AER SUR TELE ReneS SSS SS = aa = : =e = es z ss SS ae ee Mats a =" 3 is oti Tita 2 ¢ c SS 2 Saeee BR 1702 .B672 1924 Boreham, Frank, 1871-1959. A casket of cameos 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 LUGGAGE OF LIFE THE OTHER SIDE OF THE HILL THE SILVER SHADOW THE UTTERMOST STAR SHADOWS ON THE WALL RUBBLE AND ROSELEAVES A Casket of Cameos More Texts That Made History | By F. W. BOREHAM ny THE ABINGDON PRESS a CINCINNATI Copyright, 1924, by F. W. BOREHAM All rights reserved, including that of translation into foreign languages, including the Scandinavian Printed in the United States of America BY WAY OF INTRODUCTION THE stately lives of noble men, are they not the glory of the whole earth? They are the streams that, transforming every dusty desert into a fruitful field or a garden of roses, fill the world with life and loveliness. In this book—and its predecessors of the same series—I have simply traced these sparkling waters to their secret source and fountain-head far up among the everlasting hills. FRANK W. BOREHAM. Armadale, Victoria, Australia, Christmas, 1923. CONTENTS CHAPTER PAGE I. Gzorce Moore’s TExT................ 9 II. Davin Brarnsprp’s TEXT............... 21 III. Srk Ernest SHACKLETON’S TEXT........ 33 IV. Grorce WHITEFIELD’S TEXT........... A4 V. CarpinaL NEWMAN'S TEXT............. 57 WT OM ARKY SABRE SO) LEST iy sycio lun Oil eer ih tate 68 VET SROBERT (LAMB'S! TENT reed on 80 VITI. Pritie MELANCTHON’S TEXT........... 92 LA CRTOHNG BRIGHTS VEX Co ska yig enh 103 X. Jozy McQumpwHa’s TEXT.............. . 116 tees ATON SEEK TIN guided fre s taki 128 PTL SANTASEERESA’S LENT ol eC agi, 140 MEL SypNBY/DOpELL’s Texr 0c) a: 153 DN AC RINNE Y GUL E NT Olin uli Sula 165 OV. ROSALIE JOYCE STREET A. Po 176 OOY FON OHNI WILLEMS LRoor eu oa aay 189 XVIT. W. M. THACKERAY’S TEXT............. 200 XVIII. Countess or Huntincpon’s TextT..... . 242 XIX. CHARLES SIMEON’S TEXT............... 225 XX. THomas WINGFOLD’S TEXT............. 238 XXI. Lorp SHAFTESBURY’S TEXT............. 240 ASL. Dr. R. OW. DALE's TEXT iy aces sek 26% ‘ Digitized by the Internet Archive in 2022 with funding from Princeton Theological Seminary Library https://archive.org/details/casketofcameosmoO0O0bore GEORGE MOORE’S TEXT I SHALL I ever forget the night on which I looked for the first time on the Life of George Moore, Merchant and Philanthropist, by Samuel Smiles? I was only a small boy at the time, yet the memory of it rushes back so vividly upon me that it seems impossible that, since then, so many years have flown. I had, a few months earlier, made a most sensational dis- covery—the discovery of the possibilities of a circu- lating library. My schoolfellow, Gilbert Finch, a boy of about my own age, had introduced me to a dingy little schoolroom, not far from my home, where, in return for the modest outlay of a penny a month, I could borrow as many tales of adventure as I could manage to devour. When I reflect on the hordes of cannibals, Red Indians, brigands, pirates and smug- glers that I obtained in exchange for that first penny, I catch myself wondering whether, in the entire his- tory of finance, one solitary copper coin was ever made to go so far. In every spare minute, from day- light to dark, I curled myself up in my father’s ca- pacious armchair and lost myself among the grizzly 9 IO A Casket of Cameos bears of the Rocky Mountains, the boa-constrictors of the Amazon, the wolves of Siberia, the whales of the Indian Ocean, the elephants of Africa and the tigers of Bengal. I romped through Ballantyne and Marryat, Mayne Reid and Fenimore Cooper in no time. I wondered how I had contrived to fill in the dreary days of human existence before the little library was revealed to me. And then, just as my fevered brain was becoming one confused jumble of Indian wigwams, Arab tents, Zulu kraals, Arctic 'snow-huts and smugglers’ caves, my father suddenly took it into his head that such an unmixed diet of wild excitement was not conducive to the best intel- lectual development. He urged me to try a change; and, from some more sedate library that he himself patronized, he brought me the Life of George Moore. I glanced through it, but could see no sign of a shipwreck or a slave-raid or a scalp-hunt anywhere. | Still, I felt that, since my father provided me with the pennies that brought me such torrents of enjoy- ment