possible
to get ! I remember hearing the Rev. F. B. Meyer
tell of a woman who, on her way to commit suicide,
heard the singing in Christ Church, Westminster,
and stole into the porch. She was only a poor,
soiled, broken bit of London's outcast womanhood.
It happened that Mr. Meyer preached on the story
of the potter, the vessel marred and remade.
There was no further thought of suicide. She was
charmed at the prospect of a back move. Surely
when Jesus talked to Nicodemus of being 'born
again/ He was promising a back move !

Then, too, in turning over these ancient proph-
ecies, I came to Joel. Everybody knows that the
entire prophecy of Joel was suggested by the his-
toric and unprecedented plague of locusts which had

66 The Luggage of Life

just devastated the entire land. The very sun was
darkened, the fields and vineyards were a howling
wilderness, business in the city was paralysed;
even the sacrifices in the Temple were suspended.
In the midst of this awful visitation, this fearful
scourge, this national calamity, the prophet was
commanded to cry : 'Fear not, O land ; be glad and
rejoice: for the Lord will do great things. I will
restore to you the years that the locust hath eaten.'
And the promise, royally given, was royally fulfilled.
The sun was once more shining out of a clear sky.
The vines were bowing beneath the burden of
wealthy and luscious clusters. The hills, with rich,
delicious grass for the cattle, were as green as
emerald. The valleys laughed and sang with their
golden crops of corn. The city was humming with
commercial prosperity. And, to crown all, the
temple was once again crowded with devout wor-
shippers. The years that the locust had eaten were
all fully restored.

Now if only I could go to that felon's cell, to
that drunkard's home, and to a hundred other places
that occur to me, with a message like that! 'I
will restore to you the years that the locust hath
eaten!' That would be grand! That would be a
gospel of back moves with a vengeance! And may
I not? Now let me think!

Back Moves 67

How was the promise fulfilled? How did the
Most High restore the years that the locust had
eaten? It is very simple. What the locusts took,
they took; and there was no return. But the next
year? Why, the next year the hills and valleys of
Palestine were such a scene of abundant harvest
and prodigal growth that the people were fully
compensated for the loss of the previous season.
Now, as the children say, we are getting warm !

Have we never known a life that, in its later
years, displayed a sweetness and a purity and a
grace which were the direct outcome of earlier
suffering or of earlier sin? Can we not recall the
memory of saintly and fruitful lives in which both
the sanctity and the fruitfulness were the natural
result of hideous memories of former transgres-
sion? It was the haunting nightmare of their old
sins that drove both Bunyan and Newton to such
intense personal piety and to such fervent evangel-
istic zeal. We have all known men who, in days
gone by, lived in open and notorious shame. Then
came the change. Their faith was a pattern to us
all in its exquisite and childlike simplicity. The
very enormity of their transgressions made religion
a revelry to them and the thought of pardon a per-
petual luxury. Their faces were radiant. They
never referred to their experiences but with stream-

68 The Luggage of Life

ing eyes and faltering voices. Their testimony was
so impressive as to carry conviction to all who heard
it. And as we saw how strong men were moved by
their utterance we felt that God, in His own wise
and wonderful way, was restoring to them the years
that the locust had eaten. In the familiar lines of
Hezekiah Butterworth there are two significant buts,
and we are in danger of noticing only the one :

But the bird with the broken pinion
Never soared so high again.

This is the first. That is the truth that Huxley saw.
But it is not the whole truth. There is another
but:

But the bird with the broken pinion

Kept another from the snare,
And the life that sin had stricken

Raised another from despair.
Each loss has its compensations,

There is healing for every pain;
Though the bird with the broken pinion

Never soars so high again.

And, surely, surely, to 'save another from the snare,'
or to 'raise another from despair' is the very best of
back movesl 'I do not regret the past,' cried the
'Lady of the Decoration,' at the close of her story,
'for through it the present is. All the loneliness, the

Back Moves 69

heartaches, and the pains are justified now! I
believe that, whilst I have been struggling out here
in Japan, God has restored to me the years that the
locust had eaten, and that I shall be permitted to
return to a new life, a life given back by God!'
Who shall say that life has no back moves after
that?

X

THE TIRELESS TRUDGE

WHILST the fire crackled cheerily between them two
friends of mine discussed a knotty point. The ques-
tion under debate was, briefly, this: Which is the
most trying part of a long journey? One argued
for the initial steps on setting out. The weary road,
he said, stretches out interminably before you.
Every stick and stone seems to be shouting at you to
turn back and to take your ease. His friend, on
the other side of the hearth, thought quite differ-
ently. He contended stoutly for the final stage of
the pilgrimage. He vividly pictured the exhausted
pedestrian at the end of his journey, scarcely able
to drag one blistered and bleeding foot in front of
the other. It is certainly rather a fine point; but,
after all, it was really not worth discussing, for
nothing is more absolutely clear than that they were
both wrong. Which, of course, is the usual fate of
controversialists.

Now the worst part of a journey is neither at its
beginning nor at its close. There is a certain in-

70

The Tireless Trudge 71

describable exhilaration arising from the making of
the effort which imparts elasticity to the muscles and
courage to the mind, at starting. The road seems
to dare and challenge the pilgrim, and he swings off
along the taunting trail with a keen relish and a
buoyant stride. And, at the other end, the twinkling
lights of the city that he seeks help him to forget
that he is footsore and choked with the dust of the
road. His blood tingles with the triumph of his
achievement and the delight of nearing his goal.
But there is another stage concerning which neither
of my friends had a word to say. What of the
intermediate stage? What of the long and lonely
tramp? What of the hours through which no
applauding voices from behind can encourage and
no familiar fingers from before can beckon? This,
surely, is the worst part of the way! There is no
intellectual stimulant so intoxicating as the forma-
tion of a noble purpose, the conception of a sudden
resolve, the making of a great decision. And, in the
luxurious revelry of that stimulus the prodigal finds
it easy to rise from the degradations of the far coun-
try and to fling himself with a will along the great
Phoenician road. And at the other end! Surely
the most overpowering of all human instincts and
emotions is that which holds captive every nerve at
the dear sight of home! No; neither the first nor

72 The Luggage of Life

the last steps of that familiar journey were very
hard to take. But between the one and the other !
What questionings and forebodings ! What haltings
and backward glances! What doubts and fears!
Yes, there can be no doubt about it, both my friends
were wrong.

It is the intermediate stage that tests the mettle of
the man. It is the long, fatiguing trudge out of
sight of both starting-point and destination that
puts the heaviest strain on heart and brain. That
is precisely what Isaiah meant in the best known and
most quoted of all his prophecies. He promises
that, on the return from Babylon to Jerusalem,
'they that wait upon the Lord shall renew their
strength ; they shall mount up with wings as eagles ;
they shall run, and not be weary; and they shall
walk, and not faint/ Israel is to be released at last
from her long captivity. Imagine the departure
from Babylon — its fond anticipations, its rapturous
ecstasies, its delirious transports ! Those first steps
of the journey were not trying; they were more
like flying. The delighted people walked with
winged feet. And the last steps — with Jerusalem
actually in sight, the pilgrims actually climbing the
mountains that surrounded the holy and beautiful
city — what rush of noble and tender emotions would
expel and banish all thought of weariness! But

The Tireless Trudge 73

Isaiah is thinking of the long, long tramp between
— the drag across the desert, and the march all void
of music. It is with this terrible test in mind that
he utters his heartening promise: 'They shall walk
and not faint.' They would fly, as on wings of
eagles, out of Babylon at the beginning; they would
run, forgetful of fatigue, into Jerusalem at the
end; but they should walk and not faint. That is
life's crowning comfort. The very climax of divine
grace is the grace that nerves us for the least
romantic stage of the journey. Farewells and wel-
comes, departures and arrivals, have adjusting com-
pensations peculiar to themselves ; but it is the glory
of the gospel that it has something to say to the
lonely traveller on the dusty tract. Religion draws
nearer when romance deserts. Grace holds on when
the gilt wears off.

Two cases come to mind. I know a man whose
whole delight was in his boy — a little fellow of six
or so. Then, suddenly, like lamps blown out by a
sudden gust, the lad's eyes failed him, and he was
blind. The father was the recipient of scores of
touchingly sympathetic letters. All sorts of people
called. Kindly references were made in press and
pulpit. The man had no idea until that moment that
he had so many friends. All the world seemed to
be paying homage to his sorrow. That was the be-

74 The Luggage of Life

ginning. After many years the boy had been taught
to interpret the world again by means of his remain-
ing senses. There was nothing he could not do. He
earned his own living, and his sightlessness seemed
no real hindrance to him. That was the end. But
the father told me that the strain of it all came
between these two. There came a time when the
postman brought no cheering letters. Friends
uttered no heartening words. The world had trans-
ferred his boy's blindness into the realm of the nor-
mal and the commonplace. Nobody noticed. But
in the home the little fellow staggered about, and
his parents' hearts ached for him. What was to
become of him? It was during those intervening
years lying between the first crushing blow and the
final relief that the real strain came. That was by
far the worst stretch of the road.

I knew a woman. Without a moment's warning
she was plunged into widowhood, and left to battle
for her five little children and herself. There was
an extraordinary outburst of affectionate sympathy
on the part of all who knew her. Then came the
funeral. After that the world went on its way again
as though nothing had happened. That was the
beginning. After the years, the battle had been
well fought and well won. The children had been
clothed, educated, and placed in positions of useful-

The Tireless Trudge 75

ness and honour. That was the end. But my
widowed friend told me that she did not forget
when the world forgot. Every morning her grief
woke up with her. And every night it followed her
to her rest. Every day, as she struggled for her
little ones, the haunting question tortured her:
What would become of them if sickness or death
seized upon her? That was the killing time. That
intermediate stretch was the worst part of the
desolate way.

As it is with individuals, so it is with great causes.
A crusade is launched amidst vituperation, derision,
and execration. And there is enough fight in most
of us to lend a certain enjoyment to the very bitter-
ness of antagonism. And at last the self -same
movement is crowned with triumph. But the real
inwardness of the struggle lies midway. William
Wilber force used to say that he was less dismayed
by the storm that broke upon him when first he
pleaded the cause of the slave than by the 'long lull'
that followed when the country accepted his prin-
ciples, but did nothing to hasten their realization.
In America the same thing happened. The war
against slavery was undertaken with a light heart.
Young men sprang to the front in thousands with
the refrain of 'J^lm Brown's body' on their lips.
But the real struggle was not then, nor towards the

76 The Luggage of Life

close, when victory and emancipation were in sight.
But who can forget the long agony of disaster that
intervened between those two? It was when the
nation was trudging tearfully along that blood-
marked track that the real suffering took place.
The same experience repeats itself in the history of
every great reform. Some one has said that every
movement has its bow-wow stage, its pooh-pooh
stage, and its hear-hear stage. Of those three
phases the central one is infinitely the most diffi-
cult to negotiate. Between the howl of execration
that greets the suggestion of a reform and the shout
of applause that announces its final triumph there
is a long and tiresome stretch of steep and stony
road that is very hard to tread. They are God's
heroes who set a stout heart to that stiff brae, and
walk and not faint.

In his Autobiography Mark Rutherford tells of
his fierce struggle with the drink fiend. On one
never-to-be-forgotten night he resolutely put the
glass from him and went to bed having drunk noth-
ing but water. 'But,' he continues, 'the struggle
was not felt just then. It came later, when the first
enthusiasm of a new purpose had faded away.'
And, in his Deliverance he applies the same prin-
ciple in a more general way. He is telling of the
stress of his life as a whole. 'Neither the first

The Tireless Trudge 77

nor the last/ he says, 'has been the difficult step with
me, but rather what lies between. The first is
usually helped by the excitement and promise of
new beginnings, and the last by the prospect of
triumph. But the intermediate path is unassisted
by enthusiasm, and it is here we are so likely to
faint.' I cannot close more fittingly than by setting
those two striking sentences over against each other :
'It is here we are so likely to faint/ says Mark
Rutherford, speaking of the long and tiresome inter-
mediate phase. 'They shall walk and not faint/
says the prophet in reference to precisely the same
circumstances and conditions. Wherefore let all
those who are feeling the toilsome drudgery of the
long and unromantic trail pay good heed to such
comfortable words.

XI
SUNSET ON THE SEA

'UNCLE TOM and Eva were seated on a little mossy
seat in an arbour at the foot of the garden. It was
Sunday evening, and Eva's Bible lay open on her
knee. She read : "And I saw a sea of glass, mingled
with fire." "Tom," said Eva, suddenly stopping
and pointing to the lake, "there 'tis !" "What, Miss
Eva?" "Don't you see? — there," said the child,
pointing to the glassy water, which, as it rose and
fell, reflected the golden glow of the sky. "There's
a sea of glass, mingled with fire."

The exegesis of Mrs. Stowe's frail little heroine
is probably as near the truth as our best expositors
are likely to carry us. I have known what it is to
be surrounded by magnificent and mountainous ice-
bergs in the Southern Ocean; I have been an awe-
stricken admirer of the grandeur of a thunder-storm
on the equator ; I have seen the seas in a passion as
they responded to a gale off Cape Horn; but I
must confess that one of the most splendid and im-
pressive spectacles it has ever been my lot to witness
was a tropical sunset at sea. The huge and angry

78

Sunset on the Sea 79

sun went down like a ball of livid fire. The sky
seemed to have broken into flame. The sea was a
sea of blood. The very foam on the tips of the
waves was tinged with crimson. The outlook from
the deck of the vessel was unforgettable — the kind of
thing to haunt you in your dreams. Everything
was weird, awful, unearthly. And as I gazed upon
the strange mingling of flood and flame I thought
of John. The exiled apostle sat among the beetling
cliffs of Patmos after having borne the burden and
heat of the toilsome convict day. And at evening
he gazed wearily and wistfully westwards towards
those teeming centres of civilization into which he
had hoped to carry the story of the Cross. And,
even as he gazed, the cold Aegean Sea flamed with
the glory of an Oriental sunset; and he beheld at his
feet 'a sea of glass, mingled with fire.'

The fact is that the seeming antagonisms of life
are not so incongruous as we, in our superficial
moments, are apt to suppose. We are in imminent
peril of reaching false conclusions through taking it
for granted that the other side of truth is always a
lie. We forget that fire and water are in greater
concord than we assume. Truth consists not in a
part, but in the whole; and the separate parts of
that whole are often apparently inconsistent. Pro-
fessor Henry Drummond has shown us that the

So The Luggage of Life

'time was when the science of geology was inter-
preted exclusively in terms of the action of a single
force — fire. Then followed the theories of an
opposing school, who saw all the earth's formations
to be the result of water. Any biology, any soci-
ology, any evolution/ adds the professor, 'which
is based on a single factor is as untrue as the old
geology.' Geologians never approximated to the
real truth until they saw 'a sea of glass, mingled
with fire.' And from those ancient blunders of
the geologians, our theologians, if they be discreet,
may still learn much. Knowledge is not the mono-
poly of any one of her numerous schools.

The fact is that Truth is always and everywhere
friendly to Truth. It therefore follows, as the night
the day, that Truth need never be afraid of Truth.
One man may interpret Truth in the terms of a sea
of glass; another may interpret Truth in the terms
of a flame of fire. A superficial hearer, listening to
the two interpretations, will throw up his hands in
horror. 'Babel and confusion!' he will cry.
'Which is true and which is false?' But a wise
man will listen reverently to both preachers, and
will see that a sea of glass may quite easily, and
quite naturally, be mingled with fire. A few years
ago there awoke in Europe a spirit of scientific
research. The geologist took his hammer and began

Sunset en the Sea 81

to search among the strata for truth. The
astronomer swept the heavens with his telescope in
his quest of truth. The antiquarian and historian
went off together to the East with a spade, and
began to dig in Palestine, Egypt, Asia Minor, and
Assyria for truth. And there were excellent souls
in all the churches who cried for mercy. 'Stop!'
they cried, 'you will find something among stones or
stars that will stagger our faith or shatter our
serenity. You will dig up something in some lone
Syrian town that will contradict our Bibles!' But
Science would not stop. Investigation and scrutiny
hastened forward. And with what result? We see
now that, whilst Science appeared to our grandsires
like a sea of glass, as compared with Revelation,
which was like a flame of fire, the two are not
contradictory or antagonistic. They harmonize and
blend. And we to-day see 'a sea of glass, mingled
with fire.'

It is the glory of the Christian faith that it is im-
mense enough to be able to contain within itself
aspects and elements that at first sight seem strangely
conflicting. I heard a preacher exulting in the
tenderness and beauty of God's infinite love. The
very same day I heard another speak of the severity
and exactness of God's infinite justice. Surely he
was speaking of a different God! But no; it is the

82 The Luggage of Life

same God, but such a God ! There is no conflict nor
confusion. We are simply gazing at a sea of glass,
mingled with fire. He is 'a just God and a Saviour.'
And those who know Him and worship Him are
like unto Him. Dean Stanley has a most exquisite
passage, in which he extols these diverse qualities in
the life of Arnold. He describes the perfect ease
and delicacy with which Arnold revelled in the
atmosphere of the home. Those who had only seen
the stern schoolmaster in the halls of Rugby scarcely
recognized him as he romped with the merry chil-
dren by the hearth. And those who had only known
him in the home, a man so engaging, so winsome, so
delightful, listened as to ac strange language when
others referred to his strictness and austerity. 'Yet/
says Stanley, 'both were perfectly natural to him;
the severity and the playfulness expressing, each in
its turn, the earnestness with which he entered into
the business of life, and the enjoyment with which
he entered into its rest/ In a word, his character,
which was perhaps more reverenced than that of
any man of his time, was like 'a sea of glass, mingled
with fire.'

The splendour of the sunset on the sea has a very
practical application to the testimony and teaching
of all the Christian churches. Let us take, by way of
illustration, two extreme cases. I repeat that both

Sunset on the Sea 83

instances are necessarily — and happily — extreme. A
fine church, splendidly upholstered and appointed,
but only moderately attended. Its pulpit is regarded
as the last word in scholarship — and that is as it
should be. But it is said to be 'cold.' The ministry
is forbidding; the atmosphere lacks cordiality. On
the way home the worshippers are arrested by a
spectacle so remote from that from which they have
just departed that they might almost mistake it for
a representation of a different religion. A street
preacher screams and yells in a frenzied monotone.
His theology is almost brutal; his illustrations are
shocking; his gesticulation is terrifying; his
grammar causes even the children to smile. But
his arresting passion, his grim earnestness, his trans-
parent sincerity, his vivid realization of the awful
realities of which he speaks — these are beyond ques-
tion.

If only the other preacher had caught something
of his intensity, and if only he had taken the pains
to acquire something of that preacher's erudition,
what scenes might have been witnessed both from
the cushioned pew and from the corner of the pave-
ment! As it is, both are largely ineffective. The
one is like the sea — deep, but cold. The other is
like the sun — blazing, but wearying. The seer at
Patmos saw that the ideal lies, not in the lowering

84 The Luggage of Life

of the scholarship of the one, nor in the reduction
of the fervour of the other, but in the mingling of
the two — 'a sea of glass, mingled with fire.' The
problem is not one of subtraction, but of addition.
It is said that young men sometimes enter theo-
logical seminaries overflowing, like volcanoes, with
fires of enthusiasm that they can neither hide nor
contain. And it is said, too, that they frequently
emerge from those colleges like icebergs — very im-
pressive, but very cold. It is usually their own fault
when such moral tragedies occur. At least, it is a
thousand shames things should so fall out. The
youthful fires ought to be fed and purified by the
addition of knowledge. The minister, as he waves
farewell to his Alma Mater, should carry with him
his youthful ardour absolutely undiminished and
unabated, with all his scholastic acquirements as a
clear addition.

Of all the rites and ordinances of Christian wor-
ship the same may be said. Our services and
assemblies are intended to be seas of glass, mingled
with fire. Solemnity must be there, and dignity;
but there must be emotion and deep feeling as well.
Splendid music must be shot through with spiritual
praise. Stately eloquence must be glorified by stir-
ring passion. All the externals and ceremonials of
worship are in themselves as cold as icicles. The

Sunset on the Sea 85

most beautiful and impressive ordinances are simply
seas of glass till they are mingled with fire. It is
only as they are made luminous with intense spirit-
ual significance that they reveal their glory to the
eyes of men. Nothing is more flat, stale, and un-
profitable than an argument concerning the mere
technicalities and externals of an ordinance. Yet
nothing is more inflaming to all that is best within
us than the actual commemoration of these lovely
rites. Baptism, apart from the profound spiritual
sanctions with which the Scriptures invest it, is a
sea of glass. But with the realization of those inner
mysteries and experiences, the waters flame and
burn. Paul tells us that the same is true of the
Lord's Supper. 'He that eateth and drinketh un-
worthily, eateth and drinketh damnation to himself,
not discerning the Lord's body' To such a one,
that is to say, the elements are dumb; the waters do
not glow with fire. He sees the sea, but not the sun.
Little Eva and Uncle Tom were, therefore, uncon-
sciously embarking on a voyage amidst the eternal
verities as they gazed upon the sunlit lake at New
Orleans on that beauteous and tranquil Sunday
evening. And we shall be permanently enriched if
we catch something of the radiant significance of
the vision that they saw. Our seas and suns— -our
floods and flames — must mingle.

PART II

CLEAN BOWLED!

THERE is something wonderfully restful to the eye,
and strangely soothing to the mind, about the very
environment of a first-class cricket-match. The
green and tented field, fanned by the balmy breath
of summer and fragrant with the peculiar but pleas-
ant odour of the turf; the huge stands, musical
with the hum of eager conversation and the ripple
of easy laughter; the dash of colour imparted by
gay dresses, fluttering flags, and the creamy flannels
of the players ; and, last but not least, the immense
crowd, garrulous with reminiscences of earlier con-
tests and overflowing with geniality and good
temper. And then, crowning all, the glorious game
itself ! Harold Begbie does well to lilt its praise :

England has played at many a game, and ever her toy was

a ball;
But the meadow game, with the beautiful name, is king

and lord of them all.
Cricket is king and lord of them all, through the sweet

green English shires ;
And here's to the bat and the ball (How's that?), and the

heart that never tires.

89

90 The Luggage of Life

Nothing is more certain than that a recreation
which holds the devoted attachment of a great
people must, in the very nature of things, be pre-
eminently a matter of morals. In his monumental
work, The Rise of the D^utch Republic, John
Lothrop Motley says that 'from the amusements of
a people may be gathered much that is necessary for
a proper estimation of its character.' And he pro-
ceeds to demonstrate, with his wonted insight and
sagacity, the truth of this general proposition from
the experience of that sturdy little people whose
most distinguished historian he must for ever
remain. Goethe, too, that profound yet practical
philosopher, has laid it down 'that men show their
character in nothing more clearly than by what they
think laughable.' And Macaulay, in paying tribute
to Frederick of Rheinsberg, remarks that 'perhaps
more light is thrown on his character by what passed
during his hours of relaxation than by his battles or
his laws.' The evidence of three such witnesses —
Motley, Goethe, and Macaulay — must be regarded
as indisputable. One has only to think of the gladi-
ators and martyrs who were 'butchered to make a
Roman holiday,' and to remind oneself that five
thousand horses and twelve hundred bulls are an-
nually slaughtered in Spanish bull-rings, to see that
Paganism on the one hand, and Popery on the other,

Clean Bowled! 91

betray their characters in the very recreations of
their devotees. From a gladiatorial combat in
ancient Rome or a bull-fight in modern Madrid to a
test cricket-match in England or Australia is a far,
far cry. The question inevitably arises : What has
made the difference? There is only one answer
possible. It is the Cross I It is not too much to
claim that the gospel of Jesus Christ has trans-
figured and softened and beautified the very sports
and pastimes of those who have come beneath its
charm.

But the thing that has most impressed me, as I
have watched these splendid contests, is the startling
suddenness with which calamity swoops down upon
a player, and imports a new atmosphere into the
game. A man may bat most brilliantly for half a
day. You watch him hour after hour. He blocks
and cuts and pulls and drives with a consistency
that becomes almost monotonous. Bowler after
bowler is tried, but their task seems hopeless. Then
— a dog yelps behind you. You turn your head to
see what is amiss, and in that fraction of a second
there is a click and a cry and a cheer. And as
you look hastily back to the field, you see the
scattered stumps; and the hero of the hours is setting
out from the crease to the pavilion. Before you
turned your head you actually saw the bowler com-

92 The Luggage of Life

mence his delivery. He did not wave his hand and
cry, 'This is the ball that is going to do it!' The
men in the field gave no signal. The batsman
looked as he had looked for hours. There was
absolutely nothing to lead you to suspect that the
fatal ball was actually leaving the bowler's hands.
So suddenly, swiftly, sensationally — like a bolt from
the blue — calamity pounces down upon a man, and
there is no place for repentance though he seeks it
earnestly with tears. The broken wicket is irrepar-
able. He may explain and excuse, but he cannot
return.

I have been reading Mr. Stewart E. White's The
Forest. It is a most entrancing description of travel
with the Indians among the woods and waterways
of North America. And it contains, among other
fine things, a splendid chapter on 'Canoeing.' He
says, inter alia, that 'in a four-hour run across an
open bay you will encounter somewhat over a thou-
sand waves, no two of which are exactly alike, and
any one of which can swamp you only too easily if
it is not correctly met.' Each wave, he tells us, has
an individuality of its own. It requires a poise and
a balance and a movement quite distinct from those
demanded by any other wave. And he adds : Re-
member this: be just as careful with the very last
wave as you were with the others. Get inside before

Clean Bowled! 93

you draw that deep breath of relief. That sentence is
sage, striking, significant. It seems to matter very
little whether you are canoeing in America or
cricketing in Australia; the same principle is at
work. In the one case, the waves seem all alike;
yet each wave has its own peculiar peril, and the
Indian who, for one little second, is off his guard
finds himself wallowing in the surging torrent. In
the other case, the balls seem all alike ; yet each has
a trick of its own, and the unhappy batsman who,
for one instant, plays mechanically or carelessly is
rudely recalled by the hideous rattle of the wrecked
wicket behind him. In canoeing and in cricketing
disaster leaps upon its astonished victim with such
sensational swiftness.

'In canoeing and in cricketing.' And in every-
thing else for that matter. That is a trite and
terrible verse of George MacDonald's:

Alas, how easily things go wrong!
A sigh too deep, or a kiss too long;
And then conies a mist and a weeping rain,
And life is never the same again.

That is it. Life, for most of us, is wonderfully
like the experience of the Australian batsman and
the American boatman. It is very strenuous and
full of peril. Every nerve is taut. Each wave and

94 The Luggage of Life

each ball must be negotiated as though all destinies
hung trembling on our triumph over that particular
wave, our mastery of that particular ball. Most of
us can recall pathetic instances of crushing moral
disaster. Their very memory casts a heavy gloom
over our spirits still. Our idols fell, and we remem-
ber the shock and the stagger. 'Who can see worse
days,' asks Bacon, 'than he that, yet living, doth fol-
low at the funeral of his own reputation?' It is
absolutely the last word in human tragedy and sor-
row. Yet how fearfully swiftly it all happened !.
The thunder-bolt pounced out of a cloudless sky
and stupefied us by its appalling suddenness. The
morning of that moral shipwreck broke as calmly
as any since the world began. The sun shone just
as brightly; the birds sang just as blithely; the
flowers bloomed just as sweetly; and all the world
was fair. It was like the fatal ball and the fatal
wave. There was nothing about that day to dis-
tinguish it from any other day. Yet that day, in an
unwary moment, the gust of temptation did what
many storms had failed to do. The hero fell. In
giving evidence at the memorable Tay Bridge in-
quiry in Scotland, Admiral Dougall attributed the
collapse of the great bridge to a sudden pressure of
wind from an unaccustomed quarter. 'Even trees,'
he added, 'are not able to resist pressure from un-

Clean Bowled! 95

usual directions. A tree spreads out its roots in the
direction of the prevailing wind.' The moral is
obvious.

I find my hand trembling as I write. My peril
is so intensely real and so terribly acute. I may
bat for hours and pile up the centuries upon the scor-
ingboard; and then, in the twinkling of an eye, a
ball with a slightly different break may astonish me
by compassing my downfall. I may battle for hours
with the racing and foam-tipped breakers; and
then, as suddenly as a lightning flash, a wave of
innocent appearance but of peculiar peril may wreck
my frail little craft within sight and sound of home.
A gust of temptation from an unusual quarter may
work for me such havoc as the sudden squall did for
the famous Scottish bridge. Wherefore, says Mr.
Stewart E. White, 'Remember this : be just as care-
ful with the very last wave as you were with the
others. Get inside before you draw that deep breath
of relief.' And a still greater and even more experi-
enced traveller adds: 'Let him that thinketh he
standeth take heed lest he fall.' The logic of the
flying bails is irresistible. And it is so wofully easy
to be caught in the slips.

II

MAD DOGS AND MOSQUITOES

I ENTERED a chemist's shop. The polite apothecary
asked me to wait awhile, and, to save my soul from
the tedium of staring vacantly at his immense
coloured bottles, he very kindly handed me a copy
of a magazine. It proved to be the current num-
ber of The British Importer. It did not appear
promising; it was scarcely in my line; the chances
of a thrill seemed remote. I fancied that the
coloured bottles might be more exciting, after all.
But I suddenly revised my judgment. The word
WARNING ! caught my eye. It was at the top of a
reproduction of a card issued by the Incorporated
Liverpool School of Tropical Medicine. It bore the
signatures of the Princess Christian, the Earl of
Derby, Lord Cromer, and a host of other dis-
tinguished individuals. It proclaimed as its object
that it aimed at the prevention of Climatic Fever,
Malaria, Yellow Fever, Dengue Fever, Coast Fever,
Endemical Fever, Remittent Fever, and Bilious Re-

96

Mad Dogs and Mosquitoes 97

mittent Fever — a truly terrible array. And it laid
down, as an indisputable proposition,

That the Bite of a Mosquito should be dreaded as
much as that of a Mad Dog.

I thanked her Royal Highness, I expressed my
obligations to these noble lords and learned doctors
for so interesting a statement so concisely phrased,
and, laying aside The British Importer, from which
I had imported as much as I could carry in one load,
I gave myself furiously to think.

The fact is, of course, that the mad dog has gone
out of fashion. He had his vogue, and it was a
great one while it lasted. But his day is dead. The
turn of the mosquito has come. It is perhaps a
little disconcerting and a little humiliating, but it is
irresistibly true. And, since it is so resistlessly true,
it is better to face the facts. In his magnificent
History of the Nineteenth Century Mr. Robert Mc-
Kenzie broke the news to us as gently as he could.
That great chapter on 'The Redress of Wrongs/
which haunts the ear for ever like a shout of
triumph, might have been entitled: 'The Slaughter
of the Mad Dogs.' I very respectfully present the
suggestion to Mr. McKenzie, with an eye to future
editions. In that stately chapter he marshals the

98 The Luggage of Life

hideous injustices and social tyrannies under which
men groaned but a generation or two ago. He re-
cites, in glowing language, the glorious story of
reform. And when he has told his thrilling tale,
and has described the destruction of one monstrous
evil after another, he brings his chapter to a con-
clusion with a sentence that you learn by heart,
simply because you cannot help it. 'The injustice
of ages has been cancelled/ he cries triumphantly;
'the Hampdens of the future must be contented to
occupy themselves mainly with the correction of
small and uninteresting evils.' The mad dogs are
all slain, that is to say; the reformers of to-morrow
must turn their attention, like the Princess and the
peers whose proclamation set me scribbling, to the
matter of the mosquitoes.

In his Heretics Mr. G. K. Chesterton scented this
truth of the mad dogs and the mosquitoes, but dis-
tantly. He describes what he calls the war between
the telescope and the microscope. Compared with
this, he thinks, the war between Russia and Japan
is but a storm in a teacup. In the past we have
abandoned ourselves to the worship of bigness. We
have strutted about the planet looking for big things,
and the natural result is that we have found them
all. Now what is to be done? The telescope is of
no further use. And it's far too early to go to bed.

Mad Dogs and Mosquitoes 99

Out with the microscope! Make the stones tell
their story. Let the leaf of every tree, and the wing
of every fly, and the petal of every flower unfold
their lovely tales. A fig for the telescope! Its
pleasures are so easily exhausted. Hurrah for the
microscope! Its domain is without limit; its future
is eternal. There are at least a million million mos-
quitoes for every mad dog. Then who cares for
mad dogs? Let's get to the mosquitoes!

Many years ago a singular custom prevailed in
addressing children. The good man would look into
the eyes of his youthful auditors, and, assuming a
melodramatic tone, intended to convey the idea that
he was about to impart something sensational, he
would say : 'Peradventure, my boys, I am even now
addressing some future Columbus or Captain Cook,
some Polar explorer or celebrated discoverer !' And
in those olden times the argument was very effec-
tive ; but it has, of course, been blown to bits since
then. The last time it was used, one of the boys
asked permission to submit a question. 'What's the
good of being a Christopher Columbus/ he asked,
'now that you have no more Americas to be dis-
covered? What's the good of being a Captain Cook
now that we've seen pictures of every rock and reef
that pokes its head out of the ocean? What's the
good of being a Polar explorer when there are no

ioo The Luggage of Life

more Poles ?' That is the point. We cannot be ex-
pected to supply new Africas for every budding
Livingstone, new Mexicos for every prospective
Cortes; and the supply of Poles is certainly shock-
ingly limited. What then? Shall we put the
shutters up? Not at all.

When Major Leonard Darwin delivered his presi-
dential address to the Royal Geographical Society,
this matter of mad dogs and mosquitoes was evi-
dently at the back of his mind. 'It is true/ he said,
'that the South Pole is as yet uncaptured, that the
map of Arabia is still largely composed of great
blank spaces, and that the bend of the Brahmaputra
is drawn by guesswork in our atlases. But it is
probable that all these problems will be solved
almost immediately. What, then, is there left for
the Royal Geographical Society to do? The So-
ciety must, then, direct its efforts with more per-
sistence than heretofore in the direction of encourag-
ing travellers to make detailed and systematic ex-
aminations of comparatively small areas.' Bravely
said! 'The mad dogs are nearly all slaughtered,'
the learned President seems to say. 'Gentlemen of
the Royal Geographical Society, let us turn our at-
tention to the mosquitoes !' 'The Hampdens of the
future must be contented to occupy themselves
mainly with the correction of small and uninterest-

Mad Dogs and Mosquitoes 101

ing evils.' Exit — the mad dog! Enter — the mos-
quito !

Wouldst thou be a hero? Wait not then supinely
For fields of fine romance that no day brings;

The finest work oft lies in doing finely
A multitude of unromantic things !

But we must probe more deeply yet. The greatest
word ever spoken about mad dogs and mosquitoes
was uttered by Paul. He always seems to have
the last word about everything. 'We wrestle/ he
says, 'not against flesh and blood, but against spirit-
ual wickedness/ Our fiercest fight, he tells us, is
not with the coarse sins of the flesh — mad dogs —
but with sins that are as insidious and ubiquitous
and invisible as mosquitoes in the night. And, as
our Princess and peers have told us, 'the bite of a
mosquito is as much to be dreaded as that of a mad
dog.' 'If/ says old William Law, 'we would make
any real progress in religion, we must not only
abhor gross and notorious sins, but we must regu-
late the innocent and lawful parts of our behaviour
and put the most common and allowed actions of
life under the rules of discretion and piety/ That
is precisely Paul's point.

But by this time my reader can think of no one
but Thomas Chalmers and his early ministry at Kil-

102 The Luggage of Life

many. How he thundered at the mad dogs! He
preached against adultery and robbery and murder
twice every Sabbath. But, as he himself confessed,
no good ever came of it. Then came the memorable
illness and his wonderful conversion. Every min-
ister ought to give his people that great page of
Scotland's spiritual history in Chalmers' own beau-
tiful but billowy language. And after his conver-
sion the mad dogs troubled Chalmers no more. We
hear no more about sensuality — about what Paul
calls 'flesh and blood.' But, instead, we hear a great
deal of a multitude of microscopic pests, of which*
we heard no single word before. He laments his
impetuosity; he deplores his being 'bustled'; he
weeps over his coldness. 'Oh my sinful emula-
tions!' he cries; 'my ambition of superiority over
others ! my lack of meekness ! my want of purity of
heart. My heart is overspread with thorns.' Here,
too, is a record of a terrific tussle with a mosquito.
'Had asked John Bonthorn to supper yesternight/
he says in his diary, 'and told him with emphasis
that we supped at nine. He came this night at eight.
All forbearance and civility left me, and with my
prayers I mixed the darkness of that heart which
hateth his brother. This is most truly lamentable,
and reveals to me the exceeding nakedness of my
heart.'

Mad Dogs and Mosquitoes 103

Yes, there is no doubt about it. These princes
of the holier life — Paul, and Law, and Chalmers —
know what they are talking about. Our real conflict
is not with the mad dogs, but with the mosquitoes.

Hear two witnesses. Professor Momerie asks:
'Will you say that the man who has made your
home a very hell by his morose and sullen temper is
more righteous than the man who has stolen your
handkerchief? Why, the misery caused by all the
pickpockets in the world to the whole human race
is less than that inflicted on your single self by the
so-called little sins of your relative's detestable
temper.' In his lovely essay on Charles Lamb, the
Right Hon. Augustine Birrell, M.P., confesses that
the gentle Elia was too fond of gin and water. But
he asks if 'an occasional intoxication which hurt no
one but himself is to be considered a more damning
offence than the pale jealousy, the speckled malice,
the boundless self-conceit, the maddening petulance,
and the spiteful ill-will of others, who, though they
lifted no glass to their lips, broke many hearts by
their bitterness and envy? We find it hard to an-
swer these questions of the learned professor and
the distinguished statesman. But this much is clear :
it is all a matter of mad dogs and mosquitoes.

A young lady asked Charles Dickens to enter his
confessions in her album. 'What is your pet aver-

The Luggage of Life

sion?' one question ran. To which Dickens replied,
'Having the calves of my legs gnawed off by a mad
dog !' The experience is certainly not alluring ; but,
then, how many people have endured it? and how
many have been tortured by mosquitoes? Mad
dogs have slain their hundreds, but mosquitoes have
slain their tens of thousands. For the venom of
these tiny creatures is fearfully fatal. As witness
the long list of fevers mentioned in the proclama-
tion of the Princess and the peers, and attributed by
them to the ubiquitous mosquito. Or ask Paul, or
Law, or Chalmers, or the man whose face you see
daily in the mirror. Wherefore, as the proclama-
tion puts it, 'the bite of a mosquito should be
dreaded as much as that of a mad dog.' The card
bears the title, A warning to wise men. That is
very suggestive ; there is no more to be said.

Ill

ON FALLING IN LOVE

I AM attracted to my present theme by the merest
freak of circumstance. I was shown a most inter-
esting letter. As I read that letter I felt as one
might feel who is suddenly transported to Mexico
or Tibet. Everything was absolutely foreign to
me. The language was unfamiliar, and the atmos-
phere was one which I had never breathed. As a
matter of fact, it was the letter of an accomplished
pianist concerning music and musicians. The writer
lives, moves, and has her being in a world which, I
blush to confess, I have never invaded. A message
from Mars could not have possessed greater
novelty. But let me hasten to the point. The
writer speaks of her acquaintance with a certain
eminent pianist whose recitals crowd the most spa-
cious auditoriums in Europe with ecstatic admirers.
But, our correspondent goes on to say, there is just
one thing lacking. This brilliant pianist is a lonely,
taciturn man, and a certain coldness and aloofness
steal into his play. And then the writer of our
letter mentions the name of a lady pianist. That

105

io6 The Luggage of Life

name is a household word in musical circles the wide
world over; and the writer says that, to her per-
sonal knowledge, this illustrious lady one day laid
her hand on the shoulder of the brilliant young
performer, and said : 'Will you let me tell you, my
boy, that your playing lacks one thing. So far you
have missed the greatest thing in the world. And,
unless you fall in love, there will always be a certain
cold perfection about your music. Unless you come
to love another human being passionately and un-
selfishly, you will never touch human hearts as
deeply as you might.'

Now I have confessed that when I read the letter
in the presence of the person to whom it was ad-
dressed, I felt myself a pilgrim in a foreign clime,
as much abroad as an Esquimaux in Italy. But
even an Esquimaux in Italy would at least be inter-
ested, would look about and stare if he did not
understand. I found myself similarly arrested.
Then, becoming sceptical, I turned to the recipient
of the letter and asked him if a very liberal dis-
count might not reasonably be deducted in con-
sideration of the pardonable enthusiasm and ex-
cusable exaggeration of so attached a musical
devotee? Did not imagination count for some-
thing? 'Well/ replied he, 'the singular thing is that
the writer of the letter was a pupil of the illustrious

On Falling in Love 107

lady pianist to whom she refers. One day, at the
conclusion of a lesson, the pupil looked up into the
face of her teacher and told her that she had a secret
to reveal. 'I know you have,' replied the instructor,
'although it is no secret.' The girl told of her en-
gagement 'Yes/ answered the teacher, 'but it is
not quite new ; it is some time ago !' 'That is so, but
however did you know ?' 'I noticed the difference in
your playing at once, and I have observed the
change ever since. I was wondering when you were
going to tell me!'

I am still a stranger in a strange land. The
flowers wear strange hues; the birds are of un-
familiar plumage and of unaccustomed song; I do
not understand the ways of the people; I cannot
speak their language; I am all abroad, and hope-
lessly lost. But I have been here long enough to
satisfy myself that, strange as it all is, the country
is a real country. The things at which I marvel
are real things. I am not being tricked by a mirage.
It is no illusion; I do not dream.

It is worth thinking about, partly because the
same sort of thing is to be met with in other realms
than in that of music. It is not merely that love
lends to life a new interest, a new rapture, or even
a new outlook. Everybody recalls the lines of
Tennyson's 'Lover'.:

io8 The Luggage of Life

Let no one ask me how it came to pass,
It seems that I am happy, that for me

A greener emerald twinkles in the grass,
A bluer sapphire melts into the sea.

But the suggestion in the letter that lies before
me goes further than that. It means, if it means
anything, that love liberates powers which before
were simply latent. An Arctic explorer has re-
cently drawn our attention to a most singular phe-
nomenon. He tells us that some years ago a party
of British sailors landed on an isle in the frozen
North, and, by some mischance, set fire to the
stunted vegetation that scantily clothed the inhospi-
table place. They left it a bare and blackened rock.
A few years later another party landed and found
it clothed with a forest of silver birch-trees, with
stems that glittered in the sunlight and leaves that
quivered in the wind. It was a scene of sylvan love-
liness. The flames had awakened slumbering seeds
which, in the cruel grip of the icy cold, had lain
dormant throughout the years. The wilderness had
blossomed like the rose. Now the letter suggests
that, when the soul of a man is stirred and swept
by life's most masterful passion, new and unsus-
pected powers spring into activity and fruition.

Two instances leap to mind. I suppose Scottish
literature holds no lovelier gem than the famous

On Falling in Love 109

letter of Dr. John Brown to Dr. John Cairns. It is
printed in Rob and his Friends. In that letter Dr.
Brown tells the pathetic story of Dr. Belfrage. Dr.
Bel f rage's wife was a lady of great sweetness and
delicacy. After less than a year of singular and
unbroken happiness, she suddenly died. The doctor
was disconsolate, and his grief was intensified by the
reflection that there existed no portrait of his lost
love. He resolved that there should be one. He
had not an idea of painting. He had never touched
an easel. He went to the nearest art emporium,
procured all the necessary materials, shut himself
up in unbroken solitude for fourteen days, and at
the end of that time emerged from his seclusion
bearing a portrait of his late bride which became the
admiration of all who were privileged to behold it.
'I do not know of anything,' says Dr. Brown, 'more
remarkable in the history of human sorrow and
resolve.'

The other case is, of course, that of Quintin
Matsys. He was a Flemish blacksmith. He be-
came deeply enamoured of the daughter of a painter ;
but the painter had vowed that his daughter should
marry none but a distinguished master of his own
craft. Matsys laid down his hammer and left the
forge; he entered a studio, and seized the brush.
And to-day — four centuries after his death — pil-

no The Luggage of Life

grims and tourists cross Europe to gaze upon the
mystery of his 'Descent from the Cross' in Ant-
werp Cathedral, and his 'Two Misers' at Windsor.
Ella Wheeler Wilcox, with her usual subtlety and
discernment, has sung to us in a similar strain :

Though critics may bow to art, and I am its own true
lover,

It is not Art, but Heart, which wins the wide world over.

Though perfect the player's touch, little if any he sways us,

Unless we feel his heart throb through the music he plays
us.

It is not the artist's skill which into our souls comes steal-
ing,

With a joy that is almost pain, but it is the player's feeling.

I have thought — though I hesitate to say it — that
all this may explain a mystery otherwise incapable
of solution. I speak as to wise men. Many of us
are teachers, officers, ministers, and the like. We
are frequently confronted with doleful cries and still
more doleful facts. Here are articles on 'The
Dearth of Conversions/ and here are plaintive
papers on 'The Arrested Progress of the Church.'
Has my theme nothing to do with it ? I fancy it has.
May not the ministry of the preacher, like the
music of the player, lack that subtle element of pas-
sion that makes just all the difference? I fancy I
detect in my own ministry sometimes — I will not

On Falling in Love m

dare to speak of the work of others — that very self-
same 'coldness and aloofness' which the lack of love
explained in the distinguished pianist. 'Though I
speak with the tongues of men and of angels, and
have not love, I am become as sounding brass and a
tinkling cymbal.' It is a very old complaint, but
none the less tragic on that account. We take it
for granted that we preach Christ because we love
Christ ; but is the assumption always safe ? May we
not rather cry, with Tennyson's poor fallen queen ? —

Ah, my God,

What might I not have made of Thy fair world
Had I but loved Thy highest creature here?
It was my duty to have loved the highest!

'The more I love Christ/ exclaimed Gustave
Dore, 'the better I can paint Him !' Of course ! The
most accomplished, the most biblical, the most
evangelical ministry may, after all, resemble the
playing of our European professor — 'an indescrib-
able coldness, a strange aloofness' — one thing lack-
ing. There can be no doubt that Love exercises
singular influences and wields potent charms. 'Had
I but loved!' cries poor Queen Guinevere in the
anguish of her remorse. But no minister or teacher
can afford to risk the visitation of that most
poignant and pitiful regret.