from my own library, it was due to him that I should make an honest attempt to sample his. I read the ponderous volume from cover to cover, and, to my astonishment, it filled me with a delight of which, in anticipation, I had never dreamed. After an interval of forty years, I have read the book again, and every incident seems wonderfully famil- iar. I owe to that childish experience a penchant for biography that has deepened, rather than evap- orated, with the years. George Moore’s Text II II This brawling little burn, that winds its way in and out among the alders and the willows of this green, green valley, is the Dowbeck. It is hurrying excitedly down the glen that it may throw itself with a laugh into the waters of the River Ellen. That glorious old mansion on the hillside—with masses of cream-colored roses clustering luxuriantly over its walls, and thousands of lilies flecking, like snow- flakes, the yew hedge that divides the garden from the bowling-green—is ‘Whitehall,’ the home of George Moore. The house is surrounded by un- dulating lawns, winding walks, well-kept flower- beds, and graceful shrubberies. In the old days of Border warfare it played a great part in the history of the countryside; it even figures prominently in one of Sir Walter Scott’s romances. Not far away, over the hill yonder, is the tiny village of Mealsgate, where George Moore was born. How little he dreamed in the old days when, as a poor boy, he fished in the Ellen and ransacked the wide chimney of ‘Whitehall,’ in search of jackdaws’ eggs, that, one day, this magnificent estate would be his very own! And here is the man himself, enjoying, in com- pany with his big bulldog ‘Jack,’ one of those rambles of which he is so fond! He is a striking figure, sturdy and massive. In his -youth he was one of the best wrestlers in the country. His whole 12 A Casket of Cameos aspect impresses you as that of a man of blunt frankness, robust character and, indomitable energy. His alert brown eyes, eager and penetrating, have an emphatically dauntless look. His mouth, too, is firm and powerful. His fine head, with its abun- dance of curly hair, is set squarely upon his shoul- ders. You feel that you are in the presence of a strong man and a good one. {il In his younger days George Moore was a com- mercial traveller; and he revelled in the society of commercial travellers to the end of his life. In the interests of his firm he visited every town of impor- tance in Great Britain and America. But the most remarkable of his travels was undertaken in his forty-fifth year, for in that year he made the greatest journey that any man can make. He passed from death unto life! The extraordinary thing about George Moore is that he did not begin his spiritual pilgrimage until he was at the zenith of his powers and at the climax of his illustrious career. Before his need of a Saviour pressed itself at all urgently upon him, he had been ten years married, had be- come a partner in his firm, and established his posi- tion in life, had been invited by the Lord Mayor of London to become Sheriff of the city, had been offered an important seat in Parliament, and had earned a great reputation for philanthropy. The story of his spiritual experience, carefully George Moore’s Text 13 recorded, was found among his papers after his death. In the first part of his life, he says, he had no time to think. ‘At night I tumbled into bed with- out asking God’s blessing, and I was generally so tired that I fell asleep in a few minutes.’ “No time to think!’ This, doubtless, was his general condi- tion; but to that general rule there were notable ex- ceptions, three particularly. There was one never-to-be-forgotten occasion on which he spent the whole night thinking. It was the night after his mother’s funeral. He was only six at the time. As soon as they told him that his mother was dead, he was filled with curiosity and dread. What had happened to her?