IV

IPECACUANHA

IN his scathing criticism of Bertrand Barere,
Macaulay tells us that the subject of his strictures
was a man who employed 'phrases in which orators
of his class delight, and which, on all men who have
the smallest insight into politics, produce an effect
very similar to that of ipecacuanha.' I am afraid
that, if the expressive condemnation which the his-
torian thus sheeted home upon the world of politics
were to be aimed in the direction of the Christian
Church, she could not, without some equivocation,
resist the dread impeachment. There is a classical
Scripture example of the same phenomenon. Thou-
sands of years ago a tortured soul sat patiently
listening to the painful platitudes of his would-be
comforters. They endeavoured to propound to him
the significance of the afflictions by which he was
overwhelmed. And when the last echo of the
philosophy of Eliphaz had trembled away into
silence, poor Job found himself impressed with

112

Ipecacuanha 113

nothing so much as with its utter insipidity. And
it was then that he sighed out his immortal question :
'Is there any taste in the white of an egg?' The dis-
course to which he had listened had 'produced an
effect very similar to that of ipecacuanha/

But that was in the days when the world was very
young and men knew very little. Yet the same
thing happens every day. Sir J. R. Seeley says, in
Ecce Homo, that the sin which Christ most vigor-
ously denounced is the sin to which the modern
Church is most prone — the sin of insipidity. The
pious commonplaces with which we glibly attempt
to solace the suffering are often pathetically taste-
less. The man whose darling hopes have 'been
cruelly shattered is told, with a serene smile and an
upward glance, that 'it might have been worse.'
The man whose heart is bleeding, and worse than
broken, is reminded that 'these things cannot be
helped.' We indolently surmise that 'it is all for
the best.' Tennyson tells us of the pallid consola-
tions which were offered him in that awful hour
when the man with whom his soul was knit was
snatched away to a premature grave :

One writes that 'Other friends remain,'

That 'loss is common to the race' ;

And common is the commonplace,
And vacant chaff well meant for grain.

ii4 The Luggage of Life

That loss is common does not make

My own less bitter, rather more;

Too common ! Never morning wore
To evening but some heart did break.

In other words, the poet asked : Is there any taste
in the white of an egg? The comfort was insipid,
tasteless; it produced an effect very similar to that
of ipecacuanha\

Now, quite obviously, here is an evil thing and a
bitter. We have no right to play with crushed
spirits and breaking hearts. 'A man in distress/
says John Foster, 'has peculiarly a right not to be
trifled with by the application of unadapted ex-
pedients; since insufficient consolations but mock
him, and deceptive consolations betray him.' I re-
member very vividly a circumstance of my child-
hood. It was my first introduction to the problem
of human loss, and it profoundly affected me. I
chanced to be standing, on a sunny afternoon, by
the gates of the local infirmary. It was visiting day.
As I watched the relatives arriving I was struck
with the appearance of a big, brawny man from the
country. He made no secret of his excitement. He
had evidently counted the hours, and had spruced
himself up like a village bridegroom for the occa-
sion. He approached the porter : 'I've come to see
my wife, Martha Jennings,' he said. The porter

Ipecacuanha 115

consulted a book, and then, with what seemed to be
brutal abruptness, replied: 'Martha Jennings is
dead!' I saw the bronzed face blanch; I saw the
strong man stagger. I watched him as he clung to
the iron palings for support, and bowed himself in
a passion of weeping. And then, as I stood there,
good-natured people, pitying, essayed to comfort
him. They rang the changes on the commonplaces.
'Other friends remain !' 'Loss is common to the race !*
But it was of no use : 'All vacant chaff well meant
for grain.' It produced an effect very similar to
that of ipecacuanha! I have never entered the
chamber of death in all the years of my ministry
without recalling the tragedy I witnessed that Sun-
day afternoon.

Now, in the cases before us, what was wrong?
This was wrong. In all these platitudes that were
tossed to Tennyson and to my friend at the hospital
yesterday, and to Job the day before, four vital
aspects of suffering were overlooked.

i. Our commonplaces of comfort are insipid be-
cause they ignored the illuminative aspect of
anguish. We forget the flood of light that streams
from the Cross and that has transfigured tears for
ever. Such frigid philosophy as that which we have
quoted can be found in Marcus Aurelius, in Plato,
and in all the stoical philosophers. And in them it

n6 The Luggage of Life

is pardonable, even admirable. But from those who
live in the light, better things are hoped. Christ
has come! And from His disciples the weep-
ing sons of sorrow expect, not the stone that would
have been flung them by the Platonic school-
master, but the bread and wine of the kingdom of
heaven.

2. The insipidity of our consolations often arises
from the fact that we ignore the purgatorial aspect
of pain. As though the torments of his body were
not enough, Eliphaz tortured the soul of Job by tell-
ing him that purity and pain were incompatible, and
that his suffering was the result of his sin. 'Who
ever suffered being innocent?' he stupidly asks. It
is the philosophy of the pessimist. It relates all
suffering to a black, black past as penal. But the
theology of the optimist relates all suffering to a
bright, bright future as purgatorial. Poor Eliphaz
did not know, but we ought not to forget that a lamb
which was ever the emblem of innocence has become
also the symbol of suffering. If the doctrine of
Eliphaz were sound, the sufferer can only grin and
bear it. But it is not sound. And therefore the
New Testament selects, as its word for suffering,
the great word 'tribulation,' which reminds us of the
'tribulum/ the threshing-machine whose work is not
to punish the wheat, but to sift it. The fires of God

Ipecacuanha 117

are never to devour, but ever to refine. It was be-
cause Eliphaz failed to remind Job of this that his
hearers found the sermon so tedious. It made him
cry, as with Hamlet:

O God ! O God !
How weary, stale, flat, and unprofitable !

It produced an effect very similar to that of
ipecacuanha !

3. The insipidity is always manifest when the
sacrificial aspect of suffering is ignored. There is a
sense in which every sob is a sacrament. The sign
of the Cross is stamped on all human anguish. You
suffer for my good, and I bear sorrow for yours.
Dickens unfolds this wonderful secret in David
Copperfield. Mrs. Gummidge is the most self-
centred, ill-content, cross-grained woman in Yar-
mouth. Then comes the angel of sorrow. All those
around her are plunged in the shadow of a terrible
calamity. And, in ministering to them, the whole
life and character of Mrs. Gummidge was trans-
figured. David stood in amazement before the
strange and beautiful transformation.

If none were sick and none were sad,

What service could we render?
I think if we were always glad,

We scarcely could be tender.

n 8 The Luggage of Life

Did our beloved never need

Our patient ministration,
Earth would grow cold, and miss, indeed,

Its sweetest consolation.

If sorrow never claimed our heart,

And every wish were granted,
Patience would die, and hope depart —

Life would be disenchanted.

4. And the insipidity of our consolations often
arises from their neglect of the positive or possessive
aspect of human loss. Whatever has been swept
away in the terrible cataclysm, the best always re-
mains. In Lord Beaconsfield's great novel he tells
how Coningsby, in bemoaning the loss of his fortune,
is suddenly reminded that he still possesses his limbs.
In The Scapegoat Hall Caine tells how Israel left his
little blind and deaf and dumb daughter Naomi, and
wandered through the wilderness of this world.
And he saw a slave-girl sold in the market-place,
and he thanked God that his Naomi was free. And
he heard the girl curse her father, and he thanked
God for the deep love of poor little Naomi. And he
saw a poor little girl that was a lunatic, and he
thanked God that Naomi had her reason clear. And
then the great deprivations of Naomi seemed swal-
lowed up in the treasures that she still possessed.
As Mrs. Browning sings :

Ipecacuanha 119

All are not taken; there are left behind
Living Beloveds, tender looks to bring,
And make the daylight still a happy thing,

And tender voices to make soft the wind.

That is a great sentence of two words that the
Mohammedan always engraves on the tombstones
of his departed : God remains! Let us but cast these
four ingredients into the chalice of comfort that
we are preparing for the quivering lips of our weep-
ing friends, and, so far from it producing an effect
that shall resemble ipecacuanha, it shall seem to them
as bracing and invigorating as the new wine of the
kingdom of heaven.

I AM writing on a hot Australian summer after-
noon. The children are at home from school. The
cities are sultry and stifling. The delicious seclu-
sion of the fields and the refreshing cool of the sea-
side beckon us away. The bush and the beach call
loudly. And even the solitudes seem to feel that
their time has come. The wilderness blossoms like
the rose. Settlements that all through the winter
have been dreary desolations of mud and monotony
become transformed into fairylands of poetry and
romance. The great bush silences are broken by
shouts of merriment and peals of laughter. Columns
of smoke curl upwards, and bear witness to picnics
and camp-fires. Boats dart in and out of every
quiet creek and cove. Birds that have twittered and
piped on dripping boughs throughout the winter
without an audience are frightened hither and
thither by a rush of white blouses and straw hats.
It is all very refreshing and very delightful. But,

1 20

Seaside Lodgings 121

with the return of the holiday season, comes back
the old problem of seaside lodgings and holiday
accommodation. Which reminds me.

Lovers of Mark Rutherford — and the number in-
cludes all who know him — will never forget Mary
Mardon. She casts her tender spell over every
fascinating page. And not least among her charms
is her description of her visit, with her father, to
the seaside. 'The railway station was in a dis-
agreeable part of the town, and when we came out
we walked along a dismal row of very plain-looking
houses. There were cards in the window with
"Lodgings" written on them, and father wanted to
go in and ask the terms. I said I did not wish to
stay in such a dull street, but father could not afford
to pay for a sea-view, and so we went in to inquire.
We then found that what we thought were the
fronts of the houses were the backs, and that the
•fronts faced the bay. They had pretty gardens on
the other side, and a glorious, sunny prospect over
the ocean.'

So much for Mark Rutherford and Mary Mar-
don. I fancy this kind of thing is more common
than we often think. The lodgings from which we
eventually obtain our loveliest views are frequently
rather forbidding than prepossessing. They ban
rather than beckon. We dub those dwellings dull

i22 The Luggage of Life

from whose windows we afterwards catch glimpses
of radiant glory.

For the most obvious application of this homely
truth we need not go beyond the delightful charac-
ters whom we have already introduced. Turn back
a few pages to Mark's first meeting with Mary.
Whilst he debated vigorously with her father she
sat silently by. He mentally accused her of intel-
lectual paucity, of possessing a small mind, and of
a stupid inability to discuss important themes. He
looked upon her exactly as she had looked upon
the repulsive houses by the seaside. But he was as
utterly mistaken as was she. It turned out that she
was being tortured that evening by a maddening
neuralgia. He then penitently reflected that, had
such anguish been his, he would have let all the
world know of it. And, he says, 'thinking about
Mary as I walked home, I perceived that her ability
to be quiet, to subdue herself, to resist for a whole
evening the temptation to draw attention to herself
by telling us what she was enduring, was heroism,
and that my contrary tendency was pitiful vanity.
I perceived that such virtues as patience and self-
denial — which, clad in russet dress, I had often
passed by unnoticed when I had found them amongst
the poor or the humble — were more precious and
more ennobling to their possessor than poetic yearn-

Seaside Lodgings 123

ings or the power to propound rhetorically to
the world my grievances or agonies.' This experi-
ence of Mark Rutherford in relation to Mary
Mardon is clearly the precise social counterpart
of her own experience in relation to the seaside
lodgings. And later on, as every reader knows, she
gave to him, as the lodgings gave to her, many
a glorious outlook upon the infinite and the
sublime.

All this is, of course, true of the Church. The
men of Jerusalem looked up at the spacious and
splendid proportions of the Temple. It was a
stately pile of quarried stone. That was the outside
view. But those who were permitted to stand
amidst the awful sanctities of the Most Holy Place
saw that, within, all was of finest gold. It is a
parable. Readers of Bunyan's immortal allegory
must have noticed that the illustrious dreamer took
no pains to give an attractive impression of the ex-
terior of the Palace Beautiful. But, like the king's
daughter, it was 'all glorious within.' And notice
this: 'When the morning was up they had
Christian to the top of the palace, and bid him
look south. And, behold, at a great distance, he
saw a most pleasant, mountainous country, beau-
tified with woods, vineyards, fruits of all sorts,
flowers also, with springs, and fountains, very

124 The Luggage of Life

delectable to behold. Then he asked the name
of the country; they said it was IMMANUEI/S
LAND/

We have no word to say in disparagement of
those who devote their best efforts to the attempt
to render the Church attractive and alluring. But
we venture to suspect that their most strenuous
exertions will never meet with more than a very
moderate success. After you have insisted, and
rightly insisted, that there should be no oratory
to compare with pulpit oratory, and no music that
can hold its own beside church music, you have still
to admit that, so long as the Church sternly adheres
to that spiritual programme for which alone she
stands, she will always appear, like Mary Mardon's
seaside lodgings, somewhat forbidding and repel-
lent. Christian worship is too exquisitely modest
for gaudy display. Sin, righteousness, and judge-
ment are not themes that lend themselves to merri-
ment. There is nothing wildly exciting about a
prayer-meeting. Yet, like the seaside lodgings and
the Palace Beautiful, the Church has her own pecu-
liar and compensating charms. She quickly dis-
pels all unhappy illusions caused by superficial im-
pressions. To those who enter her portals she offers
coigns of vantage from which they may inhale the
delicious fragrance of the fairest flowers and enjoy

Seaside Lodgings 125

a prospect that ravishes the vision and captivates the
heart.

And, after all, it is just that view for which we
are all hungry. I have amused myself, since taking
Mark Rutherford down from my shelf for the pur-
poses of this article, by turning over the pages
hastily, and noticing his constant references to star-
lit walks. Now he is worried, and that sight of the
stars — that sense of the infinite — 'extinguishes all
mean cares/ On another occasion he is oppressed
by the conviction that 'there is nothing in him.'
He walks beneath the stars and feels that, in a
universe of such incomprehensible immensity, there
is room for every worm that crawls, and, therefore,
a place for him. Again, he is aflame with anger.
He walks beneath the stars, and, 'reflecting on the
great idea of God, and on all that it involves, his
animosities are softened and his heat against his
brother is cooled.' We have found at least a dozen
such passages in this one book. They are sugges-
tive. Mark Rutherford surely means that the in-
finite cures everything. He means that, to conquer
our besetments, to subdue our passions, to realize
our best selves, we need the window open toward
Jerusalem, the sunny outlook on the eternal. And
he means, too, that to obtain that vision splendid we
dare not despise the most uninviting ministries. 'A

i26 The Luggage of Life

dismal row of plain-looking houses' — so they
seemed. 'What we thought were the fronts were
the backs, and the fronts faced the bay. They had
pretty gardens on the other side, and a glorious
sunny prospect over the ocean' — so they actually
-were.

Somebody has said that God must be very fond
of commonplace folk — He makes so many of them.
Life is full of dingy-looking places and shabby-
looking people. But we shall do well to think the
thing all over again before, on that ground, we
exclude them from our affections and our confidence.
As the years come and go we learn that the best
and most satisfying springs are those from which,
on their discovery, we expected least. Our most
treasured friends are not always those with whom
we fell in love at first sight. In his wonderful Life
of the Bee Maeterlinck tells us at least one thing to
which we may do well to take heed. At one time,
he says, it was almost impossible to introduce into
a hive an alien queen. The myriad toilers would
at once assume that she was an enemy, and set about
her destruction. But now the apiarist introduces
the new queen in an iron cage, with a door skilfully
constructed of wax and honey. The bees im-
mediately commence to gnaw their way through
the door to murder the intruder; but, in the tedious

Seaside Lodgings 127

process, they are compelled carefully to observe the
royal prisoner. And, by the time that the waxen
palisade is demolished, they have learned to love
her; and they finish up by doing her homage and
becoming her devoted slaves. So true is it that the
forbidding may eventually become the fascinating;
the repulsive may end in the romantic; the prose
may kindle into poetry; the sombre shadows may
dissolve into radiant reality; the dingy lodgings
may open to us dazzling horizons; life's mocking
mirages often pass into most satisfying streams.

If it comes to attractive exteriors and enticing
advertisements, theology cannot hold a candle to
theatricals, nor prayer-meetings to picture-shows.
But they have most radiant outlooks for all that.
And have we not somewhere read of One who is
spoken of by those who are happy enough to know
Him as the fairest among ten thousand and the
altogether lovely? Yet, when first they saw Him,
He was to them as a root out of a dry ground, hav-
ing no beauty that they should desire Him! But
I have said enough by this time to show that the
experiences of Mark Rutherford and Mary Mardon
have warnings of the gravest moment for us all.

VI
THE CLIFFS OF DOVER

MRS. BARCLAY, in The Rosary, says a fine thing
about those towering walls of chalk that guard the
English coast. She describes her heroine — the Hon.
Jane Champion — returning to England after an
absence of two years. 'The white cliffs of Dover/
she says, 'gradually became more solid and distinct,
until at length they rose from the sea, a strong
white wall, emblem of the undeniable purity of
England, the stainless honour and integrity of her
throne, her Church, her Parliament, her courts of
justice, and her dealings at home and abroad,
whether with friend or foe. Strength and White-
ness! thought Jane, as she paced the steamer's
deck ; and, after a two years' absence, her heart went
out to her native land.'

'Strength and Whiteness' — those two are in-
separable.

The principle holds, of course, in the realm to
which Mrs. Barclay specially applies it. Nobody
who has once read Macaulay's essay on Lord Clive
can ever forget the classic and stately sentences in

128

The Cliffs of Dover 129

which the historian pays his tribute to British rule
in India. He shows that the stability of our govern-
ment lies in its justice, its uprightness, its trust-
worthiness. "English valour and English intelli-
gence,' he says, 'have done less to extend and to
preserve our oriental empire than English veracity.
All that we could have gained by imitating the
doublings, the evasions, the fictions, the perjuries,
which have been employed against us is as nothing
when compared with what we have gained by being
the one Power in India on whose word reliance
can be placed. No oath which superstition can
devise, no hostage, however precious, inspires a
hundredth part of the confidence which is produced
by the "Yea, yea" and "Nay, nay" of a British
envoy. The greatest advantage which a Govern-
ment can possess is to be the one trustworthy Gov-
ernment in the midst of Governments which nobody
can trust. This advantage we enjoy in Asia.' It
would be difficult to subpoena a witness more im-
pressive or convincing.

But there is one most pertinent application of
the principle for which, it seems to me, the times
are clamorously and insistently calling. In thase
lands, and in these days, two truths demand itera-
tion and emphasis in relation to all matters of
politics and all affairs of State. Let it be said, as

130 The Luggage of Life

plainly as language can assert it, first of all that the
nation needs strong men, and then that the strong
men are the white men. That people has fallen on
very evil days that finds itself in the grip, and at the
mercy, of the professional politician. A pair of
instances, both very much to the point, will enforce
my meaning. The first is from Sir James Stephen's
Essays in Ecclesiastical Biography. The professor
points out that William Wilberf orce lived his parlia-
mentary life as a contemporary of William Pitt,
Edmund Burke, Charles James Fox, and Richard
Brinsley Sheridan. Here was a galaxy of brilliance
— the most polished and powerful orators who ever
awoke the classic echoes of St. Stephen's ! Wilber-
force's figure conveyed the inevitable impression of
insignificance. Yet when he rose to address the
Commons the House instantly crowded. Members
held their breaths to listen. The little reformer
spoke with an authority rarely wielded by the
greatest masters. He was heard in a silence, and
with a respect, which were never accorded to those
illustrious statesmen whose utterances are to this
day read in schools and colleges as models of
rhetoric. And why? There is only one reason for
it. Like Sir Galahad —

His strength was as the strength of ten,
Because his heart was pure.

The Clifis of Dover 131

The second of these companion pictures is from
Sir Henry W. Lucy's Sixty Years in the Wilder-
ness. In the last chapter of this fascinating book
the author draws a striking contrast between John
Bright and Benjamin Disraeli. 'Disraeli,' he says,
'lacked two qualities, failing which true eloquence
is impossible : he was never quite in earnest, and he
was not troubled by dominating conviction/ Now
for the contrast. 'John Bright, perhaps the finest
orator known to the House of Commons in the last
half of the nineteenth century, was morally and
politically the antithesis of Disraeli. To a public
man this atmosphere of acknowledged sincerity and
honest conviction is a mighty adjunct of power/
Here, then, in both pictures, we have the conjunc-
tion of whiteness and strength; incorruptibility
wedded to omnipotence. This marriage was made
in heaven. These two God hath joined together.

I have emphasized the national and political
aspect of the truth because the conviction grows
upon me that we sadly need the reminder. But
I should be exceedingly sorry to leave the impres-
sion that the application was by any means exclu-
sive. It is just as true of every walk of life and of
every department of service. I turn the lantern on
my own heart and study and pulpit, and upon those
of my brethren. In a recently published work, the

132 The Luggage of Life

Rev. J. D. Jones, of Bournemouth, says a very
gracious thing concerning a ministerial friend of
his: 'In print his sermons are almost dull, as they
are certainly lacking in literary style. But when
you come into his presence, the transparent honesty
and obvious saintliness of the man lend to his words
compelling and subduing force.' 'I cannot under-
stand your minister's power,' said a visitor to a
friend of mine who was a member of a Midland
church to which a man ministered who was not a
great preacher, perhaps, but who was a great saint ;
'I cannot understand your minister's power/ he
said; 'I do not see very much in him.' 'Ah,' re-
plied the host, 'you see, there are thirty years of
holy life behind every sermon.' There is no doubt
about it. Whiteness is strength. The white men
wield the sceptre, and we are all their slaves.

But the last word has yet to be said. A most
interesting play of language occurs in the last book
of the Bible: 'I saw a strong angel proclaiming
with a loud voice, Who is worthy to open the book
and to loose the seals thereof? And no man in
heaven, nor in earth, neither under the earth, was
able to open the book, neither to look thereon.' It
will be noticed that the words worthy and able are
treated as though they were interchangeable and
synonymous, as indeed they are. The worthy are

The Cliffs of Dover 133

the able. Whiteness is strength. Might is not
always right, but right is always might. God is not
always on the side of the big battalions, but the big
battalions are always on the side of God. That is
why the meek inherit the earth. 'And I beheld, and
lo, a Lamb — sublimest symbol of innocence, white-
ness, meekness — and He came and took the book.
And they sang a new song, saying, Thou art
worthy! . . . Worthy is the Lamb!' And just be-
cause He was worthy, it followed, as the night the
day, that He was able.

We have traced this truth from the cliffs of Dover
right up to the dizziest pinnacle to which human
eyes can peer. From the great white stone to the
Great White Throne this thing holds grandly true.
Whiteness and strength; innocence and omnip-
otence; right and might, — they go side by side, and
hand in hand, both in the heavens above and on the
earth beneath. That was what Mrs. Barclay's
heroine saw in symbol as she gazed upon the white
walls of old England. And the seer who, from the
isle that is called Patmos, beheld the gleaming
towers and shining turrets of the Celestial City,
saw nothing greater.

VII
THE ORGANIST

THE organist is an ecclesiastical vagabond. He is
a nomad and a nondescript. He lives in a kind of
No-man's land. In the rationale of our spiritual
economy he has never been provided with a home.
We have never taken the trouble to place him. We
have ministers, and we know why we have them.
Deacons and teachers and choirs we have, and their
contribution to our worship is well defined and
clearly understood. But we allow the organist, as
organist, to hover spectrally on the frontiers of our
religious domain. We have never made up our
minds as to whether he is simply a cog-wheel in
the cold mechanism of our church organization or
one of the controlling forces of the inner life of the
sanctuary. Is he, in a word, one of those reviving,
quickening, spiritual factors that are an essential
part of our worship and testimony, or is he merely
a necessary appendage, a convenient adjunct,
an entertaining auxiliary? Is he a member of the
family, or merely a distant relative, or, perchance,
a nodding acquaintance? We offer him a chair —

134

The Organist 135

or at any rate a stool — on Sundays and at choir
practices; then he folds his tent, like the Arab, and
silently steals away. We scarcely know where to
place him. Is he inside or outside? Is he a partner
or a passenger? In fairness to him, and in justice
to ourselves, we ought to face the problem. We
must classify and locate him. Too long the
Church has said to the organist, 'The minister we
know, and the choir we know, but who are you !'

Now, there are very few subjects that have be-
trayed their exponents into more obvious confusion
of thought than the attempt to define the exact
relationship existing between minstrelsy and minis-
try. The case for the organist has never yet been
satisfactorily stated, either from the purely musical
or from the purely ecclesiastical view-point. Here,
for example, Charles Santley, in his Reminiscences,
tells us that his master, Nava, at the Conservatoire
at Milan, used to insist 'that the object of music
was to give greater expression and emphasis to the
words/ Which, of course, is unadulterated non-
sense. It is true enough of certain forms of vocal
music, but the sweeping and merciless dictum ruth-
lessly excommunicates the blackbird and the thrush,
the nightingale and the canary, and at the same time
cuts the throat of our unhappy organist. If we
subscribe to the daring proposition we condemn the

136 The Luggage of Life

'Dead March' and the 'Wedding March' as inanities,
and all our organist's wordless voluntaries become
impertinences of the worst kind. It is clear, there-
fore, that, whilst our Milanese master is indisput-
ably right in insisting on the clear enunciation of
every syllable, when there are syllables to enunciate,
he has not spoken the whole truth. He has failed
to supply us with a practical theory that will include
both the goldfinch and the organist, the two great
wordless minstrels in the temples of Nature and
Grace.

Now, if our theologians had read their Bibles as
carefully as our organists have read their music,
they would most certainly have discovered that the
Scriptures have some very fine things to say about
the organist. Here, for instance, is quite a cluster
of great Old Testament stories which should have
helped us to solve our problem long ago. Look at
this one : Jehoram, the wicked King of Israel, and
Jehoshaphat, the good King of Judea, have for a
while joined forces that they might fight side by
side against the Moabites. But in the course of the
campaign their united armies fall into sore straits,
and Jehoshaphat longs to hear some guiding voice.
In his perplexity he hungers for fellowship with
the skies. His soul ached to speak with God. 'Is
there not a prophet ?' he inquired. Elisha is found,

The Organist 137

and three kings stand before him, and beg him to
prophesy. But the lips of the seers are sealed; he
has no message ; he is dumb. Then he cried : 'Bring
me a minstrel! And it came to pass, when the
minstrel played, that the hand of the Lord came
upon Elisha, and he prophesied' ! Now, here is a
clear-cut case in which the organist was simply in-
dispensable to the minister. The prophet could not
prophesy without the minstrel. The player was the
preacher's inspiration — a minister to the minister.
The music of the minstrel directly contributed to a
magnificent spiritual result. 'When the minstrel
played, the hand of the Lord came upon Elisha, and
he prophesied.*

Two other instances of a similar kind will leap
to the memory of every reader: (i) When Saul
heard the music of the psaltery and the tabret and
the pipe and the harp, the Spirit of the Lord came
upon him, and he prophesied, and was turned into
another man; (2) When David took his harp and
played before Saul 'the evil spirit departed from
him/ The point is that in each case we recognize the
organist. It is instrumental music, pure and simple.
There is no question of words, whether clearly or in-
distinctly enunciated. And in each case the language
admits of no second interpretation; an emphatically
spiritual effect was produced. We must be honest,

138 The Luggage of Life

even though we be theologians; we must be fair,
even towards an organist. None of the facts must
be blinked.

Now, we venture to think that a working hypoth-
esis can be built upon these facts. Two irresistible
conclusions emerge. The first is that the organist
is clearly part and parcel of our spiritual economy.
Indeed, these three graceful old stories, if they
mean anything, seem to show that we need our
friend the organist in every department of our reli-
gious enterprise. For, in the first two cases, it was
through his agency that the Divine Spirit was re-
ceived ; and in the third case it was by means of his
melodious ministry that the evil spirit was expelled.
These are the two great essential functions of the
Church in every age — to invoke a fresh inrush of
spiritual enlightenment and reviving fervour, and
to exorcise and expel all that is unrighteous, unholy,
and unclean. And if, as these stories plainly show,
the organist can help the Church to fulfil these two
magnificent missions and to realize this sublime
spiritual ideal, then let all pastors and deacons and
teachers and singers stand up and say, God bless the
organist!

But, lest our friend of the music-stool should
become exalted above measure by the brilliance, as
of the seventh heaven, of this Old Testament revela-

The Organist 139

tion, we hasten to emphasize the second principle
that clearly emerges from its beatific splendours.
It is manifest that the music of the minstrel is not
an end in itself. Just as the work of the minister
is not in itself spiritually effective, but is the channel
through which the excellency of the divine power
may communicate itself, so the harmonies of the
organ are but a means of grace. The language is
wonderfully exact and explicit: 'When the min-
strel played, the hand of the Lord came upon
Elisha/ and it was the hand of the Lord that
wrought the resultant miracle. We hazard the sug-
gestion that if our pastors and officers and mem-
bers would spend half an hour in the careful con-
templation of these exquisite old records, their eyes
would be so illumined that they would detect an
aureole encircling the brows of the organist. And
if our minstrels would pore over these fragrant
pages for a while they would feel the thrill of a
new ecstasy in their avocation, and glorify their
talents with a fresh consecration. An added sweet-
ness and dignity would lurk in those lovely notes
that come trilling and shuddering down from the
organ. And the gracious ministries of our min-
strelsy would anticipate that home of the eternal
harmonies in the heart and centre of whose melodies
the Lord himself delightedly abides.

VIII
THE JACKASS AND THE KANGAROO

A MINISTERIAL friend of mine was recently travel-
ling in the far east of Australia. On his return
he penned a most picturesque account of the wilds
and wonders of the Queensland bush. And, in the
process of his cinematographic description of
a glorious motor-ride, he includes this realistic and
characteristic touch: 'In the heart of the bush/ he
says, 'we came upon a tragedy that must often be
enacted amongst the animal dwellers of the great
solitude — a kangaroo, a mother, unable to resist the
pangs and pains thrust upon her by her destiny, lay
dead upon the roadside, and above, on a branch of a
tree, stood a pair of laughing-jackasses, guffawing
their loudest, as if life knew no tragedy and no
pain.'

Here, then, is a painting, skilfully finished, before
which we may profitably pause. And the charm
of it — as of all great pictures — is that it is so true
to life. The laughing- jackass and the dead kan-
garoo ! I always keep up one of my sleeves a micro-

140

The Jackass and the Kangaroo 141

scopic — a very microscopic — naturalist, and an
equally microscopic philosopher up the other. I un-
rolled my friend's picture to my naturalist. 'Ah,
yes/ he said, 'there you have the jackass all over;
that's the way of the bird!' I turned to my other
sleeve, and showed the picture to the philosopher.
'Ah, yes,' he said, 'there you have life in miniature;
that's the way of the world !'

'The way of the bird' and 'the way of the world/
What do these gentlemen mean? Let us probe a
little. Now, the jackass has a literature of his own.
I suppose the most captivating and convincing
description of our bush comedian that has ever been
penned is the classical sketch by Frank Buckland.
That most genial and most winsome of all British
naturalists simply revelled in his study of the jack-
ass. And he was particularly amused by the very
trait that arrested my friend on his tour. He pil-
lories him thus : 'The bird has a custom of laughing
in a most exasperating fashion/ he says, 'when a
misfortune happens to travellers. Thus, when a
wagon loaded with goods breaks down in some deso-
late region on a long march, and the owner is at his
wits' end to get it right again, a laughing-jackass
is sure to appear at the top of a neighbouring tree
and laugh in the most aggravating manner at the
miserable condition of the traveller, till the woods

142 The Luggage of Life

resound with his merry "Ha, ha, ha! He, he, he!
Ho, ho, ho !" This is very interesting. We are
grateful to Mr. Buckland and to my friend for
drawing our attention to so curious a phenomenon.
But this chapter is not to be understood as a fugitive
excursion into natural history. I am attracted to
the theme by quite other considerations. For it is
surely as clear as noonday that the incident is true
to life in the deepest sense. We are for ever and
ever discovering, with a shock of surprise, that the
laughing-jackass is never far away from the dead
kangaroo. At every turn of our pilgrimage we see
comedy stand grinning cheek by jowl with tragedy.
The world is made up of the most discordant and
incongruous juxtapositions.

Among the treasures in the Sydney Art Gallery
is Sir Luke Fildes' famous painting entitled 'The
Widower.' On the right-hand side of the picture
sits the poor toiler, with his sick child on his knee.
One overwhelming bereavement has already over-
taken him, and another stares him in the face. His
brow is clouded with uttermost sorrow and per-
plexity. He looks at his child and seems to say, 'If
only she were here !' And on the left-hand side of
the picture are the younger children playing on the
floor, laughing and crowing in their merriment.
They are not old enough to understand; but their

The Jackass and the Kangaroo 143

delight seems cruelly to mock his despair. Have
we not here the story of the laughing- jackass and
the dead kangaroo over again? The thing occurs
hourly. As the mourners return broken-hearted
from the graveside they are tortured by the mad
melody of wedding-bells from a neighbouring
belfry. Edward FitzGerald somewhere says that
there are no lines in our literature so pathetically
expressive of the soul's deepest emotions as the
familiar song of Robert Burns :

Ye banks and braes o' bonnie Doon,
How can ye bloom so fresh and fair?

Ye little birds, how can ye sing,
And I so weary, full of care?

Who is there that, passing through some deep
valley of weeping, has not been stabbed to the quick
by the laughter on the hills? I shall never forget
the day on which I left the Homeland. I was about
to set sail for lands in which I should be the veriest
stranger. I passed, on my way to the ship, through
the crowded London streets, every one of which was
endeared to me by old associations and enriched by
fond memories. "I was accompanied by those who
were all the world to me, those who, like myself,
were calling up all the reserve powers of the will
to nerve them for the wrench of parting. And I

144 The Luggage of Life

remember how I was mocked by the sounds of the
city streets. My soul was in tears ; but who cared ?
People were chattering ; crowds were jostling; news-
boys were shouting ; all London was sunlit and gay.
It seemed as though the old haunts were glad to
see me go. The laughter tore and lacerated my
spirit. The jackass seems a hideous incongruity in
the presence of the dead kangaroo.

The parable has an obvious application to public
affairs. There are enough dead kangaroos lying
about the world, in all conscience! Our tragedies
are tremendous. At the moment of writing Italy
and Turkey are at war. France and Germany are
scowling angrily at each other across their frontiers.
China is convulsed in the throes of a huge revolu-
tion. Spain and Portugal are in a state of seething
tumult and disorder. At our own doors the social
conditions are full of disquiet and unrest. Strikes
and lock-outs are the order of the day. We are not
alarmists; we see in all this no cause for panic.
The pessimist is completely out of court. But, on
the other hand, we do submit that these things call
for a certain public seriousness and gravity. The
newspapers should cause every decent citizen furi-
ously to think. Yet we see small evidence of seri-
ous thought ; quite otherwise. The pursuit of pleas-
ure— and not always of the noblest pleasure — was

The Jackass and the Kangaroo 145

never so deliriously feverish. The woods seem to
resound with the untimely giggle of the laughing-
jackass; and, with so many tragedies about us, the
notes grate harshly on our ears. We venture a
pertinent application. If things have become so
serious that Australia needs to build battleships and
compel all her sons to bear arms, then things have
become far too serious for pugilistic orgies and
similar carnivals of inanity. There is no doubt
about it. The laughing- jackass is quite out of place
beside the dead kangaroo.

We pause reverently for a moment before daring
to suggest a still deeper consideration in closing.
Perhaps, perhaps this is why our Gospels present to
us the sad and stricken face of a Man of Sorrows.
The smitten soul, turning aside like a wounded deer
from the herd, simply could not endure a gay or
mirthful Saviour. I know a lady who dismissed her
doctor because she could not bear the levities with
which he thought to brighten her. Her nerves
winced and squirmed beneath his jokes and chatter.
It is a curious fact that there are more suicides in
summer than in winter, and more in genial and
sunny climes than in sterner temperatures. The rea-
son is obvious. The brightness and gaiety of the
world mock the bruised and battered spirit and drive
it to despair. A tearless Saviour would have re-

146 The Luggage of Life

pelled the very souls that Jesus came to save ; but
One over whose crushed spirit all the waves of grief
have surged must be the natural refuge of all peni-
tent and contrite hearts so long as time shall last.
It is this harmony of the emotions, this subtle and
unfathomable wealth of infinite sympathy, that has
led millions to sing with choked and trembling
voices :

Rock of Ages, cleft for me,

Let me hide myself in Thee;

Let the water and the blood,

From Thy riven side which flowed,

Be of sin the double cure,

Save me from its guilt and power.

There is a world of tender significance in the in-
congruous tragedy which the motor-car passed by
the side of the track.

IX
OUR RUBBISH-HEAPS

THE great bush solitudes had taken the place of the
bustling streets. He — an Australian minister on
holiday — rested on a fallen tree beside the dusty
track. He raised his hat to the loveliness and bathed
his brow in the loneliness that pervaded everything.
It was with him as when a great steamer stops in
mid-ocean to allow her engines to cool. The thud
of the propeller, the vibration of the machinery, are
felt no longer; the stillness is uncanny. He drew
from his breast-pocket his Bible, and, his mind
recurring to his own attempts to build the city of
God among the haunts of men, he turned to the
stately old story of Nehemiah. He read on, un-
disturbed by the drowsy hum of insects and the
merrier songs of birds, until arrested by Sanballat's
question: 'What do these feeble Jews? Will they
revive the stones out of the heaps of the rubbish
which are burned ?' It was an awakening phrase —
a revival from a rubbish-heap! He laid the open

148 The Luggage of Life

Bible on the mossy log beside him and lost himself
in contemplation.

And, even as he pondered, a new object presented
itself to his hungry mind. From the depths of the
bush on the distant hill-side great wreathing
columns of smoke curled skywards, occasionally
shot through by fierce flashes of flame. Straining
his ears to listen, he caught the crash of falling
trees, and thought he could detect the crackle and
roar of the fires as the monsters yielded themselves
to the devouring element. Straining his eyes to see,
he dimly discerned the figures of men moving here
and there, superintending the work of demolition
and destruction. They were clearing away the
maple and the myrtle, the wattle and the gum, to
make room for the apple and the apricot, the peach-
tree and the pear. And the preacher, as he watched,
caught himself echoing Sanballat's question: 'Will
they bring a revival out of a rubbish-heap? Will
they obtain riches from refuse?' These were com-
panion pictures — this picture in the Bible and this
picture in the bush; and, as he gazed upon them
side by side, several clear-cut thoughts emerged.
He saw that rubbish-heaps fill a large place in the
domestic economy of a world like this. And he
saw that an element of such enormous magnitude
must be governed by laws. Refuse must have its

Our Rubbish-Heaps 149

fixed rules. The slag-heap must have its statutes.
They have !

There is the law of deterioration. From the
picture in the Bible and the picture in the bush it
becomes clear that all material things, though as
sacred as the Temple or as natural as the forest
flowers, are on their way to the rubbish-heap. It
sounds like a death-knell to the materialist. Materi-
alism, unmasked, appears as the religion of the
rubbish-heap. It is heavy tidings, too, for the
ritualist; for Ritualism stands in perilous relation-
ship to the rubbish-heap. 'Now abideth' — what?
Altars? vestments? crosses? creeds? catechisms?
confessions ? 'Now abideth faith, hope, love — these
three; and the greatest of these is love.' The moth
is in our fairest fabrics, and our holiest temples
totter to their fall. 'And as some spake of the
Temple, how it was adorned with goodly stones
and gifts, Jesus said : As for these things which ye
behold, the days will come in the which there shall
not be left one stone upon another that shall not
be cast down.' That is significant. It is well to set
our affections on the things for which the rubbish-
heap can have no terrors.

There is the law of occupation. For Nehemiah,
in the one picture, and the settler in the other, find
the ground not fallow, but occupied. Moss and

150 The Luggage of Life

lichen cover every stone. Giant trees, twining
creepers, shapely ferns, and waving grasses fight for
every inch of soil. Rank weeds and spear-like
leaves peer out from all the interstices. Every
crack and cranny, every corner and crevice, is oc-
cupied. Nature abhors a vacuum. Wherever the
foot of man has failed to tread, wherever the hand
of man has failed to labour, God's innumerable
and invisible agriculturists plough and harrow, sow
and reap, and produce the bewildering beauties of
the bush. Hannibal's military precept of preoccupa-
tion dominates the rubbish-heap. The moss and the
lichen are on the stones of Jerusalem because no
Nehemiah has come to build the city. The wattle
and the gum abound on the hill-side simply because
no man has planted apricots or pears. Is it not ever
so ? The mind becomes a wilderness of foul imagi-
nations because clean and wholesome thoughts have
not been planted there. The heart becomes, like
Jerusalem, a wilderness and a desolation because the
kingdom of Christ has never been established there.
Evil evolves where good evacuates.

There is the law of elevation. The question is:
What makes rubbish rubbish? The term is obvi-
ously not absolute, but relative. A lady's hat is a
milliner's dream to-day. To-morrow — a new style
having come in — it is its mistress's despair. What

Our Rubbish-Heaps 151

has so suddenly changed delight to disgust, and
made the fashion of yesterday the folly of to-day?
It is the new style. And it is always the new style,
whether of dresses or of dreadnoughts, that flings
the satisfaction of one day to the slag-heap of the
next. What has made the maple and the laurel
look like rubbish to the settler? The parrots and
the kangaroos see no change to account for his
vandalism. The aboriginals did not find it necessary
to hack down trees and fire the undergrowth. Why,
then, this fury of axe and torch and gunpowder?
It is the conception of an orchard that has done it.
That is the 'new style.' A man dreams of apples,
and he burns the virgin bush. Then, in his orchard
he sees the glint of gold ! The soil is auriferous !
The fruit-trees become firewood that he may seize
the precious metal. Later on, in peril of a watery
grave, he flings his very gold into the ocean that
he may save his life. Bush, fruit, gold, each in their
turn become rubbish, flung to the slag-heap by the
alluring force of a higher attraction. Nor is life
itself the last stage. The martyrs cheerfully threw
even life away, fascinated by still greater wealth.
Had not Paul his rubbish-heap? He counted all
things but loss for the excellency of the knowledge
of Christ Jesus his Lord, for whom he had suffered
the loss of all things, and did count them but dung,

1 52 The Luggage of Life

that he might win Christ. The rubbish-heap can
have no grander word written of it than that.

There is the law of transformation. God makes
His loveliest roses out of rubbish. The charred
ashes of yesterday's bush nourish the roots of to-
morrow's orchard. If the refuse of the ages had
been allowed to accumulate, the world would be un-
inhabitable. The air would be heavy with pesti-
lence. We bury our rubbish, and it all comes back
to us in fruits and flowers. Its resurrection body
is divine.

It is just here that the Church finds her most acute
problem. In every community there are crowds of
people who have gone to the wall. They feel
crushed and beaten. Under our fierce competitive
system the iron law of the survival of the fittest
has flung them on the social slag-heap, and they
know it. They hate the churches, because the
churches are old, and they think that if the churches
had done their duty, things would not be as they
are. They forget that, if the churches had not done
their duty, things would be ten thousand times
worse than they are. They snatch at every social
quackery and political panacea. Now, the Church's
mission is to do for this ruined mass what Nehemiah
did for the rubbish-heaps of Jerusalem — to build
out of them the city of God. 'Will they bring a

Our Rubbish-Heaps 153

revival out of a rubbish-heap?' asks Sanballat. Of
course. A rubbish-heap is God's raw material. A
revival is His finished product. Let the Church
get to work. She alone is equipped for so divine
a duty. If she fail, her collapse will be the disaster
of the ages. In that melancholy event, this social
rubbish-heap will become, like all untrans formed
rubbish-heaps, the menace of mankind and the peril
of the world. In it all pestilential fever-germs will
breed and multiply. Anarchisms and revolutions
will fill the air with shrieks and screams. But the
Church of Jesus Christ knows how to transform
this mass of refuse into a field of roses. Paul
understood the magic secret. He looked upon the
unbridled lust, the grinding tyranny, and the hide-
ous idolatry of the city of the Caesars, and was un-
abashed. And he gave his reason. The gospel, he
said, is the power of God unto transformation. He
saw that the foulest filth of Rome might become the
fairest fragrance of the New Jerusalem.

X

LIFE'S INVISIBLE CONSTABULARY

TM always a-moving on, sir,' cried poor Jo, wiping
away his grimy tears with his arm. 'I've always
been a-moving on and a-moving on ever since I was
born. Where can I possibly move to, sir, more nor
I do move?'

'My instructions don't go to that/ said the con-
stable. 'My instructions are that you are to move
on. I've told you so five hundred times.'

'Well, but really, constable, you know/ observed
Mr. Snagsby (to whom poor Jo's appeal had been
addressed), 'really that does seem a question.
Where, you know?'

So far Charles Dickens and Bleak House. Mr.
Snagsby and poor Jo were indisputably right. It is
the easiest thing in the world to keep moving on.
*But where, you know ?' For it is the hardest thing
in the world so to direct our movements that each
change shall represent a real advance, and constitute
itself a distinct contribution towards the attainment
of an ultimate goal. By a sure instinct we ask each

154

Life's Invisible Constabulary 155

other on the street, not 'Are you getting on?' be-
cause that matters little, but 'How are you getting
on?' because that matters everything. 'Really/ as
Mr. Snagsby said, 'that does seem a question —
where, you know ?'

Now, movement is the law of life. The police-
man told Jo that he must move or be locked up.
But the greater constabulary of the solar system
are very much more severe. They tell us that we
must move or be put to death.

Drummond's savage is a case in point. Says the
amiable Professor: 'When we meet him first he is
sitting, we shall suppose, in the sun. Let us also
suppose — and it requires no imagination to suppose
it — that he has no wish to do anything else than
sit in the sun, and that he is perfectly contented and
perfectly happy. Nature around him, visible and
invisible, is as still as he is, as inert apparently, as
unconcerned. Neither molests the other ; they have
no connexion with each other. Yet it is not so.
That savage is the victim of a conspiracy. Nature
has designs upon him. She wants to move him.
How does she set about moving him? By moving
herself.' The sun goes down; he must move on or
freeze. The time rolls on ; he must move or starve.
The roar of the wild beast is heard; he must move
or be eaten. He moves!