* He timidly crept to her bedside; uncovered the cold, white face; touched it; spoke to her; and was puzzled by her icy indifference. On the night after the funeral he slept with his father in the bed from which his mother’s body had just been taken. He was frightened, startled, horror-stricken. Where was she? He never once closed his eyes; and, to the last day of his life, that terrifying experience haunted his memory. That night was certainly an exception. That night he thought. He thought of life; he thought of death; he thought, in his childish way, of immortality. There was another occasion on which he thought. It was during his apprenticeship at Wigton. He became enslaved by the gambling habit and often sat at the card-table till the grey and ghostly dawn 14 A Casket of Cameos came stealing through the windows. One early morning—it was the morning of Christmas Day— he returned to his room to find that he had been locked out. By dint of climbing over roofs and chimneys—an art which he had acquired when searching for jackdaws’ eggs—he managed to gain entrance to his room through the window. He slipped into bed; but not to sleep. For very soon the waits came round, singing the Christmas carols. “The sweet music awoke me to a sense of my wrong- doing. I felt overwhelmed with penitence and re- morse. I thought of my dear father and feared that 1 might break his heart and bring down his grey hairs in sorrow to the grave.’ He remained in bed all day—ihinking! ‘I resolved,’ he says, ‘to give up card-playing and gambling,’ and, true to his pledge, he never again touched a card or hazarded a coin. The third occasion on which he thought was in his forty-fifth year. It suddenly occurred to him that neither his great success, nor his immense popularity, nor his princely benefactions could atone for his sins or blot out a certain inner defilement of which he was becoming increasingly conscious. ‘I am pain- fully aware,’ he says, ‘of the depravity of my own heart.’ It worried him; the anxiety of it kept him awake at night; he would rise in the darkness, kneel in anguish by his bedside, and pray for deliverance. ‘For the last two years,’ he says, ‘I have been earnestly asking God to give me some sudden change George Moore’s Text 15 of heart; but no sudden change comes.’ With bitter tears he sought the way of repentance, but, like Esau, could not find it. ‘It seems,’ he moaned, ‘as if God has hidden His face from me.’ And then, like a flash, the light broke upon him, and all his wretchedness was gone. IV It was a text that did it. It suddenly occurred to him that he had been confusing the salvation of his soul with the arrival of certain moods, feelings and sensations. Because no rush of ecstasy had swept into his heart, he had taken it for granted that God had turned a deaf ear to his piteous cries and passionate entreaties. He saw his mistake. ‘IT am determined for the future,’ he says, ‘not to perplex my mind with seeking for some extraor- dinary impressions, signs, or tokens of the new birth. I believe the gospel. I love the Lord Jesus Christ. I receive with confidence the promise that He that heareth My word, and believeth on Him that sent Me, hath everlasting hfe, and shall not come into condemnation, but ts passed from death unto life. We rested implicitly on that promise and en- tered into peace. George Moore’s testimony reminds me of Frank Bullen’s experience with the same text. It was in the old sail-loft at Port Chalmers, in New Zealand. Little Mr. Falconer, the sailors’ missionary, had conducted an evangelistic service. Frank Bullen, 16 A Casket of Cameos then a sailor-lad, was impressed, and remained be- hind for further conversation. Mr. Falconer quoted to him the promise on which George Moore had rested with such confidence. ‘Verily, verily, I say unto you, He that heareth My word, and believeth on Him that sent Me, hath everlasting life, and shall not come into condemna- tion, but is passed from death unto life’ Frank Bullen said that he believed; yet his belief brought him no assurance of deliverance. ‘Ah, I see how it is,’ exclaimed Mr. Falconer, ‘you are waiting for the witness of your feelings to the truth of Him who is Himself the Truth. You dare not take Him at His word unless your feelings, which are subject to a thousand changes a day, corroborate it. You must believe Him in spite of your feelings and act accordingly.’ ‘In a moment,’ says Frank Bullen, in telling the story years afterwards, ‘in a moment the hidden mystery was made clear to me, and I said quietly, “T see, sir; it is the credibility of God against the witness of my feelings. Then J believe God!” “Let us thank God,” answered the little man; and to- gether we knelt down by the bench. Little more was said. There was no extravagant joy, no glo- rious bursting into light and liberty such as I have read about as happening on these occasions; it was just the satisfaction of having found one’s way after long groping in darkness and misery.’ That was George Moore’s experience exactly. George Moore’s Text 17 And, when I see this stately ‘Verily, Verily’ opening the door of deliverance to this simple sailor-lad on one side of the world, and to this great merchant and philanthropist on the other, I feel that there are none among the sons of men to whom it will deny its emancipating ministry. ‘He that believeth,’ says the text. George Moore believed and he kept on believing. ‘The foremost feature in his character,’ the biography tells us, ‘was the admirable simplicity of his faith. And, in his own diary, I come upon entries such as these: ‘Every day I feel more and more my own un- worthiness. I have nothing to rest upon but Christ; yet surely that is enough for me!’ ‘Just as I am, without one plea—a poor, unworthy sinner. Christ takes me as I am, without money or price or works. My works are nothing.’ Such a change had the text wrought! He made Mrs. Moore promise—and he often reminded her of her pledge—that, if she was with him when he was dying, she would repeat the words to him: ‘Verily, verily, I say unto you, He that heareth My word, and believeth on Him that sent Me, hath ever- lasting life, and shall not come into condemnation, but is passed from death unto life. V The text transfigured everything. It even trans- figured his philanthropy. He always revelled in giving away his money. Every New Year’s Day, 18 A Casket of Cameos as he started a new pocket book, he inscribed upon the flyleaf the lines: What I spent, I had: What I saved, I lost: What I gave, I have. He began each year by sending large cheques to - the charities and organizations in which he was interested, many of which he had himself inaugu- rated. He enjoyed giving. ‘If the world only knew half the happiness that a man has in doing good,’ he used to say, ‘it would do a great deal more.’ And, when he first began to feel his need of a Saviour, he would add: “I wish that my faith were as strong as my works! And, when faith came, his works were glorified by its coming. It gave to all his activities a new and higher motive. He hung in his smokeroom an illu- minated tablet on which was inscribed the thirteenth chapter of Paul’s First Epistle to the Corinthians— the chapter that magnifies the glory of love. In large bright letters at the head of the tablet were the words: CHARITY NEVER FAILETH, and, at the foot: NOW ABIDETH FAITH. Those two inscriptions are very significant. George Moore’s later life represents the wedding of Faith to Charity. He felt that it was not enough to give money and to give it lavishly. ‘I believe,’ he said, in George Moore’s Text 10 addressing a great public meeting at Aldersgate Street, ‘I believe that mere money, unless it be given for the love of Jesus, is as filthy rags in the sight of God.’ He therefore felt it his duty to give it in such a way that those for whose benefit it was de- signed were made aware of the love that prompted it. He was not content to post cheques to treasurers. In spite of the protests of his friends, who thought it undignified for a rich city merchant to mingle with the raggedness and filth of the slums, he went fearlessly and familiarly among the thieves, tramps and vagrants who herded in London’s squalor. ‘I feel,’ he explained, ‘that nothing can reach to the depth of human misery, or heal such sorrow, but the love of Jesus, the Good Shepherd who yearned over such people with infinite pity and gave His life for His lost sheep.’ VI The carriage is at the door. George Moore, now a man of seventy, is driving off to preside at a meet- ing of the Nurses’ Institution. ‘What,’ he asked his wife, as he bade her good-bye, “what is that passage that | want to quote? Oh, I remember—“Well done, good and faithful servant, enter thou into the joy of thy Lord.”’’ But that speech was never to be deliv- ered. He was knocked down by a pair of runaway horses. Mrs. Moore hurried to the inn in which he was dying, and, bending over him, quoted the text in accordance with her promise. 