156 The Luggage of Life

It could easily be shown that these invisible
constables have other and even surer methods of
moving us on. They give us work to do, and wreck
it for us so soon as we have done it, in order to
make us do it all again. We build a house. Be-
fore the workmen have removed the scaffolding mil-
lions upon millions of invisible hands have set to
work to reduce the building to ruins. It is only a
question of time, and they will have left it, like
Solomon's Temple, with not one stone upon another.
They are terribly afraid — those unseen constables —
that we shall loiter and stand still. They tear our
work to pieces, and demolish the very homes in
•which we live, for the sheer sake of compelling us
to renew our toils. They overthrow Nineveh and
Tyre and Athens and Jerusalem and Rome that we
may build London and Paris and Buenos Ayres and
Chicago and Melbourne. And they are tearing
down these that we may build the New Jerusalem.
They are always moving us on. We plough a field.
We must harrow and sow it at once, or they will
trample it down with their microscopic feet until it
needs reploughing. We gaze upon our golden crop.
We must reap it immediately or they will drench
and destroy it before our very eyes. We garner
our harvest. We must plough the field again, or
they will sow such a crop of thorns and of thistles

Life's Invisible Constabulary 157

as will make our backs ache even to look upon them.
No street-corner constable was ever so imperative,
so merciless, so tyrannical as are these. 'My in-
structions/ said the policeman to poor Jo, 'are that
you are to move on. I have told you so five hun-
dred times.' That is nothing1. These other con-
stables have told us so five million times. They say
it from morning till night. They say it from baby-
hood to old age. They said it when the first day
dawned, and they will be saying it when the last
sun sets. It is 'Move on!' for ever and ever and
ever. And, to be doubly certain that we do move,
they move us! Whether we like it or not, whether
we sleep or wake, they hurl us through space at the
dizzy rate of thousands of miles an hour to greet the
sunrise ; and in another direction they push us along
at the terrific speed of sixty thousand miles an hour
towards the summer-time. We are whirling and
spinning and rushing and flying from midnight till
noonday and noonday till midnight. These fearful
forces appal us with their everlasting cry of 'Move
on !' Poor Jo's sad plight was a mere circumstance
when compared with our own. And there is no
Mr. Snagsby to intercede with our constables !

The science of life hinges upon turning mere
movement into progress. Huxley once found him-
self being driven in a hansom cab at a breakneck

158 The Luggage of Life

speed round and round a certain network of London
streets. He had told the hackman to 'drive fast,'
but had not instructed him as to his destination ! It
does not by any means follow that movement, even
the most rapid movement, is necessarily progress.
In the Origin of Species Darwin has a good deal to
say about 'certain larvae that actually stand higher
in the scale of organization than the mature animal
into which they are afterwards developed.' Have
we not witnessed the same phenomenon ? There is,
for example, all the difference imaginable between
the Mayflower, as she crossed the Atlantic nearly
three centuries ago, and the Mauretania, the pride
of yesterday. The Mayflower was the 'larva,' the
Mauretania the 'mature animal.' But the May-
flower was a house of prayer, a temple of worship,
and, on every Atlantic breeze that blew, songs of
praise were wafted to the skies. Concerning the
maiden voyage of the palatial Mauretania a London
paper says that the trip was rendered hideous by the
brutal ferocity of gamblers and the horrid de-
bauchery of drunkards. 'The smoking-room be-
came a veritable Bedlam.' Match-stands, spittoons,
glasses, soda-water bottles, trays, and chairs were
flying in all directions. On arrival at New York
the vessel was met by detectives, who had been
warned by Marconigrams from the ship (a device

Life's Invisible Constabulary 159

of which the Mayflower could not boast and for
which she had no such use). These officials
straightway conducted the passengers to the Jeffer-
son police-court. From the Mayflower to the
Mauretania is a big 'move on' ; but, in view of these
records, one may be permitted to speculate as to how
far the movement has represented a real advance.
It sometimes happens, as Darwin says, that the
larvae outstrip the mature animal.

The principle is capable of somewhat incisive
individual applications. Ignorance, in the immortal
allegory, moved on just as far as did Christian and
Hopeful; but at the gates of the Celestial City
'the Shining Ones took him and carried him through
the air to the door that I saw in the side of the hill
and put him in there.' Movement kept pace with
the movement of the pilgrims, but Progress made no
advance at all. And perhaps the most appealing of
all illustrations of this principle is Tom Hood's:

I remember, I remember,

The fir-trees dark and high;
I used to think their slender tops

Were close against the sky;
It was a childish ignorance,

But now 'tis little joy
To know I'm farther off from heaven

Than when I was a boy.

The larvae, that is to say, were in advance of the

160 The Luggage of Life

mature animal which developed from them. The
unseen constabulary of the universe can move us
on; but it is not in their power to see that the move-
ment shall be progress. They move us on as the
wind moves the ships : it is for us to trim our sails
to suit our destinies. For there are two great prin-
ciples involved in getting on. There is the principle
of the propeller, and there is the principle of the
rudder. The propeller may make the pace, but only
so far as it is checked and directed and controlled
by the rudder can we be sure of 'getting there.' It
is so fatally easy to move on.

'But where ?' cries poor Jo.

'Well, really, constable, you know/ says Mr.
Snagsby wistfully, 'really, constable, that does seem
a question. Where, you know?'

Mr. Snagsby is quite right. It is a question in-
deed!

XI
'SO MANY BEDS IN THE WARD!'

THAT was little Emmie's trouble : So many beds in
the ward! The lines are almost too familiar to
need quoting:

'Yes, and I will,' said Emmie, *but then, if I call to the
Lord,

How should He know that it's me? such a lot of beds in
the ward !'

That was a puzzle for Annie. Again she considered and
said:

'Emmie, you put out your arms, and you leave 'em outside
on the bed —

The Lord has so much to see to ! but, Emmie, you tell it
Him plain,

It's the little girl with her arms lying out on the counter-
pane.'

Now here, with an art that is all the more wonder-
ful because it is the art that conceals art, Tennyson
has stated for us one of the most acute problems of
the Christian faith. The Lord has so much to see
to! Such a lot of beds in the ward! These are the

161

162 The Luggage of Life

ugly thoughts that have come knocking at all our
doors at some time or other. Did I say, 'at some
time or other' ? I mean at one especial time. These
are the ugly thoughts that have entered all our
heads just when the time came to pray. We were
burdened. We hungered for a sense of the divine
sympathy, the divine interest, the divine care. And,
as we kneeled, little Emmie's question came dinning
itself into our shuddering souls : 'The Lord has so
much to see to! Such a lot of beds in the ward!'
We rose disillusioned. When we kneeled, the place
seemed like a shrine. When we rose, it was only a
cupboard. When we kneeled, it seemed as though
we were about to hold communion with the very
skies. When we rose, the ceiling itself seemed to
be grinning at our defeat. It was as though all the
lamps of faith had been blown out. It was as
though life's dearest companion had wilfully turned
his back upon us. It was as though the doors of
home had been suddenly slammed in our faces. 'The
Lord has so much to see to ! Such a lot of beds in
the ward!'

These reflections have been suggested by a letter
which has just reached me. It is from a gentleman
who has gained, with marked distinction, two of the
highest degrees obtainable on this side of the world.
I mention this to show that the problem is not

'So many Beds in the Ward!' 163

confined to poor little waifs in London hospitals.
Here, on the one hand, we have little Emmie; and
here, on the other, we have our brilliant university
graduate. But in both cases the trouble is the same.
'I have given up praying!' my friend tells me. 'It
seems so utterly incredible to me that a God who
controls all worlds and inhabits all time can have
patience to hear me speak to Him about my ex-
aminations, and my love-affairs, and my prospects.'
Here then, quite clearly, we are face to face with
little Emmie's puzzle over again. 'The Lord has
so much to see to ! Such a lot of beds in the ward !'
Little Emmie stated the case from the standpoint
of the child ; the letter states it from the standpoint
of the scholar. That is all.

Let me turn for a moment to current literature.
Here on my desk is a London magazine containing
an article by Miss Marie Corelli. It is not written
in that lady's best vein. I am not sure that it is
quite worthy of her. Her whole argument seems to
be that the Lord has far too much to see to — that
there are too many beds in the wards — to permit
of His taking an individual interest either in a child
in a London hospital or in a university graduate in
Australia. She refers to the Most High as 'that
tremendous Omnipotence to whose intelligent action
we owe our very being — the Generator of universes

1 64 The Luggage of Life

— the Creator of everything the eyes can see, the
ears can hear, or the brain can imagine.' And she
scorns the very idea that 'we, the children of one out
of a million million vast productive epochs, should
be found assuming a certain "swaggering" posture
before this ever-present Divine.'

Here, then, we have the selfsame problem stated
in three different ways : first, by a puny little patient
in the children's hospital, then by a graduate of an
Australian university, and once again by a modern
novelist. And each one of us, if we cared and dared,
could state it afresh in the throbbing terms of some
profound personal experience. A book published
some time ago told the story of 'old Mr. Westfield,
a preacher of the Independent persuasion in a cer-
tain Yorkshire town, who was discoursing one Sun-
day with his utmost eloquence on the power of
prayer. He suddenly stopped, passed his hands
slowly over his head — a favourite gesture — and
said, in dazed tones : "I do not know, my friends,
whether you ever tried praying; for my part, I
gave it up long ago as a bad job." The poor old
gentleman never preached again. They spoke of
the strange seizure that he had in the pulpit, and
very cheerfully and kindly contributed to the pen-
sion which the authorities of the chapel allowed
him. I knew him five-and-twenty years ago, a

'So many Beds in the Ward1. 165

gentle old man addicted to botany, who talked of
anything but spiritual experiences. I have often
wondered with what sudden flash of insight he
looked into his own soul that day, and saw himself
bowing down silent before an empty shrine.'

It is a great mystery, a very great mystery. And
yet — and yet — when you come to think of it, it is
all wonderfully and exquisitely simple. 'The Lord
has so much to see to !' It all turns on that. 'The
Lord has so much to see to !' But what if He has?
Is it not an almost universal experience that the
people who have most to see to are the very people
who see to each separate thing most thoroughly?
If a piece of work wants doing, we ask the busy
man to do it. He will consent without making a
fuss, and he will do the work well. 'So many beds
in the ward !' And what if there are? The mothers
who have most mouths to feed are the best mothers,
after all ! We recall the recitation that was so popu-
lar some years ago. It told of a father and mother
struggling to support a large family. A handsome
offer came from a childless home. Would they, who
had so many, part with one? Father and mother
lit a candle and went from room to room among
their slumbering bairns; but they found each as
dear as though each were their only child. 'So
many beds!' said little Emmie. 'So many beds!'

166 The Luggage of Life

said the tempter with his bags of gold. But when
the many beds were visited the parents shook their
heads over each. Not one could be spared. Indeed,
the experience of this old world of ours shows con-
clusively that those children turn out best who come
of large families. Darwin makes a great point of
that. So that it is false to fact that a child gets more
care if his is the only cot in the house. All experi-
ence goes to prove that a child is enriched, and not
impoverished, when the parents have 'so much to
see to' — 'so many beds in the' home! It is fair,
therefore, to say that there is not even a prima fade
case to be made out for the fear which assailed the
faith of our little sick waif, our Master of Arts,
and our distinguished authoress. There is abso-
lutely nothing in it. Reasoning, as alone we may,
from things terrestrial to things celestial, it is clear
that the great Father, who has so many children
to see to, will take the very best care of each individ-
ual child, and will bring up His immense family
with the greatest credit to Himself.

But even if, in spite of all this, the argument be
allowed the honour of serious analysis, it is so easy
to expose its fallacy! It will be noticed that the
real difficulty, in each case, lies in the greatness of
God. It seemed incredible to little Emmie, to our
Master of Arts, and to Miss Corelli that a God who

'So many Beds in the Ward!' 167

is 'the Generator of universes and the Creator of
everything' can be concerned with the cares of the
individual. Now the trouble is, not that they have
made God to seem too great, but that they have not
made Him great enough. They have belittled Him !
Now, how great is God ? That is the real question !
Is He great to the point of absolute infinity? Is
He, or is He not? Now, if God is great to the
point of infinity, it follows, beyond all controversy,
that there is no stick or stone in all His universes
of which He is not perpetually cognizant and con-
scious. Or — to put it the other way — if there is a
feather or a straw blowing about the solar system
which has, for a fraction of a second, eluded His
knowledge or escaped His observation, then, by just
so much, His greatness falls short of infinity. If,
therefore, I do really believe that God is not only
great enough to be 'the Generator of universes and
Creator of everything,' but great enough to be in-
finite, then I cannot help believing that no sparrow
falls to the ground without His notice and that the
very hairs of my head are all numbered. This has
never been better stated than by Faber^:

O Majesty unspeakable and dread!

Wert Thou less mighty than Thou art,
Thou wert, O God, too great for our belief,

Too little for our heart.

i68 The Luggage of Life

But greatness which is infinite makes room

For all things in its lap to lie;
We should be crushed by a magnificence

Short of infinity.

But what is infinite must be a home,

A shelter for the meanest life,
Where it is free to make its greatest growth

Far from the touch of strife.

Yes ; there are many whose hearts have ached in
sympathy with those of little Emmie, and our
Master of Arts, and our eminent novelist. They
have known the anguish of the empty shrine. Let
them turn their faces in the direction I have tried to
indicate. And if they will follow that road they will
find that it leads home, and they will rest sweetly
when they get there !

PART III

THE LAW OF THE LANE

WHO that has lived in England has not stored,
among his chiefest treasures, his memories of the
old English country lane — its serpentine folds, its
gentle undulations, its over-arching oaks, its de-
licious and fragrant hedgerows, its twitter of birds,
its hum of insects, and its glimpses of golden butter-
cups in the spreading fields beyond ? All these will
haunt him till his last sun sets.

We have heard a great deal since then of the rule
of the road; but the lane has a law of its own; and
the law of the lane is an infinitely loftier and an
infinitely lovelier thing than the rule of the road.
And that is saying much, for Mr. G. K. Chesterton,
our greatest literary acrobat (notwithstanding his
insatiable fondness for standing on his head), says
that the indescribable charm of Dickens may be best
summed up in one satisfying phrase used by one of
his own characters. * "My friend," said Mr.
Perker*s clerk to Job Trotter, "you've got the key of

171

172 The Luggage of Life

the street" And, says Mr. Chesterton, 'Dickens
himself had, in the most sacred and serious sense of
the term, the key of the street.'

Few of us understand the street. Even when we
step into it we step into it doubtfully, as into a
house or room of strangers. Few of us see through
the shining riddle of the street, the strange folk that
belong to the street only — the street-walker or the
street-arab, the nomads, who, generation after
generation, have kept their ancient secrets in the full
blaze of the sun. Of the street at night many of us
know even less. The street at night is a great house
locked up. But Dickens had, if ever man had, the
key of the street. His earth was the stones of the
street; his stars were the lamps of the street; his
hero was the man of the street. He could open the
inmost door of his house — the door that leads into
that secret passage which is lined with houses and
roofed with stars.

Yes, the street is a wonderful place — a place of
mystery and dread. But the lane is more wonder-
ful still; for the street conceals, whilst the lane
reveals. The street is a place of secrecy; the lane
is a palace of song. Even if a man is born who,
like Charles Dickens, possesses the key of the street,
he can at best but tell us what man is. But he
who reads the riddle of the lane knows what God is.

The Law of the Lane 173

In the lane 'earth is cramm'd with heaven, and
every common bush afire with God/

Little flower, but if I could understand
What you are, root and all, and all in all,
I should know what God and man is.

Charles Kingsley used to say that, whenever he
strolled down an English lane, he felt as though
everything about him, every leaf, and bud, and
flower, were saying something to him, and he was
pained and oppressed by the feeling of his own
density.

Yes, compared with the lane, the street is a sordid
place. It has its charms, but its charms are for
sale. It barters its beauties for gold. It was from
the street that Bunyan caught his conception of
Vanity Fair. The lane displays its shining wares
no less attractively, but offers them without money
and without price. Who has ever found quite the
same satisfaction in an afternoon's shopping as we
found in the old lane long ago? The wild flowers
that the lane offered us in the spring-time, when
the long winter was past and gone; the tangle of
hawthorn and dog-rose and convolvulus that we
found there in the summer; the nuts and black-
berries of autumn, and the redder berries with which
we decked the home in winter, — the lane was never

174 The Luggage of Life

without its treasures. And they were always freely
ours. There was no stint in the lane. Is it not
Lowell who tells us that —

Bubbles we buy with a whole soul's tasking ;
'Tis heaven alone that is given away,
'Tis only God may be had for the asking?

And then, too, the lane was a winding place.
When we were young we puzzled over its crazy
progress, and stupidly wished that it were straight.
Since then we have had to do with the realities of
life; and we have learned, by tiresome experience
of their monotony, that the last word in art is a
graceful curve. We have driven, it may be, along
the great prairie roads of the Western world — roads
that, looking back, seemed to come in an unbending
line from the Atlantic, and that, looking forward,
seemed to run in one unbending line to the foot-
hills of the Rocky Mountains. Or we have made
our weary progress along the great undeviating
tracks that intersect the vast Australian plains, and
that seem to run without a swerve from world's-end
to world's-end. We have journeyed along the street
which is called Straight, and our hearts have longed
the while for the tortuous but romantic folds of the
dear old lane at home. And for our tardy prefer-
ence there is a reason, psychological, and deeply

The Law of the Lane 175

based. The road across the prairies, the track across
the plains, the street which is called Straight, are
untrue to life and experience. They are artificial,
unnatural, forced. Life is a lane; it abounds in
surprises; it twists and doubles, and curves and
folds. We cannot know what is just beyond. We
quickly lose sight of our yesterdays. We are kindly
compelled to take our to-morrows on trust. As
Klingle says :

God broke our years to hours and days,

That, hour by hour, and day by day,

Just going on a little way,
We might be able all along to keep quite strong,
Should all the weight of life

Be laid across our shoulders, and the future rife
With woe and struggle, meet us face to face
At just one place,

We could not go;

Our feet would stop, and so
God lays a little on us every day.

That is the law of the lane.

And the last song that the birds are singing in
the old lane is perhaps the blithest of them all. It
tells us that life does not lose its romance as the
years wear away. It was not until we had left the
lane for twenty years that we discovered its beauty.
We find far more pleasure in the winding path now
than we did when we perspired on sultry summer

176 The Luggage of Life

afternoons beneath the weight of our baskets of nuts
or buckets of blackberries. We were choked with
dust and tired to death, and were too close to catch
the lane's loveliness in its right perspective. All of
which is hugely significant.

We set out on this ramble in the excellent com-
pany of Mr. Chesterton. Let us return to him.
'Mrs. Nickleby,' he says, 'stands for a great truth
which we must not forget : the truth that experience
is not in real life a saddening thing at all. The peo-
ple who have had misfortunes are generally the peo-
ple who love to talk about them. Experience is
really one of the gaieties of old age, one of its dis-
sipations. Mere memory becomes a kind of de-
bauch. Experience may be disheartening to those
who are foolish enough to try to co-ordinate it and
to draw deductions from it ; but to those happy souls,
like Mrs. Nickleby, to whom relevancy is nothing,
the whole of their past life is like an inexhaustible
fairyland. Just as we take a rambling walk because
we know that a district is beautiful, so they indulge
a rambling mind because they know that a whole
existence is interesting. A boy does not plunge into
his future more romantically and at random than
they plunge into their past.' Even the folds and
stretches that our tired feet have left behind them
become transfigured with exquisite beauty as we

The Law of the Lane 177

press courageously on and thread the labyrinth of
life's long lane. The Present has a lovely way of
wreathing an aureole about the brows of the Past.
And even though the Present seems nothing but a
dreary commonplace, the Future will do as much
for her in God's good time. He maketh everything
to be beautiful in its time; but it may not be the
present time. To-morrow we shall see the glory of
to-day. 'You always said my lane would turn,'
wrote the 'Lady of the Decoration,' 'and it has
turned into a broad road bordered by cherry-blos-
soms and wistaria.' It is always so. The birds in
the hedges on either hand are singing that we really
lose nothing that is behind by pressing bravely to-
wards what lies before. All the loveliness of the
lane is ours, even though we have nearly reached the
end.

Grow old along with me !

The best is yet to be,
The last of life, for which the first was made.

Our times are in His hand,

Who saith, A whole I planned.
Youth shows but half; trust God; see all, nor be afraid.

II

A TONIC OF BIG THINGS

IMMENSITY is magnificent medicine. That is one
reason — if we may let the cat out of the bag —
why the doctors send us to the seaside. We forget
the tiddley-winking in the contemplation of the tre-
mendous. We lose life's shallow worries in the
vision of unplumbed depths. Those who have read
Mrs. Barclay's Rosary will remember that, in the
crisis of her life, the heroine, the Hon. Jane Cham-
pion, determined to consult her physician, Sir
Deryck Brand. And, after having realized the
fearful strain to which his poor patient's nerves
had been subjected, he exclaimed : 'Here is a pre-
scription for you! See a few big things!' He
urged her to go out west, and see the stupendous
Falls of Niagara, to go out east and see the Great
Pyramid. 'Go for the big things/ he said ; 'you will
like to remember, when you are bothering about
pouring water in and out of tea-cups, "Niagara is
flowing still !" '

All of which is, of course, very excellent. It is
178

A Tonic of Big Things 179

the word we need. The tendency of life is to drift
among small things — small anxieties, small pleas-
ures, small ideas, and small talk. He is a very wise
physician indeed who can prescribe for us a tonic of
big things. In the course of that long struggle in
his own life which reflects itself in Christian's
lengthy pilgrimage to the Cross, John Bunyan
enters in his autobiography two records that are
worthy of frequent observation. I quote, of course,
from Grace Abounding : ' While I was thus afflicted
with the fears of my own damnation,' he says,
'there were two things would make me wonder.
One was, when I saw old people hunting after the
things of this life, as if they should live here always ;
the other was, when I found professors much dis-
tressed and cast down when they met with outward
losses. Lord, thought I, what ado is here about such
little things as these !'

That is the point: 'Such little things as these!'
We are like the pebbles on the beach. It is not easy
to keep among the big ones at the top — the big ones
that feel the laughing caress of every wave and the
lovely radiance of every sunbeam. The tendency
is to get shaken down among the small shingle
underneath. But we are forgetting the other record
from the inner life of Bunyan: 'Upon a day the
good providence of God called me to Bedford, to

i So The Luggage of Life

work at my calling, and in one of the streets of that
town I came where there were three or four poor
women sitting at a door, in the sun, talking about the
things of God. I heard, but understood not, for
they were far above, out of my reach. Their talk
was about a new birth, the work of God in their
hearts ; they talked how God had visited their souls
with His love in the Lord Jesus, and with what
words and promises they had been refreshed, com-
forted, and supported.'

These two keynotes, the one taken from the first
quotation, and the other from the second, are worth
repeating. 'Such little things as these!' 'The
things of God — far above — out of my reach/ The
soul of the poor tinker was tired of the microscopic
and hungry for the majestic. He craved 'a tonic of
big things,' and the talk of the four poor women
sitting in the sun was like a banquet to his famished
spirit.

The thing has its parallel everywhere. To take
one of the most familiar of all our religious classics,
it occurs in John Wesley's Journal. We all remem-
ber how pitifully weary the great Methodist apostle
became of the crowd of small men who buzzed about
him with a multitude of small concerns. And we
have all felt the glow of his delight when he found
some kindred spirit with whom he could freely con-

A Tonic of Big Things 181

verse on the great themes of the Christian gospel.
There are times when we get so tired of the plain;
we love to get among the mountains. The soul
makes its own pilgrimage among great, rugged,
snow-clad ranges, along whose tracks and passes she
never loses her way. She loves the peaks that pierce
the sky; she enjoys 'the tonic of big things.'

In Lord Morley's magnum opus he reproduces
one of Mr. Gladstone's letters, in which the great
statesman tells of a visit to Dr. Chalmers. And by
nothing was Mr. Gladstone more impressed than by
the utter incapacity of Chalmers to indulge in small
talk. He simply lived among mountains. Every-
thing about Chalmers was massive, monumental,
magnificent. Who that has read it can ever forget
his historic utterance before the General Assembly
of the Church of Scotland, when he explained his
change of views on the subject of ministerial prepa-
ration? He explained, first of all, the change that
had come over his own spiritual life. 'I was wrong,
sir !' he cried, 'strangely blinded that I was ! What,
sir, is the object of mathematical science? MAGNI-
TUDE, and the proportion of magnitude. But then,
sir, I had forgotten two magnitudes — I thought not
of the littleness of time, I recklessly thought not of
the greatness of eternity!' That word 'magnitude'
was characteristic of the man. And it profoundly

1 82 The Luggage of Life

impressed Mr. Gladstone as being characteristic of
his conversation. When only tiny themes presented
themselves, the doctor was as silent as the Sphinx.
'He had nothing to say,' says Mr. Gladstone; 'he
was exactly like the Duke of Wellington, who said
of himself that he had no small talk. His whole
mind was always full of some great subject, and he
could not deviate from it.' 'Chalmers never wasted
time on small topics/ Dr. Donald Fraser tells us in
his biography, 'if he could find a man fit to enter
on great matters.'

In the classical and memorable passage towards
the end of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Em-
pire, Gibbon describes the triumph of the most
majestic masterpieces of Roman architecture.
Huns, Goths, and Vandals had done their worst.
The city had been sacked again and again ; the hand
of the iconoclast had been pitiless. Everything de-
structible had been ruthlessly destroyed; yet some
things remained. They remained because they were
not destructible; and those things were the big
things. The fretwork and the fancy work, the deli-
cate carvings and dainty ornamentations had fallen
before the brutality of the Vandals ; but the tower-
ing columns and colossal arches defied alike the teeth
of time and the malice of the barbarian. The big
things stand. 'Now abideth. . . .' It is ever so.

A Tonic of Big Things 183

Every preacher knows that it is the great themes
that hold the field; and they hold the field simply
because the people, tired to death of trifles, need
'a tonic of big things/ The preacher of small
subjects is doomed. The Canadian Presbyterian
commented recently on the farewell services of a
minister who was closing a two years' ministry.
A venerable member of his congregation, in bidding
his pastor a tearful 'good-bye,' remarked: 'Well,
sir, I am sorry to see you go. I never had but
one objection to you: your preaching was always
too horizontal^? That is the worst of small things,
however prettily presented. A multitude of grains
of sand, however beautiful each separate grain may
be in itself, only makes a desert after all ; and there
is no blinking the fact that deserts are not popular
institutions. People don't like living in deserts ;
they like altitudes, magnitudes, infinitudes; they
revel in the ruggedness of the ranges. 'I almost
envy some of these good people who can stand
in the middle of one of their prayers and touch
all four sides.' It is the 'Lady of the Decoration*
who is speaking; and she goes on: 'They know
what they want, and are satisfied when they get it;
but I want the moon and the stars and the sun
thrown in!' Yes; our poor 'Jmmanity needs 'a
tonic of big things.'

1 84 The Luggage of Life

The preacher must take note. The pulpit is the
place for magnificent verities. It is the home of
immensities, infinities, eternities. 'We must preach
more upon the great texts of the Scriptures/ says
Dr. Jowett, 'we must preach on those tremendous
passages whose vastnesses almost terrify us as we
approach them/

Professor Henry Drummond was once sailing
along the west coast of Africa. His deck com-
panions were four men, no one of whom could
understand the other; they spake in divers tongues.
But at last one produced a Bible. The second
hurried to his cabin and appeared with his; then
the third, and then the fourth. By a stroke of
genius, the first opened his at the third chapter
of John's Gospel, and the great sixteenth verse.
The others opened theirs, and pointed with their
fingers to the place; and the glow on their faces
was an eloquent language in itself. Men can see
the mountain-peak over a multitude of intervening
obstacles. And no obstacle of race or language,
rank or station, can preclude men from the fellow-
ship of life's immensities. 'They shall cry unto the
Lord, and He shall send them a Saviour, and a great
one! Everything in the gospel is 'a tonic of big
things/

Ill

SERMONS AND SANDWICHES

IT was the church anniversary. On the Sunday
there were special sermons, solemn praise, and
stately anthems. Everything was inspiring, im-
pressive, sublime. On the Monday there were
sandwiches, cream puffs, and jam-tarts. The steam-
ing urns imparted a genial glow to the spirits of the
guests, for waves of laughter rippled and broke
through the hum of friendly chatter. I had taken
part in the solemn services of the Sunday, and had
been asked to speak at the tea-meeting on the
Monday. I drew aside to collect my thoughts.
But my thoughts politely, but firmly, declined to
be collected. They insisted on propounding to me
this arresting conundrum — tell us, they clamoured,
the philosophical connexion between the sermons of
yesterday and the sandwiches of to-day. What
relation exists between singing and scones? What
fellowship hath religion with revelry? Why follow
the sacred worship of the Lord's Day with a carnival
of confectionery?

I took my Bible from my pocket, and had not

1 86 The Luggage of Life

to search far before I came upon a clue. On one
of the very earliest pages of the sacred records I
lit upon a significant statement. It occurs at a
crisis in Hebrew history. It was a time of wealthy
revelation and divine illumination. Here it is:
'They saw God, and did eat and drink.' There
you have revelation and revelry side by side. There
you have the secret of all worship and the germ of
all tea-meetings. 'They saw God' — that is the prin-
ciple of the sermon; 'and did eat and drink' — that
is the principle of the sandwich. What more could
I desire? Yet I read on, and, to my amazement, I
found these two great principles running side by
side, like a pair of white horses perfectly matched,
through the entire volume. The sandwich was
never far from the sermon.

In the Old Testament all the stirring seasons
of spiritual elevation and national enlightenment
were Feasts — the Feast of Pentecost, the Feast of
Tabernacles, the Feast of Passover, the Feast of
Trumpets, the Feast of Dedication, and so on.
Revelation blends with revelry. The chapter that
tells of Israel's redemption from Egypt by the
shedding of blood — a classic of revelation — tells
also, in precise and graphic detail, of the eating of
the lamb. The passage that tells how Elijah saw the
angel tells also how the angel said, 'Arise and eat !'

Sermons and Sandwiches 187

'And, behold, a cake baken on the coals, and a cruse
of water.'

The sandwich principle keeps pace with the
sermon principle. Revelry goes hand in hand with
revelation. The tea-meeting is never far from the
special services. But the most revealing element in
the ancient economy was its law of sacrifice. The
old dispensation crystallized itself in the altar. And
here we all sit at the feet of Professor Robertson
Smith. He made this theme peculiarly his own.
And he fearlessly affirms that we cannot understand
that solemn and striking symbol of patriarchal faith
unless we grasp the fact that the altar was first of
all a table. 'This,' he says, 'is the key to the whole
subject of sacrifice, and the basis of all Semitic
covenants. When the two parties have eaten of
the same victim, and thus become participants in
a common life, a living bond of union is established
between them, and they are no longer enemies, but
brothers/ Here, then, are the two laws — the law
of the sermon and the law of the sandwich, the
principle of revelation and the principle of revelry
— in closest juxtaposition at the very climax of the
old world's illumination.

Crossing the border-line into the New Testament,
the same singular conjunction is everywhere. 'This
beginning of miracles did Jesus in Cana of Galilee,

1 88 The Luggage of Life

and manifested forth His glory.' The revelation
was a revelry. It was at a marriage feast. Later
miracles followed the same line — the feeding of four
thousand, the feeding of five thousand, and so on.
Loaves and fishes — the representation of the sand-
wich— were never far from the most revealing
sermons of the Son of Man. And even when, after
His resurrection, He deigns to show Himself to His
astounded fishermen, He feeds them. 'And they
saw a fire of coals, and fish laid thereon, and bread.'
Revelation and revelry are together still. And just
as the Old Testament reaches its natural climax in
the Altar of Sacrifice, so the New Testament reaches
its culminating revelation in the Table of the Lord.
There 'we see God, and do eat and drink.' The
two principles join hand in hand. And even when
the Great Revealer spoke of heaven, these two
thoughts were always in His mind. Heaven is a
place of revelation and of revelry. There the pure
in heart see God; and there we sit down at the
Marriage Supper of the Lamb. Men often do
things, as the swallows do, under the guidance of
some sure instinct, yet without detecting, or even
desiring, any explanation of their odd behaviour.
It is thus that the Church has wedded her revelries
to her revelations. She has rightly set the sand-
wich over against the sermon. The union is

Sermons and Sandwiches 189

indissoluble. The solemn service and the social
meal are inseparable. These two hath God joined
together.

Now in these two elements I find my bond of
brotherhood with the holiest and the lowliest.
Among the angels and archangels and all the
company of the heavenly host I know not what
seraphic spirits may burn. But I know that there
is no altitude higher than this to which they can
attain — they see God! But so do I. Then they
and I are brothers. In the splendid revelations of
Christian worship we stand allied to the holiest in
the height. And in eating and drinking, on the
other hand, we are kinned to the lowliest. I watch
the birds as they fly. It seems to me that they
live in one element, and I in another; we have
nothing in common. I watch the rabbit as he
shyly peeps from his burrow. How far. removed
his life from mine! I watch the trout as they
flash and dart in the shades and shallows of the
stream. There is no point of fellowship between
them and me. But wait! The rabbit sits upon
his haunches nibbling at a blade of grass, on which
a dewdrop glistens. He eats and drinks! So do
I. The bird flutters down from the bough to seize
a morsel on the lawn. He eats and drinks! So
do I. The fish come darting up the stream to

The Luggage of Life

devour the gnats that, in trying to escape the
birds, have fallen upon the glassy surface. They
eat and drink! So do I. If the sermon allies
me to angels and to seraphs, the sandwich allies
me to all things furry and feathered and finny.
.When we were prattlers our nurses used to amuse
us with fantastic pictures of lions and storks and
ants and dolphins and men all sitting down, cheek
by jowl, at the same table.

Later on we despised the old print as a furious
freak of some farcical fancy. But now we know
that it was nothing of the kind. It was a severely
accurate delineation of the real and sober truth.
Indeed, it was less than the truth, for no superhuman
guests were there. The universe is a banqueting-
table. That sage old friar — Francis d'Assisi — was
within the mark, after all, when he addressed the
creatures as Brother Hare, Sister Lark, Brother
Wolf, and so on. The sermon element brings me
into intimate and fraternal relationship with all the
flaming hosts above. The sandwich element brings
me into league with the tigers, and the tomtits,
and the trout. The special services of anniversary
Sunday, and the tea-meeting of the Monday, set
forth in harmonious combination the breadth and
catholicity of man's holiest and lowliest brother-
hoods.

Sermons and Sandwiches 191

But the instinct of the tea-meeting tells me yet
one other thing. I see now that I have misinter-
preted the majesty of God. 'It is the pathetic fate
of Deity/ says Pascal, 'to be everlastingly misunder-
stood.' I had always supposed that the glory of
God was embarrassing, bewildering, dazzling! I
had thought of it as repelling, terrifying, paralysing!
But now I see that it is nothing of the kind. 'They
saw God, and did eat and drink.' Even a cat
will not eat in a strange house, nor a bird in a
strange cage. Eating and drinking are symbols of
familiarity. We feel at home. We bring our friends
to our tables that they may realize their welcome.
My ugly thought of God was a caricature, a parody,
an insult. Man was made for God, and only finds
his perfect poise in His presence. To see God
is to eat and drink — to be perfectly, peacefully,
reverently, rest fully, delightfully at home.

' "I have served God, and feared Him with all
my heart," says poor Rufus Webb in Miss Ellen
Thorneycroft Fowler's Fuel of Fire.

' "That may be, but you have never loved nor
trusted Him !" replied the minister.

'The dying man lay silent for a few minutes, with
closed eyes. Then he opened them again, and said :
"I wonder if you are right, and I have misjudged
Him all these years ?"

i pa The Luggage of Life

' "I am sure of it."

' "And do you think He will pardon me that also,
in addition to my many other sins ?"

' "I am sure of it," repeated the vicar, "although
it is hard, even for Him, to be misjudged by those
whom He loves; there are few things harder."

It is even so. I heard the solemn pathos of this
philosophy jingled out in the clatter of the cups
and the spoons at the tea-meeting. 'A glorious high
throne is the place of our sanctuary.' It is not re-
pelling; it is restful. He who sees God eats and
drinks. The sandwiches naturally follow the ser-
mons. 'If any man hear My voice I will come in to
him, and will sup with him, and he with Me.'

IV
THE CHALLENGE OF THE HEIGHTS

ONE of the world's most intrepid mountaineers, Mr.
George D. Abraham, has published a record of his
adventures. His experiences have quite a startling
significance for life at all points. Much that he says
is as bracing as those stinging breezes that hurled
the hail in his face as he invaded the snowy solitudes
and carved the first path over slippery glaciers. He
reminds us, for example, that nobody has yet stood
on the roof of the world. The real sky-piercers
have never yet been climbed. On almost every con-
tinent the loftiest summits wrap their clouds about
them and stand defiant and triumphant. They have
never felt the proud heel of a conqueror.

It is good, both for our humiliation and for our
inspiration, that we should lay that pregnant record
to heart. In days when bewildering inventions and
sensational discoveries leap from our newspapers
with every plate of porridge, it is as well that we
should be made to feel that, after all, we have only
been toying with trivialities. Our grandchildren will

193

i94 The Luggage of Life

ransack some old chest or drawer, and drag from
its seclusion an old illustrated paper of, let us say,
the year 1912. They will scream with furious glee
as they scan the photographs of the aeroplanes and
automobiles which so hugely tickled our own vanity ;
and then, as they read the accompanying letter-
press, and feel the pulsations of our pride, they will
awaken all the echoes with their boisterous shouts
of laughter.

It is very humiliating; and yet, after all, surely
it is powerfully invigorating too. Who does not
feel that life holds a new meaning for him as he
reflects that there are dizzy heights which have
stood in naked and awful silence from the founda-
tion of the world? Their desolate grandeur is
waiting for the pilgrim feet of a pioneer. Who
does not experience a thrill as he remembers that
it is possible for us to break all the records of the
ages and burst upon the vacancies that ache for
conquest ?

Mr. Abraham contends that the first man to
ascend Mount Everest will be a greater benefactor
of his race than a successful polar explorer. It
may be humiliating to be reminded that we have
not discovered everything. But it would be simply
crushing if we were assured that nothing remained
to be discovered. The tang of these icy winds that

The Challenge of the Heights 195

sweep down these untrodden slopes taunts the im-
agination and challenges the enthusiasms of the
world. All the greatest heights have yet to be
climbed. It is grand ! All the sweetest songs have
yet to be sung; all the noblest poems have yet to
be penned; all the greatest books have yet to be
written; all the finest sermons have yet to be
preached; all the truest lives have yet to be lived;
all the most heroic exploits have yet to be achieved.
The whole wide world, with its restless millions,
waits to be conquered. India, China, Africa, South
America, spacious continents, crowded countries,
cannibal islands and coral reefs, all wait — as the
peaks wait for the pathfinder — for the beautiful
feet of those triumphant mountaineers whose coming
will precipitate the conquest of the ages. The chal-
lenge of the heights is in our ears ; it stirs our blood ;
it fires our fancy. It is a day for girding our
loins for heroic enterprise. The pinnacles beckon
and the topmost crags are calling. We must quit the
pine-clad valleys ; we must go. The Golden Age has
still to be ushered in.

Then, again, Mr. Abraham conclusively demon-
strates that, on the dizzy Alpine tracks, no man
liveth to himself. He insists on the social element
in mountaineering. The heights must be scaled,
not by individuals, but by parties, and every member

196 The Luggage of Life

of the party is part and parcel of every other
member. No brotherhood could be more real, more
practical, more imperative. Sometimes the members
of the expedition are roped together; but in any
case the tie is there. In negotiating a difficult pass,
in clambering up a perilous face, or in attempting
a forbidding ascent, it is the weakest member of the
expedition whom all other members must consider.
His failure would be the failure of all. The golden
rule is nowhere so clamant as among the crags of
the summit. Every task that presents itself has
to be faced with a full recognition of its suitability
to the capabilities of each member of the fraternity.
The slipping of the feeblest foot might easily
jeopardize the lives of all. That is for ever and
for ever the lesson of the heights. It is only in
life's rarer and more intense atmospheres that we
see it so clearly. The murky mists of the valley
often obscure the fact that we are, in deed and in
truth, members one of another.

In his great chapter on 'The Evolution of Lan-
guage,' Drummond shows that a law like this
operates in the animal world. 'One of the earliest
devices hit upon,' he says, 'was the principle of
co-operation. The deer formed themselves into
herds, the monkeys into troops, the birds into flocks,
the wolves into packs, the bees into hives, and the

The Challenge of the Heights 197

ants into colonies/ And the brilliant doctor goes
on to show how it works out: 'Here/ he says, 'is
a herd of deer, scattered, as they love to be, in a
string a quarter of a mile long. Every animal in
the herd not only shares the physical strength of
all the rest, but their powers of observation.'

The very beasts of the field are members one of
another, and know it. But the finest and most
graceful illustration of this social law — the strength
of the strongest passing as a heritage to the feeblest
— occurs in The Pilgrim's Progress. ' "Alas !" cried
poor Mr. Feeble-mind, "I want a suitable compan-
ion; you are all so lusty and strong; but I, as you
see, am weak. I choose, therefore, rather to come
behind, lest by reason of my many infirmities I
should be both a burthen to myself and to you. I
am, as I said, a man of a weak and a feeble mind,
and shall be offended and made weak at that which
others can bear. I shall like no laughing; I shall
like no gay attire; I shall like no unprofitable
questions. Nay, I am so weak a man as to be
offended with that which others have a liberty to
do. I do not yet know all the truth ; I am a very
ignorant Christian man; sometimes, if I hear some
rejoice in the Lord, it troubles me because I cannot
do so too. It is with me as it is with a weak man
among the strong, or as with a sick man among

198 The Luggage of Life

the healthy, or as a lamp despised, so that I know
not what to do." "But, brother," said Mr. Great-
heart, "I have it in commission to comfort the
feeble-minded, and to support the weak. You must
needs go along with us ; we will wait for you, and
we will lend you our help; we will deny ourselves
of some things, both opinionated and practical, for
your sake; we will not enter into doubtful disputa-
tions before you; we will be made all things to
you, rather than that you shall be left behind."

The Pathfinder, the Professor, and the Puritan
all agree, therefore, in making it abundantly clear
that no man liveth to himself, and no man dieth
to himself. 'Wherefore/ says the most sure-footed
of all our mountaineers, 'take heed to them that
are weak. It is good neither to eat flesh, nor to
drink wine, nor anything whereby thy brother
stumbleth.' The echo that we have heard comes
to us from the Alps and the Himalayas; but the
voice that awoke that echo is from a greater height.
It spake from Mount Sinai, from Mount Sion, from
the eternal altitudes. It is the voice of God.

A third striking thing our mountaineer has to say.
He emphasizes the astonishing fact that the vast
majority of Alpine fatalities occur on the easy
tracks. The steep and narrow passes, where the
brain reels, where the foothold is precarious, and

The Challenge of the Heights 199

where the poise of the body is difficult, clamour
loudly for special care. But the easy tracks have
a peril of their own. 'Claudius Clear/ in a sug-
gestive article, demonstrated the fact that, although
we commonly regard youth as the essential period
of moral peril, the most disastrous collapses have
been on the part of men and women in middle
life. We acquire a certain fatal contempt for
temptation which is ultimately our undoing. We
have edged our way with trembling caution along
the most slender shelves, beside perpendicular cliffs,
and above yawning abysses ; and then we fling our-
selves with a reckless stride along the broader
tracks. We scorn the danger. Are we not noted
climbers — ministers, officers, teachers, saints of ripe
or mellow maturity ? Thinking that we stand fast,
we take no heed lest we fall. We become the
victims of the easy track at the last. It is cruelly
anomalous, but it is tragically true, that many a
man's conscience is less sensitive as to the minor
moralities of life after twenty years of Christian
service than during the first months of his religious
experience. He slips now where he stood fast
then. He has become too confident to be cautious,
and has grown tired of being careful. That way
lies disaster.

We feel very much obliged to Mr. Abraham.

200 The Luggage of Life

We never expect, in this life, to follow him on his
vigorous pilgrimages towards virgin peaks. We
can only gaze at his snowy summits admiringly
and wistfully. But his adventures read like al-
legories; his suggestions sound like sermons. The
analogies, however unintentional, are too arresting
to be shunned; the parallelisms, however uncon-
scious, too striking to be avoided. We have fol-
lowed this trusty guide by granite and glacier, midst
snow and ice, and have caught a vision of more
radiant purity, gleaming on loftier pinnacles, and
bathed in the golden glory of a lovelier sunrise.
And those beckoning heights have challenged us to
press with new vigour towards the triumphs for
which all the ages have been struggling, to reach
out hands of dearer brotherhood to the comrades
who share our pilgrimage, and to exercise a greater
vigilance as we tread life's treacherous easy tracks.
It is so easy to fail of life's loftiest altitudes; so easy
to forget the partner of one's toil and travel; so
wofully easy to be overtaken by desolating calamity
through a false step on the easy track, after all.
After all!

V

THE FURNITURE-VAN

I AM writing in April. The month moves on its
way amidst a wealthy cluster of associations. It
opens with a festival of folly. The Englishman
invariably connects its coming with welcome
thoughts of the cuckoo and the crocus. In our
Australian minds it stands related to the rustle of
autumn leaves. It is the month of homeward yearn-
ing, too, for all exiles. There be many that say, as
Browning said:

Oh to be in England

Now that April's there !

And whoever wakes in England

Sees, some morning, unaware,

That the lowest boughs and the brushwood sheaf

Round the elm-tree bole are in tiny leaf,

While the chaffinch sings on the orchard bough

In England — now.

April brings, too, more often than not, the tender
pathos of Good Friday, and the exquisite triumph
of Easter. But there is one home to which these
chastened joys make no appeal, for to the door of
the Australian Methodist parsonage April brings
only the furniture-van. We have been engaged in

201

202 The Luggage of Life

saying sorrowful farewells to ministerial neigh-
bours with whom we have worked side by side
through pleasant years of comradeship. And now,
without any indication that their work is finished,
like plants torn up when in full bloom, they must
move on.