20 A Casket of Cameos ‘Verily, verily, I say unto you, He that heareth My word, and believeth on Him that sent Me, hath ever- lasting life, and shall not come into condemnation, but is passed from death unto life’ ‘He looked wistfully into my face,’ says Mrs. Moore, ‘and he told me that he was not afraid; his Saviour would never leave him nor forsake him. Several times afterwards he spoke to me, expressing the same trust. He knew perfectly well that he was dying; but his faith failed not.’ ‘From death unto life? ‘Well done, good and fathful servant, enter thou into the joy of thy Lord! He intended to have quoted the words to others; the programme was altered; and he went to hear them addressed to himself! il DAVID BRAINERD’S TEXT { It is a thickly-wooded solitude beside a graceful in- let of the Susquehanna. The dense and matted vegetation stands as it has stood from the founda- tion of the world. The silence of the wilderness is broken only by the lapping of the mimic wavelets and the flapping of the wings of the waterfowl. On the mossy bank near the water’s edge sits a white man, a mere youth—the palest of palefaces—with his Bible on his knee. Have a good look at him; he is a man ina million; he did more than any other to usher in the world’s new day. He is the morning star of the missionary movement. He isa tall spare youth, of almost feminine face, and large, sad, lus- trous eyes. It is a lovely evening in the early sum- mer of 1744; and, only a few yards from him, a colony of beavers is building a dam across the stream. Looking up from the open page before him, he watches the clever little creatures at their task. They have no more idea that they are observed than he knows that he is being watched by wolfish eyes concealed within the impenetrable foliage. The red men, as silent and as sinewy as serpents, follow 21 22 A Casket of Cameos him everywhere and mark his every step. It is well for him that they do. For, on his very first journey to the Forks of the Delaware, the insatiable curiosity of the Indians saved his life. He had been told of a particularly ferocious tribe, living far back in the forests of New Jersey, and he determined to take the gospel to them. When, towards evening, he saw the smoke of their camp fires, he pitched his tent and resolved to enter the settlement in the morning. He had been led to expect a hostile reception, but, to his inde- scribable astonishment, the whole tribe came out to meet him as, soon after sunrise, he approached the wigwams. ‘The reverence that they exhibited almost took his breath away. He only learned later that, during the night that he had spent on the outskirts of the village, their sharp eyes had been constantly upon him. As soon as it was whispered that a white — man was coming through the woods, a party of warriors had gone forth to kill him. But, when they drew near to his tent, they saw the paleface on his knees. And, even whilst he prayed, a rattlesnake crept to his side, lifted its ugly head as if to strike, flicked its forked tongue almost in his face, and then, without any apparent reason, glided swiftly away into the brushwood. ‘The Great Spirit is with the paleface!’ the Indians said; and they accorded him a prophet’s welcome. But we have digressed. We left David Brainerd sitting under a broad-leafed basswood tree, watching David Brainerd’s Text 23 the beavers in the river below. Something has frightened the beavers now, and they have vanished ; perhaps they caught a glimpse of the white man or of the Indians among the trees. At any rate, they have gone; and, now that he has nothing to distract him, his eyes are fastened once more upon the Bible on his knee. It lies open at the page that is more thumbed than any other. To it he always turns in moments of great loneliness or great anxiety or great depression. He is reading from the seventh of John. In the last day, that great day of the feast, Jesus stood and cried, saying, If any man thirst, let him come unto Me and drink. Whilst David Brain- erd, a youth of twenty-six, sat beside that lonely western stream, John Wesley, in the prime of life, was stirring England as England had never been stirred before. In some respects they were twin souls, although the one died at twenty-nine, whilst the other lived to be nearly ninety. One of Brain- erd’s biographers has said of him that ‘he belonged to a class of men who seem to be chosen of heaven to illustrate the sublime possibilities of Christian attainment; men of seraphic fervor of devotion; men whose one overmastering passion is to win souls for Christ and to become wholly like Him them- selves.’ To this heroic class John Wesley also be- longed. He recognized his spiritual kinship. ‘What can be done,’ he asked his English Conference, ‘what can be done to revive the work of God where it has decayed?’ And he answered his own question by 24 A Casket of Cameos replying: ‘Let every preacher read carefully the Life of David Brainerd’ To-day, Wesley s Journal and Brainerd’s Journal stand side by side among our choicest classics of devotion. In his early days John Wesley devoted himself to the evangelization of the Red Indians: David Brainerd spent all his ministerial days among them. Mr. Wesley used to say that, whenever the cravings of his soul became so intense that no satisfaction could be found, even at earth’s purest fountains, he invariably found com- fort in that sublime proclamation: Jf any man thirst, let him come unto Me and drink! ‘Come! cried the Saviour in the temple courts. ‘Come unto Me! ‘Tf any man thirst, let him come unto Me and drink !’ John Wesley and David Brainerd never saw each other’s faces; it may be that, until after Brainerd’s death, Mr. Wesley never so much as heard his young contemporary’s name; the Atlantic rolled between them, and their fields lay far apart; but, in their affection for the Saviour’s stupendous proclamation at the Feast of Tabernacles, their twin hearts beat as one. If David Brainerd only lived to be twenty-nine; yet, during that brief career of his, he assumed three separate and distinct relationships towards the text. There was a time when the text irritated him. It David Brainerd’s Text 25 is his own word. He was reared in a Puritan home in Connecticut, and was left an orphan at fourteen. As a little boy he was extraordinarily serious, and startled his elders by asking the most grave and searching questions. ‘I was from my youth some- what sober and inclined to melancholy,’ his Journal tells us, ‘but do not remember anything of convic- tion of sin, worthy of remark, till I was seven or eight years of age.’ Then began a period of dark- ness and distress which, though varying in intensity, lasted until he was a youth of twenty-one. At about that age he was walking one morning in a solitary place when, as he says, he was brought to a sudden stand. He felt like a man reeling on the edge of a precipice. ‘It seemed to me,’ he says, ‘that I was totally lost.’ Mr. Stoddart’s Guide to Christ fell into his hands; but, as he says, it only irritated him. He felt angry with the author. For, although the book described with scientific accuracy the terrible distress which he was himself experiencing, it did not satisfactorily explain to him the way of deliv- erance. It told him to come to Christ. ‘Tf any man thirst, let him come unto Me and drink? But what, precisely, did Mr. Stoddart mean? What, precisely, did the Saviour mean? ‘Whilst I was in this dis- tressed, bewildered and tumultuous state of mind, I was irritated, he writes, ‘through not being able to find out what faith was. What was it to believe? What was it to come to Christ? I read the calls of Christ to the weary and the heavy-laden, but 26 A Casket of Cameos could find no way that He directed me to come in. I thought that I would gladly come, if 1 only knew how. Mr. Stoddart’s book told me to come to Christ, but did not tell me anything that I could do that would bring me to Him. For,’ he significantly adds, ‘I was not yet effectually and experimentally taught that there could be no way prescribed, where- by a natural man could, of his own strength, obtain that which is supernatural, and which the highest angel cannot give.’ And so the text, coming to him the first time, brought no comfort. It only awoke ‘a great inward opposition.’ It irritated him. Iil Happily, the text repeated its visit. God gives second knocks. Again the Saviour stood and cried, as He cried on the great day of the feast, Jf any man thirst, let him come unto Me and drink. And this time the text captivated him. Again, it is his own word. It was a Sunday evening—the evening of July 12,1739. He was walking in the same solitary place. ‘At this time,’ he says, ‘the way of salvation opened to me with such infinite wisdom, suitableness and excellency that I wondered that I should ever have desired any other way of salvation. I was amazed that I had not dropped my own contrivances and complied with this lovely, blessed and excellent way before. If I could have been saved by my own duties, or any other way that I had formerly David Brainerd’s Text 24 conceived, my whole soul would now have refused it. I wondered that all the world did not see and comply with this way of salvation.’ ‘Tf any man thirst—it is the only condition. ‘Let him come unto Me’—it is the only command. ‘Let him come unto Me and drink !’—it is the only satisfaction that a thirsty man desires. And David Brainerd was a thirsty man. You can scarcely find a paragraph in his Journal in which the symbolism of the parched tongue does not occur. ‘I felt my soul hungering and thirsting.’ ‘I hungered and thirsted, but was not refreshed and satisfied.’ ‘My soul longed for God, the living God.’ ‘T thirsted night and day for a closer acquaintance with Him.’ Such phrases punctuate every page. ‘T longed!’ ‘I longed! ‘I longed? ‘I thirsted! ‘I thirsted? ‘I thirsted’ ‘Tf any man thirst, let him come unto Me and drink Brainerd thirsted: Brainerd came; Brainerd drank! He left that solitary retreat of his that day singing in his soul the song that, a century later, Horatius Bonar reduced to language: I heard the voice of Jesus say, ‘Behold, I freely give The living water; thirsty one, Stoop down, and drink and live.’ I came to Jesus, and I drank Of that life-giving stream; My thirst was quenched, my soul revived, And now I live in Him. 28 A Casket of Cameos ‘Unspeakable glory seemed,’ he says, “to open to the view and apprehension of my soul. [| do not mean any external brightness, for I saw no such thing. It was a new view of God such as I had never had before. I stood still, wondered and ad- mired. I had never before seen anything compa- rable to it for excellency and beauty; it was widely different from all the conceptions that ever I had had of God or things divine. I felt myself in a new world, and everything about me appeared with a dif- ferent aspect from what it was wont todo. My soul! was captivated and delighted. I rejoiced with joy unspeakable.’ ‘That,’ says President Jonathan Edwards, in pointing to this entry in the Journal, ‘that is the story of Brainerd’s conversion. It was not a mere confirmation of certain moral principles: it was entirely a supernatural work, turning him at once from darkness to marvellous light, and from the power of sin to the dominion of holiness.’ “The change he then experienced was,’ the President says again, ‘the greatest change that ever he knew.’ It transhgured his whole life. And so the text that, on its first appearance, irri- tated him, came again, and, at its second coming, captivated him. ‘I was completely captivated! he joyously exclaims. IV But there was a third phase. The words that first David Brainerd’s Text 29 irritated and then captivated him, at length animated his whole being. As soon as the burning thirst of his own soul had been divinely slaked, it occurred to him that such thirst was no monopoly of his. The text as good as said so, ‘Tf any man thirst’ ‘Any man!’ “Any man! ‘Any man? ‘Tf any man thirst, let him come unto Me and drink! Brainerd seemed to be looking out upon a thirsty world. His lot was cast in an age that knew nothing of missionary enterprise. Our great societies were yet unborn. For the evangelization of the world no prayers were offered and no money given. It was through reading Brainerd’s Life, in accordance with Mr. Wesley’s counsel, that William Carey caught his vision and threw open the doors of a new day. It was Brainerd’s biography that made Henry Martyn a missionary. Brainerd was a leader, a pathfinder, a pioneer; he blazed the trail. “His story,’ as Mr. J. M. Sherwood says, ‘proves him to be one of the most illustrious characters of modern times; it has done more to develop and mould the spirit of modern missions, and to fire the heart of the Christian church, than that of any other man since the apos- tolic age. One such personage, one such character, » is a greater power in human history than a finite mind can calculate.’ He longed to tell the whole wide world of the 30 A Casket of Cameos Saviour’s cry: ‘Jf any man thirst, let him come unto Me and drink? But how could he? China, India, Africa—all these were out of the question. He thought of the heathen that haunted the prairies and forests of his own land. He was scarcely more than a boy, and he felt the fascination that youth has always felt for the distinctive and picturesque features of Indian life. He thought of the canoes and the wigwams; the mats and the moccasins, the frayed leggings and the feathered head-gear, the bows and the quivers, the scalping-knives and the tomahawks, the pow-wows and the peace-pipes; he thought of these, and he thought, above all, of the man himself. He thought of the Indian’s haughty and taciturn demeanor, of his lithe and agile move- ment, of his simple but dignified eloquence, of his courage and resourcefulness of the warpath, and of his poetic and imaginative accomplishments in time of peace. David Brainerd made up his mind that the Indian was well worth winning, and he devoted his young life to the conquest. He was not mistaken in supposing that others were thirsty as well as he. Again and again in his Journal he speaks of the hunger of the tribes for the message that he took them. He tells how an Iroquois woman confessed that, from the moment at which she first heard him, her whole heart had cried out for the gospel. To a great assembly of tattooed warriors he preaches on ‘Herein is love, not that we loved God, but that He loved us and sent David Brainerd’s Text 31 His Son to be the propitiation for our sins” “There were scarce three in forty,’ he says, ‘that could re- frain from tears, and the more I discoursed of the love and compassion of God in sending His Son to suffer for the sins of men, the more they wept.’ And he tells of another occasion on which, when he un- covered the communion-table and explained the sig- nificance of the sacred mysteries, the whole com- pany was dissolved in tears. And so this frail young consumptive, racked with his cough and never free from pain, passed from tribe to tribe, telling everywhere the story of the Cross. Groping his way through dense and track- less forests, he spent most of his days in the saddle, startling the creatures of the wild as he broke upon their age-long solitudes. Most of his nights he spent beneath the open sky. Frail as was his frame, he exposed himself to perils and privations of every kind. Yet, as Mr. Sherwood says, he never wa- vered in his purpose, never regretted his choice, and never paused in his task until, after five brief but strenuous years, he rode back to New England to die. And the text, still holding its old place in his heart, was ever on his tongue. It ever impelled him to fresh conquests. Here are a few extracts from the Journal: Feb. 15,1745. This evening I was much assisted in meditating on that precious text: Jesus stood and cried, If any man thirst, let him come unto Me and drink! I longed to proclaim such grace to the whole world of sinners. 32 A Casket of Cameos Feb. 17, 1745. On the sunny side of a hill in the wilderness, I preached all day, to people who had come twenty miles to hear me, on Jesus stood and cried, If any man thirst, let him come unto Me and drink! I was scarce ever enabled to offer the free grace of God to perishing sinners with more plainness. April 22, 1745. Preached, with freedom and life, from Jesus stood and cried, If any man tlurst, let him come unto Me and drink! | August 5, 1745. Preached to the Indians from Jesus stood and cried, If any man thirst, let him come unto Me and drink! Some, who had never been affected before, were struck with deep concern; others had their concern greatly deepened. He died on October 9, 1747. He was not yet thirty, but he had no regrets. ‘Now that I am dy- ing,’ he exclaimed, ‘I declare that I would not for all the world have spent my life otherwise! Near the end, Miss Edwards, to whom he was betrothed, and who followed him into the unseen about four months later, entered the sickroom with a Bible in her hand. ‘Oh, that dear book!’ he cried, ‘that lovely book! I shall soon see it opened! The mys- teries in it, and the mysteries of God’s providence, will all be unfolded!’ Thus he clung to the promise of the text to the last. He was radiantly confident that the thirst of the soul—the thirst for knowledge and illumination—the thirst that had been only par- tially quenched in this world—would be abundantly satisfied in the realms of everlasting light. Vat SIR ERNEST SHACKLETON’S TEXT I FLAME or frost; it makes no difference.