It is this that has set us thinking. Indeed, it has
set Methodism . thinking. The whole question of
ministerial movement is beset by problems that have
made wiser heads than ours to ache. It is true, on
the one hand, that the itinerary system is being
eyed, not without envy, by the statesmen of other
churches. Here, for example, in the latest issue of
The Church Family Newspaper, is a leading article
suggesting the adoption by the Church of England
of a modified Methodism. Presbyterian assemblies
have long been discussing it, and Baptists and Con-
gregationalists have sometimes cast shy but wistful
glances in the same direction. And yet — and yet, on
the other hand, two things are clear. The first is
that Methodism itself is coming to regard the system
as open to review. I have known large city churches
apply for registration as central missions in order
that they may stand outside the pale of the
itinerary system. And I have known small country
churches plead that they might retain their status
as home missions rather than be dragged into the

The Furniture-Van 203

sweep of the system. The second fact is that every
minister who has stayed in one place long enough
to marry the girls and boys that he kissed when he
came, knows that his most regal influence came to
him in the years that followed the fifth. It is then
that the best work is done. The minister has won
a personal, in addition to a merely official authority.
His name is graven in the very hearts of his people,
and he speaks in their homes with the voice of a
king.

But let me hasten to say that I am writing to
challenge no system, and to advocate no system.
All these things are in the melting-pot; and the
churches will be wise if they watch each other
closely, confer with each other frankly, and profit
by each other's sagacity and experience. Yet one
thing I do most unhesitatingly affirm, and it is for
that irresistible affirmation that I am contending
now. It is this : a ministerial removal should never be
mechanical. It is a crisis of the soul — perhaps of
many souls. It is a thing to be undertaken only
after strong crying and tears. I like to recall the
searchings of heart that marked a ministerial resig-
nation a century or so ago. Everybody knows the
circumstances tinder which poor old John Fawcett
wrote 'Blest be the tie that binds.' And, at about
the same time, Andrew Fuller spent two years in

204 The Luggage of Life

most terrible anguish of soul whilst he tried to de-
termine whether or not it was his duty to leave his
little flock at Soham. 'It seems as if the church
and I should break each other's hearts/ he wrote.
'I think, after all, if I go from them, it must be
in my coffin.' His agony of mind led Dr. Ryland
to remark that 'men who fear not God would risk
an empire with fewer searchings of heart than it
cost Andrew Fuller to leave a little church, hardly
containing forty members besides himself and his
wife.'

And, indeed, there is no need to limit the scope
of this chapter to manses and parsonages. The same
principle holds good of every removal. The ten-
dency of young nations is to regard the furniture-
van flippantly. A century ago, the removal of an
English family from one village to another was
regarded as a social tragedy through all the country-
side. A man worked for his master because his
father had worked for his master's father, and his
grandfather for his master's grandfather. And it
never occurred to him that some social cataclysm
might prevent his grandchildren from serving his
master's grandchildren. All that has changed.
That day is as dead as the moa and the dodo. The
temper of the time has altered. We hail a furniture-
van nowadays with almost as light a heart as we hail

The Furniture-Van 205

a hansom cab. In his Gamekeeper at Home Richard
Jefferies, the naturalist, maintains that this very fact
has had a good deal to do with the sharp accentua-
tion of our industrial troubles. The old intimate
and almost sacred relationship between employer
and employe, fortified by associations sanctified by
several generations, has broken down; and its col-
lapse has paved the way for all our modern embroil-
ments and agitations.

Yes, there is no doubt about it, we overwork the
furniture-van. Its axles are too hot. Old Daniel
Quorm comes to mind. 'I do often see it, friends !'
said Dan'l, 'I've watched it for years. Here's a
young fellow doin' good in the Sunday school and
other ways, promising to be a useful man when we
old folks are gone home. But somebody sends down
word that he can make half a crown a week more
wages in London. That's enough. No prayer about
it ; no askin' the Lord what He do see. No thinkin'
about the Lord's work. "I must get on," he says,
and he says it so pious as if it was one o* the ten
commandments — but 'tisn't, friends, 'tisn't, 'though
you do hear it so often !'

Over against Daniel Quorm let us set Dr. Alex-
ander Whyte. In his lecture on 'Treasure Hid in
the Field' the doctor touches on this very matter,
and tells of a lovely experience. 'An old office-

206 The Luggage of Life

bearer of this very congregation,' he says, 'told me,
long ago, how he had lately summoned a conference
of his whole household in order to make a great
family choice and decision. He put it to his wife,
and to his sons, and to his daughters, whether he
would build a house for them away out of Edin-
burgh, with a park and a garden and stables, or
whether he would buy a house in the city so as
still to be near this church, and so as to let his family
continue to sit under Dr. Candlish's ministry. And
the eyes of that old elder glistened with joy when he
told me that he had determined on a house within
reach of the pulpit to which he owed his own soul
and the souls of his children. His wife had been in
Dr. Candlish's ladies' class. Things like that do not
happen every day.'

Dr. Whyte is right. They do not. We are too
fond of the furniture-van. We ought to regard it in
the same category as the world and the flesh and the
devil. The number of transfers granted to members
leaving one church for another would make our
grandsires turn in their graves, whilst the multitude
of those who are entered as having 'moved away,'
one church's loss being no other church's gain, is
appalling. They have moved away, that is all. The
furniture-van has done its deadly work. Father,
mother, lads and lasses have moved away from

The Furniture-Van 207

church and Sunday school, from societies and
classes, from useful services and helpful charities
and happy ministries ; they have moved away — to
what? Church secretaries might often mournfully
and truthfully enter in the 'Remarks' column of the
church-roll the 'Lay of the Lost Leader' :

Just for a handful of silver he left us,
Just for a riband to stick in his coat!

Nobody, of course, is so dreamy and unpractical
as to suggest that church connexions should never
be ruptured in order to secure commercial promotion
or industrial preferment. That is not the point.
The iniquity is with those who order the furniture-
van before such considerations have been duly
weighed. If a man sees the beckoning hand, he
must go on ; and, so long as he is clear that his move
is a move nearer to the realization of life's ultimate
purpose, the furniture-van may be as idyllic a vehicle
for him as a chariot and horses of fire.

But there is a 'moving away' that is worse still.
Paul assures the Christians at Colossae that their
Lord shall present them holy and unblamable and
unreprovable if they be not moved away from, the
hope of the gospel. That is sorrow's crown of
sorrow — life's culminating climax of tragedy — to
be moved away from the hope of the gospel. Wher-

2o8 The Luggage of Life

ever the furniture-van may take our chairs and
tables, our hearts must always abide in the same
place. In an age of shifting and of drifting we must
make it the loftiest science of life to dwell in the
secret place of the Most High and to abide under
the shadow of the Almighty. In the immutable
Rock of Ages the soul must wisely build her nest.
'Be not moved away' ! Surely, if church secretaries
are sometimes tempted to inscribe the 'Lay of the
Lost Leader* against certain names on the mem-
bership roll, it is pardonable to fancy the very
angels, from their higher knowledge, writing sadly
against other names, 'Moved away — moved away
from the hope of the gospel/ It is the Dirge of a
Lost Soul!

Mr. Young, of Jedburgh, used to tell a story of
old Janet, who, in her lonely hut on the Scottish
moor, was dying at last. She breathed heavily and
painfully. Her brown old Bible lay open on the
counterpane. The minister came just in time. 'And
hoo is't wi' ye the noo, Janet ?' he inquired, bending
over her wrinkled countenance. Her face was
radiant. 'It's a' weel, it's bonnie/ she cried; 'but,
mon, I'm a wee confused wi' the flittin' !' Happy
are all they who, in that last solemn removal, know
no more poignant anguish than the mere flutter and
flurry of the process !

VI

ON THE WISDOM OF CONDUCTING ONE'S
OWN FUNERAL

MARK TWAIN more than once makes merry at the
lugubrious and fantastic conception of a man
mourning at his own funeral. In these passages
the genial humorist is not at his best. He misses
the true inwardness of things. There is nothing in
actual experience more common and nothing more
pathetic than for a man to occupy the position of
chief mourner at his own burial. We have often
read the touching records of missionaries on the
islands, who are compelled to act as grave-diggers
and chaplains at the funerals of their own wives and
children. And quite recently we heard of a stricken
and lonely woman, in an ocean solitude, who was
called to nerve herself to perform the same melan-
choly offices at the burial of her husband. But life
holds an even deeper pathos. It is the tragic experi-
ence of every man who rightly reads the riddle of
life to preside, perhaps more than once, at his own
obsequies. He looks tearfully down upon the plate

209

2io The Luggage of Life

upon which his own name and age are inscribed, and
says, deliberately and bravely, 'Ashes to ashes, dust
to dust.' Lord Dufferin has told us that he owes
his very life to a vivid dream in the course of
which he seemed to be a mourner at his own funeral.
Many a man owes far more than life itself not to
a mere dream, but to the actual experience.

The process occurs, for instance, in the choice of
a profession. Here and there a man feels that he
must follow a certain line, and that no other is even
thinkable. But with most men the trail is not so
clearly blazed. A man decides to be a builder, but
he feels that he would have made a very respectable
banker. Or he resolves on being a minister, but
he feels at the same time that he could easily have
distinguished himself as a barrister. In such cases,
if he be wise, the builder will straightway bury
the banker that is in him, and the minister will
pronounce the solemn words of committal over the
grave of the barrister. The builder who is per-
petually hankering after a teller's desk will never
build anything better than huts or hovels — even for
himself. And the minister who is for ever casting
envious eyes at a barrister's chambers will never
catch the rapture that Christ's true ministers may
know.

That is a great story which Professor Herkless

On Conducting One's own Funeral 211

tells us in his Life of Francis d'Assisi. On the
one hand Francis longed to be a friar and to
dedicate himself to poverty and pilgrimage. On
the other hand he loved a sweet and noble and
gracious woman. He wrestled with his alternatives,
and at length, through an agony of tears, he chose
the cloak and the cowl. But still the lovely face
haunted him by cloister and by shrine. And one
radiant moonlit night, when the earth was wrapped
in snow, the brethren of the monastery saw him
rise at dead of night. He went out into the grounds,
and, in the silvery moonlight, fashioned, out of the
snow, images of wife and children and servants.
He arranged them in a circle, and sat with them,
and, giving rein to his fancy, tasted for one delicious
hour the ecstasies of hearth and home, the joys
of life and love. Then, solemnly rising, he kissed
them all a tearful and a final farewell, renounced
such raptures for ever, and re-entered the convent.
That night Francis the friar buried himself. He
read his own funeral service. He had made his
choice; and, in order that his life might not be
clogged by the haunting images of dead possibilities,
the man who had decided to be a friar buried
everything except the friar. Indeed, the Roman
Church draws the most impressive symbolism of
its dedication from this source. Lamartine tells us

212 The Luggage of Life

of Madame Roland's visit to a French convent.
'A novice took the veil during her residence there.
Her presentation at the entrance, her white veil,
her crown of roses, the sweet and soothing hymns
which directed her from earth to heaven, the mortu-
ary cloth cast over her youthful and buried beauty
and over her palpitating heart, made Madame
Roland shudder and overwhelmed her with tears.'

But there is no need to go beyond the pale
of Protestantism for our illustrations. The case
of F. W. Robertson of Brighton is very much to
the point. The love of arms ran in his very blood.
His grandfather, his father, and his brothers were
all soldiers. He himself had counted the slow years
that must drag by before he could wear the Queen's
uniform. But at last the time came, and he found
himself, to his intense delight, appointed to the
Third Dragoon Guards, and almost simultaneously
there came the call to the ministry. Then the
struggle in the dark, and, finally, the great decision.
Robertson stripped off the brilliant uniform, laid
aside his sword, entered the ministry, and from
that time forth never looked back. The first
service he conducted, he conducted all alone. It
was the burial of the soldier in him. And, before
burying him, he stripped from the soldier all his
military virtues — endurance, discipline, courage —

and transferred them to the equipment of the min-
ister.

If our years were allotted to us in the generous
fashion which some of the patriarchs seem to have
enjoyed, a man might find some opportunity for
trying his hand at more avocations than one. As
it is, however, the time is short. At seventy a man
only begins to feel that he knows his work. There is
no time for tinkering with many things or for
trifling with one. The very brevity of life clamours
for concentration and economy. We have all read
the affecting and informing and heart-searching
correspondence of Dr. Marcus Dods. No man
sounded the very depths of life's innermost experi-
ences more terribly than did he. He felt called to
be a minister. He buried every other inclination
and possibility. Then came years of neglect and
rejection. No congregation would call him. But,
with a courage never excelled on a battle-field, he
held on. He looked wistfully at the graves in which
he had buried his earlier fancies. But he would
allow no resurrection. And at last came recognition
and reward. And out of that agonizing experience
he wrote on the economy of life, and he deserves to
be listened to with bated breath. 'Every man,' the
doctor says, 'as he grows into life, finds he must
employ such an economy on his own account. He

The Luggage of Life

is pressed to occupy positions or to engage in work
which will prevent him from achieving the purpose
for which nature has fitted him. He is offered pro-
motion which seems attractive and has its advan-
tages ; but he declines it, because it would divert him
from his chosen aim. Continually men spoil their
life by want of concentration. They are greatly
tempted to do so, for the public foolishly concludes
that, because a man does one thing well, he can do
everything well; and he who has written a good
history is straightway asked to sit in Parliament, or
the man whose scholarship and piety have been con-
spicuous is offered preferment which calls for the
exercise of wholly different qualities.'

The theme might, of course, be amplified infinitely.
It is the central thought of the gospel. There are
times when men sigh, with the speaker in Tenny-
son's Maud :

Ah, for a man to arise in me,
That the man I am may cease to be !

And Jesus meets such men on their own ground.
He offers a new life. 'Ye must be born again' ! He
says. And the birth within me of the man He
means me to be necessarily implies the burial within
me of the man I have actually been. The vocabu-
lary of the death-bed and the grave-side was con-
stantly on the lips of Paul. Again and again he told

On Conducting One's own Funeral 215

the Christians of Europe and of Asia the story of
his own death and burial. Almost all his auto-
biographical references are obituary notices. He
had been crucified with Christ, he would say, and
he implored his hearers to reckon themselves as
dead and buried too.

Yes, it is good for the builder to bury the banker
that he might have been. It is good for Paul to bury
the Saul that he had been. But there is one man
within us, whom we are most strongly tempted to
bury, to whose funeral we must never, never go. He
is the man of our ideal ; the man of our prayers ;
the man we fain would be. There are no sadder
lines in English poetry than those of William Wat-
son:

So on our souls the visions rise
Of that fair life we never led:

They flash a splendour past our eyes,
We start, and they are fled;

They pass and leave us with blank gaze,

Resigned to our ignoble days.

We catch the fair vision of glorious possibilities ;
but we shake our heads, like the rich young ruler,
and turn away sorrowful. Oh the pity of it!
'Resigned to our ignoble days' ! The old world is
very weary with weeping over her troubles and
her tragedies; but she has never known anything
more inexpressibly mournful than that.

VII
OUR BETTER HALVES

MARRIAGE is simply an obvious and outstanding
illustration of one of life's cardinal laws. The
world is made up of pairs, and, like the sexes, those
pairs are supplementary and complementary. I
have two eyes. They are not in rivalry; each has
its function. It is difficult for my right eye to dis-
cern the danger that approaches from the opposite
direction. My left eye, therefore, stands sentinel
on that side of my face. Each member of my body
holds in charge powers that it is under obligation to
exercise for the good of all its fellow members.
The world is built on that plan. Examine, for proof
of it, the list of exports and imports of any nation
under the sun. As Cowper sings :

Wise to promote whatever end He means,
God opens fruitful Nature's various scenes ; ;
Each climate needs what other climes produce,
And offers something to the general use ;
No land but listens to the common call,
And in return receives supplies from all.
216

Our Better Halves 217

In our silly habit of teaching half-truths, we tell
our children that Australia belongs to Britain, that
Algeria belongs to France, and that Java belongs to
Holland. If we told them the whole truth they
would learn that Britain belongs to Germany, and
that France belongs to China, and that America be-
longs to Japan, and that every nation is an essential
and complementary part of every other nation.
And if we taught them the whole truth after that
liberal fashion, they would grow up to beat their
swords into ploughshares and their spears into
pruning-hooks.

In precisely the same way every man holds in
sacred charge certain gifts and graces which he is
under solemn obligation to use for the general good.
My next-door neighbour is my better half; I cannot
do without him.

He is rich where I am poor,

And he supplies my wants the more

As his unlikeness fitteth me.

The best possible illustration is, of course, Com-
mander Verney L. Cameron's story of the two
lepers he met in Central Africa. One had lost his
hands, the other his feet. They established a farm
together. The leper who had no hands, and who
could not therefore scatter seed, carried his legless
brother, who could not else have stirred, upon his

2 1 8 The Luggage of Life

back; and thus, each supplying the other's lack,
they broke their ground, and sowed their seed, and
reaped their crop.

Or go to Scotland. Everybody who has read that
wealthiest of all northern biographies will remem-
ber the storm scene on the Highland loch. Dr.
Norman Macleod was in a small boat with a boat-
man, some ladies, and 'a. well-known ministerial
brother, who was as conspicuous for his weak and
puny appearance as Dr. Macleod was for his
gigantic size and strength/ A fearful gale arose.
The waves tossed the boat sky-high in their furious
sport. The smaller of the two ministers was
frightened out of his wits. He suggested that Dr.
Macleod should pray for deliverance. The ladies
eagerly seconded the devout proposal. But the
breathless old boatman would have none of it. He
instantly vetoed the scheme. 'Na, na !' he cried ; 'let
the wee mannie pray, but the big one maun tak' an
oar if ye dinna a' want to be drooned !' The shrewd
old Highlander was simply stating, in a crude way
of his own, life's great supplementary law. Let us
admire this principle of the big minister and the
small minister, of the armless leper and the legless
leper, each in his proper place, as it reveals itself in
other fields. Every great movement furnishes evi-
dence of the effective operation of this law.

Our Better Halves

Those who have studied carefully the story of the
Reformation know how the powers of Luther and
Melanchthon dovetailed into each other, and how
beautifully each supplemented each. Differing from
each other as widely as the poles, each seemed to
supply precisely what the other lacked ; and neither
was quite sure of the wisdom of his own proposal
until the sanction of the other had been obtained.

Macaulay has told us, concerning Charles Fox
and Sir James Macintosh, that when Fox went to
the desk and wrote, and Macintosh took to the plat-
form and spoke, the cause they espoused seemed
pitifully impotent; but when Macintosh seized the
pen, and Fox mounted the platform, they were
simply irresistible. They brought the whole coun-
try to their feet. Which, of course, is the story of
the big minister and the wee minister over again.
The gifts of each exactly supplemented those of the
other. Each was the other's better half. And has
not Lord Morley made us familiar with the fine
record of Cobden and of Bright? 'They were,' he
says, 'the complements of each other. Their gifts
differed, so that one exactly covered the ground
which the other was predisposed to leave compara-
tively untouched.'

The story of the grey friars and the black friars
is another case in point The followers of Francis

220 The Luggage of Life

exactly supplemented those of Dominic, and each
order overtook the work which the other left un-
done. History teems with similar examples. The
law of the better half is as wide in the sweep of its
operations as the law of gravitation.

What ecclesiastical jealousies and theological
bitternesses and ministerial heart-burnings would
have been saved if even the best and saintliest of
men had been swift to recognize the operation of
this gracious principle! To say nothing of such
shameful controversies as those between Calvinists
and Lutherans, let us take as our example, a wordy
conflict of but two centuries ago. We ministers
read John Wesley's Journal and William Law's
Serious Call on Saturday nights; and contact with
such flaming enthusiasms makes our own hearts to
burn within us as the great day of the week ap-
proaches. What piety, what passion, what prayer-
fulness we discover! All the chills of the week melt
from our spirits as our souls warm themselves be-
fore these blazing fires ! But we blush for our own
revered spiritual masters when we recall the way in
which these giants of the devout life treated each
other. And, now that all the dust has settled, what
is the truth? The simple fact is that Wesley was
the very greatest preacher of his age, and Law was
the very greatest religious writer.

Our Better Halves 221

'We see, now/ says a great writer, 'that William
Law without John Wesley, as well as John Wesley
without William Law, would have left the religious
life and literature of the eighteenth century both
weak, one-sided, and unsafe. Could they both have
seen it, both were, indispensable — John Wesley to
complete William Law, and William Law to com-
plete John Wesley/ Just so. Could they both have
seen it ! But the tragedy of it all is that they could
not see it, and did not see it. We shall be wise men
if, in sitting at their feet, we profit by the very
blindness of our teachers. Each, had he only known
it, was the other's better half.

There come to most of us weak or wicked mo-
ments, when we are apt to regard our more brilliant
brethren as our enemies. We forget that we are
members one of another, and that we need each
other. What a story for tears is that which Dr.
Alexander Whyte has told us of Thomas Shepard !
It is a tale to be read on our knees. Thomas Shep-
ard, as we all know, was an English Puritan, a
Pilgrim Father, and the Founder of Harvard. But
we did not all know that Thomas Shepard was a
poor wretch of like passions with ourselves. He
had, it seems, a brilliant ministerial neighbour. And
his neighbour's sermons were printed on Saturdays
in the New England Gazette. So, for that matter,

222 The Luggage of Life

were Shepard's. But his neighbour's sermons read
well, and were popular. Shepard's read but in-
differently, and were despised. And on one memor-
able Saturday a particularly brilliant and clever
sermon appeared in the Gazette. Everybody read
it, everybody talked of it, everybody praised it. And
the praise of his neighbour was like fire in the bones
and like gravel in the teeth of poor Thomas Shep-
ard. It was gall and wormwood to his very soul.
That Saturday the spirit of the old Puritan passed
through the Garden of Gethsemane. When mid-
night came it found him still prostrate before God
on the floor of his study. His whole frame was
convulsed in an agony of sweat and tears, whilst his
brilliant neighbour's clever sermon was still crushed
and crumpled between his clasped hands. He
wrestled, like Jacob, until the breaking of the day.
He prayed until he had torn all bitterness and
jealousy and hatred and ill-will out of his heart.
And then, with calm and upturned face, he craved
a blessing on his neighbour and on his neighbour's
clever sermon. Thomas Shepard came to see that
he and his neighbour belonged to each other. He
was his neighbour's better half. Time has taken
good care to vindicate Shepard. He is the friend
of all of us, whilst we do not even know his neigh-
bour's name. What Saturday nights, I say again,

Our Better Halves 223

we ministers have with Wesley and with Law!
How our hearts burn within us in their excellent
company! But what still more glorious Saturday
nights we might have had if only John Wesley or
William Law — or, better still, both of them — had
spent one Saturday night after the pattern of
Thomas Shepard's never-to-be-forgotten Saturday
night in New England! If only they, and all like
them, had wrestled with their bitterness until the
breaking of the day! The daybreak would have
revealed to each the noble face of a brother beloved.
For we are members one of another.

VIII
THE CONQUEST OF THE POLES

I HAVE just been over the Fram. Captain Amund-
sen, with his lieutenants, Messrs. Hassel and Wist-
ing — both of whom accompanied their chief to the
Pole — were as courteous and attentive as mortals
could possibly be. They showed us all that there was
to be seen, told us all that there was to be told, and
assisted us in snapping everything that tempted our
cameras. Nothing could have been more beautiful
than the grace and modesty with which they were
receiving, in the form of a perfect stream of con-
gratulatory cablegrams, the plaudits of the world.
It was good to walk the decks of the sturdy little
vessel that holds the extraordinary record of having
penetrated to the farthest north with Nansen and to
the farthest south with Amundsen. We raise our
hats to the heroic achievements of these hardy
Norsemen. What memories rush to mind! What
tales of dauntless courage and dogged endurance !
Our thoughts quit all their ordinary grooves and
224

The Conquest of the Poles 225

plunge into fresh realms. We seem to leave the
solar system far behind us, and to invade a new
universe as we lean against these beaten bulwarks
and give ourselves to retrospection. And here, at
least, there are no more worlds to conquer. Here,
at any rate, progress has reached finality. There
are no more poles ! None ! It is so very rarely that
we can cry Ne plus ultra! that we must enjoy the
sensation when we can. Peary and Amundsen
hold a distinct monopoly. They are entitled to
make the most of it. The magnificent achievement
of Captain Amundsen has set us all thinking of
Arctic and Antarctic exploits. We have been trans-
ported in fancy to those lofty and jagged ranges
of mountainous ice that have been the despair of
adventurers since exploration began. We have
shivered in imagination as we have caught glimpses
of innumerable ice-floes and of stretching plains of
frozen snow. Of Captain Amundsen's success in
the south we know only the bare fact. His book,
with graphic detail and description, is a treat with
which the future tantalizes us.

But Amundsen has reminded us of Peary, and
we have picked up the Commander's book once
more. He tells a great tale. It is good to see that
the world cannot withhold its sounding applause
from the man who knows exactly where he wants

226 The Luggage of Life

to go, and who never dreams of resting till he
gets there. Peary's book is a classic of excellent
leadership. Nansen told us long ago that the
obstacles that intervened between civilization and
the Pole, terrific as they were, were too frail for
the dogged and indomitable determination of Peary.
That prediction has been magnificently vindicated.
Commander Peary has taught us that the really
successful man is the man who knows how to keep
on failing. Failure is life's high art. He who
knows how to fail well will sweep everything before
him. Peary kept on failing till the silver crept into
his hair; and then, when well over fifty years of
age, on stepping-stones of his dead self, he climbed
to higher things. Through what Disraeli would
have called 'the hell of failure/ he entered the
heaven of his triumph.

It is ever so. The kingdom of heaven suffereth
violence, and the persistent take it by storm. The
conqueror is, as Wellington said, the man who never
knows when he is beaten. The dust of defeat stings
the face of the victor at every step of his onward
march. 'The arms of the Republic/ writes Gibbon,
'often defeated in battle, were always successful in
war.' 'As for Gad/ exclaimed the dying Jacob,
'a troop shall overcome him, but he shall overcome
at the last/ The Cross is the last word in the grim

The Conquest of the Poles 227

record of the world's most ghastly failures; it is at
the same time the emblem of a victory which shall
shame our most radiant dreams. Those whose ears
have never heard a paean, and whose brows have
never felt the laurel, should ponder well this great
romance of Arctic exploration. When God writes
Success on any man's life He often begins to spell
it with an '£.'

Commander Peary tabulates his difficulties.
Speaking generally, these coincided with Amund-
sen's, and they were three : ( i ) there was the diffi-
culty, sometimes almost insuperable, of conveying
heavy baggage over steep, ragged, slippery moun-
tains of ice; (2) there was the difficulty presented
by the piercing, penetrating, paralysing cold; (3)
and there was the difficulty of the dense, depressing
darkness — the long polar night. In relation to the
first of these, however, we must confess that the
thought that has haunted us, as we have followed
our intrepid voyager, is that, really and truly, these
were not the things that deterred, but the things that
drove him. Their propelling power was infinitely
greater than their repelling power. It is quite cer-
tain that if the Poles could have been reached in a
sumptuous Pullman car, neither Peary nor Amund-
sen would have made the trip. It was the stupend-
ous difficulty that lured them on.

228 The Luggage of Life

«
We make an egregious blunder when we try to

persuade men that the way to heaven is easy. The
statement is false to fact in the first place; and, in
the second, there is no responsive chord in human
nature which will vibrate to that ignoble note.
Hardship has a strange fascination for men.
Pizarro knew what he was doing when he traced his
line on the sands of Panama, and cried: "Com-
rades, on that side of the line are toil, hunger, naked-
ness, and drenching storm, desertion, and death ; on
this side ease and pleasure. Choose, every man!
For my part, I go to the south.' Garibaldi knew
what he was doing when he exclaimed : 'Soldiers,
what I offer you is fatigue, danger, struggle, and
death; the chill of the cold night in the free air; the
intolerable heat beneath the blazing sun ; no lodgings,
no munitions, no provisions, but forced marches,
perilous watch-posts, and the continual struggle
with the bayonet against strong batteries. Those
who love freedom and their country may follow me.'
Men love to be challenged and taunted and
dared. Six thousand men eagerly volunteered to
join Captain Scott's expedition to the South Pole.
Some holding high and remunerative positions
craved to be permitted to swab the decks of the
Terra Nova. A captain in a crack cavalry regiment,
with five clasps on his uniform, a hero of the South

The Conquest of the Poles 229

African war, counted it an honour to perform the
most menial duties at a salary of a shilling a month.
Yes, Pizarro and Garibaldi, Peary and Scott knew
what they were doing. They were obeying the
surest instinct in the genius of leadership; for they
were following Him who said : 'If any man will
come after Me, let him deny himself, and take up
his cross daily, and follow Me; for whosoever shall
save his life shall lose it, but whosoever shall lose
his life for My sake, the same shall save it.' On
the road to Golgotha, the Saviour challenged the
daring among men, and the heroes of all the ages
have in consequence trooped to His standard.

But the colossal obstacles have often to be sur-
mounted, Peary tells us, in the cruel cold and the
dense darkness. And such cold! It is surely an
allegory. Many a man feels that the task assigned
him would be difficult enough in itself; but, in
the chilling and disheartening atmosphere in which
he has to perform it, it seems impossible. Bad
enough, thought Benaiah, to fight a lion; but a
lion in a pit ! And a lion in a pit on a snowy day !
Hard enough to persevere in well-doing when in-
spired by sweet whispers of gratitude, and cheered
by the warm breath of sympathy. But misunder-
stood and unappreciated! There are millions who
have discovered, with Peary, that life's heaviest

230 The Luggage of Life

loads have to be borne in the most nipping and
frigid atmosphere.

And the darkness ! Nobody knows what darkness
is, Peary tells us, unless he has experienced an
Arctic night. Week after week, with no illuming
ray, the blackness seems to soak into one's very
soul. But here our explorer is mistaken. There
are many who have never been within thousands
of miles of the Pole who nevertheless take up every
morning their heavy burdens and bear them through
an atmosphere more chilling than that of Arctic
latitudes, and amidst darkness compared with which
an Arctic night is brilliant. For there is no gloom
like the petrifying gloom of mystery. The sorrows
of all time reached their climax in the Man of
Sorrows ; and the anguish of the Christ reached its
climax on the cross. And in the awful heart of
that anguish there was darkness; and out from
the darkness emerged the expression of eternal
mystery, 'My God, My God, why hast Thou for-
saken me ?' The horror of the ages is concentrated
in that fearful 'Why?' And with an unanswered
'Why?' upon his dumb lips, many a Christian
follows his Lord in the dark.

I have said that Peary's book is a classic of
distinguished leadership. This reminds me of the
finest thing in the volume. The explorer makes

The Conquest of the Poles 231

a noble boast. In the course of his life he has led
hundreds of men among Arctic foxes and Polar
bears. And, save for shipping accidents that might
have happened in any zone, he has brought them
all safely back. There could be no more eloquent
testimony to his shrewd foresight, his unfailing
diligence, and his almost fond unselfishness, than
that. Of nothing is he more proud. But Peary's
leadership is modelled on a greater. What though
at times the burdens of life seem crushing? What
though the atmosphere seem paralysing? What
though the darkness seem appalling? He leads
on. He has felt the darkness and the cold. The
responsibility is, after all, in the last resort, upon
the leader. And, with unerring wisdom and beau-
tiful accuracy of judgment, He picks out the peril-
ous path and apportions the difficult tasks to the
well-known potentialities of His followers. 'Of
those whom Thou hast given Me/ He says, 'I have
lost none.' Commander Peary's great book has
taught us that the wise leader sets an infinite value
on the welfare of his most lowly follower; and that
every task is allotted in the light of that lofty esti-
mate.

IX
HAT-PINS AND BUTTON-HOOKS

I HAVE been reading a pretty tale of a wee lassie,
who, on bounding in from school, exclaimed that she
had learned to punctuate. 'Indeed!' exclaimed her
mother, 'and how do you do it, Elsie?' 'Well,
mamma/ cried the excited little grammarian, 'it's
just as easy as easy can be! If you say that a thing
is so, you just put a hat-pin after it; but if you are
only asking whether it is so or not, you put a button-
hook !'

On thinking it over, we have reached the deliber-
ate conclusion that there is a world of sound phil-
osophy about the little lassie's explanation. All life
resolves itself, sooner or later, into a matter of hat-
pins and button-hooks. If we were to hold a kind
of mental spring-cleaning, turning out all the
drawers of memory and cupboards of thought; if
we were to sort out all our notions and ideas, our
doctrines and our theories; if we were to overhaul
our entire intellectual and moral equipment, we
should discover with surprise that the great bulk of

232

Hat-Pins and Button-Hooks 233

it all could be sharply divided under these two heads
— our affirmations and our interrogations; the
things of which we are positive, and the things of
which we are doubtful ; the matters on which we are
dogmatic and the matters on which we are dubious.
The soul has a stock-in-trade of its own ; and on its
shelves are to be found the goods that it has bought
outright and the goods of which it has accepted
delivery on probation. We carry these two classes
of stores — our certainties and our suspicions —
these and no others. Our cupboards are crammed,
that is to say, with hat-pins and with button-hooks.

It is in these two classes of goods that the churches
do their main business. The Church makes great
affirmations, and she propounds great interroga-
tions. She declares confidently : We know whom we
have believed! We know that all things work to-
gether for good! We know that, if our earthly
house were destroyed, we have a house not made
with hands, eternal in the heavens ! She asks great
questions too: What shall it profit a man? How
shall we escape if we neglect? What shall the end
be of those that obey not the gospel? Surely the
pulpit is of all places the natural home of stupend-
ous affirmation and searching interrogation.

Oliver Wendell Holmes rushes to the memory at
once. ' "I will agree," said Number Seven, "to write

234 The Luggage of Life

the history of two worlds, this and the next, in such
a compact way that you can commit them both to
memory in less time than you can learn the answer
to the first question in the catechism." He took
a blank card from his pocket-book, and wrote :

' "Two worlds ! Endless doubt and unrest here
below; wondering, admiring, adoring certainty
above. Am I not right?" It was conceded that he
was right. It conies to this. The story of two
worlds can be set forth by a single hat-pin and a
single button-hook.

Hat-pins and button-hooks are both very good in
their way, and for their proper purposes. We have
heard of hat-pins being used with vicious intent at
football matches and in street riots, just as we have
heard men speak with certainty where they would
have been wiser to have spoken with caution. They
were cock-sure; but time has shown that they were
wrong. It was an abuse of the hat-pin, that was all.
'Have your beliefs/ says an old writer, 'and have
your doubts. Believe your beliefs, and doubt your
doubts. Never doubt your beliefs, and never believe

Hat-Pins and Button-Hooks 235

your doubts.' It is a quaint way of saying that
the hat-pin and the button-hook must be kept, each
in its proper place, and must be used, each for its
proper purpose.

In a magnificent lecture delivered to students
not long before his death, Dr. John Watson urged
the importance of this very thing. There are certain
matters, he contended, on which the preacher can
be absolutely positive — the facts of Revelation, of
the Deity of the Son of God, of Sin, of Redemp-
tion, and of the power of the Holy Ghost. Round
these splendid facts, he demonstrated, there revolved
a thousand theories. Between these things he en-
treated the students to distinguish clearly. 'The
facts/ he said, 'should be declared in faith with
much assurance; the theories should be advanced as
contributing light with diffidence.'

The button-hook, like the hat-pin, is a most useful
article in its own way. It is a good thing to ask
questions. It was the occupation of the child Jesus
in the midst of the doctors. Towards the close of
his life Dr. Thomas Guthrie wrote a beautiful letter
to his daughter congratulating her on her first ap-
proach to the table of the Lord. The letter simply
overflows with intense affection and fatherly coun-
sel. And it contains this pertinent passage: 'I saw
an adage yesterday, in a medical magazine, which is

236 The Luggage of Life

well worth your remembering and acting on. It is
this wise saying of the great Lord Bacon's: WHO
ASKS MUCH, LEARNS MUCH. I remember the day
when I did not like, by asking, to confess my igno-
rance. I have long given up that, and now seize on
every opportunity of adding to my stock of knowl-
edge. Now don't forget Lord Bacon's wise saying !'

There are only two men in the whole wide world
who can ask questions effectively. There is the
man who does not know, and wants to learn; and
there is the man who does know, and wants to
teach. Of the former, Alexander the Great is the
classical illustration; among the latter, Socrates
stands supreme. We all remember the great passage
in Plutarch, in which the rise of Alexander is largely
attributed to his endless facility for asking sagacious
questions. When Frank Buckland, the delightful
naturalist, was in his fourth year, his mother wrote
of him: 'He is always asking questions. If there
is anything he cannot understand, he won't go on
till it has been explained to him. There is no end
to his questions.' And Dr. Culross, in his exquisite
monogram of Carey, tells us how the 'sensible lad
in the leather apron' attracted the notice of Dr. Scott,
the commentator, by his 'modest asking of appro-
priate questions.'

The place of the button-hook is permanent. So

Hat-Pins and Button-Hooks 237

long as life throbs with mystery the place of the
interrogation is assured. The baby asks questions
as soon as he can prattle.

Why, muvver, why

Was those poor blackbirds all baked in a pie ?
And why did the cow jump right over the moon?
And why did the dish run away with the spoon?
And why must we wait for our wings till we die ?
Why, muvver, why?

And death comes at last, and finds us still asking the
old questions :

Why?

This is the cry

That echoes through the wilderness of earth,
Through song and sorrow, day of death and birth :

Why?

Why?

It is the high

Wail of the child with all his life to face ;
Man's last dumb question as he reaches space :

Why?

The comfort about it all is that the really big
things of life are represented by hat-pins, and only
the things that can afford to wait by button-hooks.
Dr. Dale used to illustrate this by a reference to
the pillars beside his pulpit. 'It appears to you/
he would say to the congregation at Carr's Lane,

238 The Luggage of Life

'that these pillars support this arch above my head.
They do nothing of the kind. If you could stand
where I stand, you would see that they have been
cut through to make room for this rostrum, and
they actually hang upon the arch which they seem
to support.' In like fashion, our faith seems at
times to depend upon the theories and evidences
concerning which we ask our questions. In point
of fact, it does nothing of the kind. If all our
theories and evidences were cut through like the
pillars, our faith would still stand securely like the
arch. Our certainties infinitely outnumber and
outweigh our speculations. We know. The soul
plants her feet on a sure refuge of her own. Pro-
fessor Forsyth rightly argues that to the individual
consciousness there can be no stronger witness than
its own experience of the love of God, of the merits
of the Saviour's Cross, and of the efficacy of His
risen power. These the soul takes into stock, not on
approbation, but for ever and for all. She buys
these truths and sells them not. The Christian
gospel holds for the believer stupendous and satis-
fying certainties; and, amidst these affirmations,
secure from all interrogations, the heart loves to
build its nest

X

THE BROW OF THE HILL

THE brow of the hill has a divinity of its own. There
is something distinctly spiritual, as well as some-
thing distinctly sublime, about a summit. That is
why the heathen loved to build their altars there.
How often, in the historical books of the Old Testa-
ment, we are told that the idolatrous people erected
their shrines and raised their images on the high
hills about Jerusalem ! How the Aztecs delighted in
rearing their strange temples, shaped like pyramids,
on the loftiest peaks of Mexico, with the altar on the
topmost pinnacle of the temple ! And the same sure
instinct has led men to lay their bones to rest on
the brow of the hill. They wearily sought its silent
and solemn sanctity at the last ! We have all visited,
at least in fancy, the resting-place of Robert Louis
Stevenson. 'Nothing more picturesque can be im-
agined,' his cousin tells us, 'than the narrow ledge
that forms the summit of Vaea, a place no wider
than a room, and flat as a table. On either side the

239

240 The Luggage of Life

land descends precipitously; in front lies the vast
ocean with the surf-swept reefs; to the right and
left green mountains rise, densely covered with the
primaeval forest.' No firearms must be discharged
about those slopes. The chiefs insist that the birds
must be undisturbed, that they 'may raise about his
grave the songs he loved so well.' I saw the other
day a striking picture of Cecil Rhodes's lonely grave
on the crest of the mighty Matoppos in Africa.
Two lions from the valley beneath are standing on
the great flat tomb, and seem in harmony with the
wild, romantic place.

But I no longer hold the attention of my readers.
Their thoughts have left Robert Louis Stevenson
and Cecil Rhodes far behind, and have visited the
strange, lone resting-place of Moses among the
mountains of Moab.

That was the grandest funeral

That ever passed on earth ;
But no man heard the trampling,

Or saw the train go forth.
Perchance the bald old eagle

On grey Beth-peor's height,
Out of his rocky eyrie

Looked on the wondrous sight.

And Browning has expressed the same fondness
for a mountain burial in his 'Grammarian's Funeral.'

The Brow of the Hill 241

Here's the top peak; the multitude below

Live, for they can, there :
This man decided not to live but know —

Bury this man there?
Here — here's his place, where meteors shoot, clouds form,

Lightnings are loosened,
Stars come and go! Let joy break with the storm!

Peace let the dew send !
Lofty designs must close in like effects:

Loftily lying,
Leave him — still loftier than the world suspects,

Living and dying.

Now I have simply pointed to these altars and
monuments that deck the hill-tops of the world in
order to prove that there exists, in the very blood
of the race, an instinctive reverence for the brow
of the hill. We feel that summits are sacred.
Why? That is the question. Let us investigate.

Now, in attempting a solution of this alluring
mystery, I must call to my aid two gentlemen
of rare insight and of profound scholarship —
Professor George Adam Smith and Mr. A. C.
Benson. In treating of the I2ist Psalm the learned
Principal says: 'To the psalmist the mountains
spread a threshold for a divine arrival. Up there
God Himself may be felt to be afoot. Whether
we climb them, or gaze at them, the mountains
produce in us that mingling of moral and physical
emotion in which the temper of true worship

242 The Luggage of Life

consists.' So much for the Principal. Now for the
schoolmaster. 'It is good,' writes Mr. Benson, in
one of his delightful essays, 'it is good for the body
to climb the steep slopes and breathe the pure air;
it is good for the mind to see the map of the coun-
try fairly unrolled before the eye; and it is good
for the soul, too, to see the world lie extended at
one's feet How difficult it is to analyze the vague
and poignant emotions which then and thus arise !'
*A hill-top,' remarks another writer, 'is a moral as
well as a physical elevation.'

Now it is as clear as clear can be that the hunger
of our hearts for the hills is only a part of the
hunger of our hearts for the infinite. The instinct
of the far horizon is indelibly engraven in our very
nature. Go where you will, visit what city you like,
and you will straightway be taken to some noble and
commanding eminence to see the view. Surely this
phenomenon requires some explanation. Even the
most intelligent of the lower animals betray no love
for the landscape. They know nothing of the pas-
sion of the far horizon. I have often ascended
Mount Wellington, at Hobart, and gazed entranced
upon the magnificent panorama of land and sea
that unrolls itself, in altogether indescribable
grandeur, at one's feet. The prospect is almost over-
powering. But I have noticed repeatedly that,

The Brow of the Hill 243

whilst every member of the party turns in ecstasy to
admire so glorious a landscape, the horses and dogs
— man's most intelligent and sagacious companions
— have deliberately turned their backs upon the mag-
nificent landscape, to forage for food on the bushy
slopes near by. The different behaviour of the men
and the animals is much more than a matter of
degree. It is a contrast in kind. It is a direct line
of cleavage. It is arresting and inviting.

In one of his most captivating and suggestive
passages, Mark Rutherford, in his Revolution in
Tanner's Lane, tells how the boys of the tiny hamlet
of Cowfold would, on a holiday, trudge the three
dusty miles down the lane from the village to the
main coach road, and back again, just for the rapture
of reading the wondrous words 'TO LONDON/ 'TO
YORK/ on the finger-post at the end of the lane.
The romance of the mysterious fingers pointing
mutely down the winding road along which the
coaches rattled on their way to the great capitals,
was 'an opening into infinity/ to use Mark Ruther-
ford's words, to the boys of Cowfold. It was the
next best thing to a mountain peak. It is so with
every boy. The instinct of the far horizon burns
within him. He reads Jules Verne and R. M.
Ballantyne, Captain Marryat and Captain Mayne
Reid, G. A. Henty and Gordon Stables. These are

244 The Luggage of Life

his classics. He glories in boundless plains and
impenetrable jungles; in pathless prairies and endless
snows; in trackless deserts and illimitable oceans.
He revels in a limitless landscape. His fertile fancy
converts every hencoop and dog-kennel into a wig-
wam or a kraal, every paddock into a prairie, every
terrier into a tiger, and the boys of every neighbour-
ing school into a fierce and hostile tribe. He is
always on an imaginary hill-top, looking out upon
the four corners of the earth. He loathes the
intimate and loves the infinite. There is evidently
some subtle and mysterious ingredient in his
composition that is totally absent in the make-up
of your noblest horses and your finest dogs. The
passion of the wide horizon, the instinct of the
infinite, the spirit of the summit, tingles in his very
blood.

Yet, after all, it must be sorrowfully confessed
that the hill-tops never really satisfy. The horizon
is always small, the landscape limited. We look out
to sea, and we wonder what ships are sailing out
there beyond the skyline; we gaze across the
land, and we wonder what lies beyond the distant
ranges.

The peak is high, and flushed

At its highest with sunrise fire;
The peak is high and the stars are high,

But the thought of man is higher.

The Brow of the Hill 245

Yet be quite sure that the hunger that the high-
est peak leaves unsatisfied is no mockery. It is
to appease it that the churches live. For there is
another hill-top. 'Then said the Shepherds one to
another, "Let us here show to the pilgrims the gates
of the Celestial City." The pilgrims then lovingly
accepted the motion. So they had them to the top
of a high hill, called Clear, and gave them their
glass to look. And they saw some of the glory of
the place. Then they went away and sang this song :

"Thus by the Shepherds secrets are revealed,

Which from all other men are kept concealed :
Come to the Shepherds then, if you would see
Things deep, things hid, and that mysterious be." '

Let all the Shepherds of all the flocks take note.
The hunger for the hilltop is a very real and a very
beautiful thing. It is not satisfied by rearing altars
there. It is not appeased by planning, like Steven-
son and Rhodes, to lie in stately silence there.
There is no mountain-peak among earth's loftiest
ranges high enough to gratify the cravings of a
single soul. The view is so restricted. Men are
hungry for the wealthier vision that is to be seen
from the summit of the hill called Clear; and it is
for the Shepherds to take these wistful pilgrims
there.

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