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 iTHpfigT OF 
 
 SAlDFRG* 
 
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 COPYHIGHT DEPOSIT 
 
THE ART OF 
 SAILING ON 
 
 t 3 
 
 By EDGAR WHITAKER WORK 
 
 Author of 
 
 THE HOUSE OF CHIMHAM 
 
 THE LAND OF FAR DISTANCES 
 
 STUDY TO BE QUIET 
 
 AMERICAN TRACT SOCIETY 
 
 150 NASSAU ST. NEW YORK 
 
3X1 m 
 H437/97 
 
 Copyright, 1912, by 
 AMERICAN TRACT SOCIETY 
 
 LC Control Number 
 
 tmp96 028761 
 
 CI.A308 
 
 0748 
 
Bebtcateb 
 
 TO THE 
 
 FOURTH CHURCH BROTHERHOOD 
 
 "Men that have been a comfort unto me." 
 
FOREWORD 
 
 It is believed that the title of the first address 
 in this volume may with some fair degree of pro- 
 priety stand as the title of the volume itself. For 
 the spirit engendered in the hearts of those who 
 consort closely with the Gospel of our Lord is ever 
 a spirit of patience, perseverance, and the quiet 
 winning of victory through grace. Quick and eager 
 imagination, the gift of hopeful prophecy, the 
 power of heroic endeavor and forward enterprise, 
 together with a solid fixedness of the heart in the 
 never-abrogated promises of God — these are the 
 structural qualities that will make what Bushnell 
 called " Building Eras " in the Kingdom of our 
 Lord. The Master waits ever upon the eagerness 
 and enterprise of his people, to " see of the travail 
 of his soul and be satisfied." 
 
 The Christian task grows with every hour. It 
 is no day for a narrowed vision or a vanishing 
 hope. If difficulties multiply, they are made to be 
 conquered. If obstacles increase, the dynamic of 
 the Gospel is not weak. The showbread of the 
 Tabernacle is the " continual bread " of the Pres- 
 
6 Foreword 
 
 ence. God is with us. Our Lord is more master- 
 ful than the storm; he can still the tumult of the 
 people. Let all mariners then on the high seas of 
 life rejoice in that they sail not without chart and 
 compass, and rejoice most of all in the presence of 
 the Master-Mariner, whose voice brought calm to 
 stormy Galilee. Let them practise then " The Art 
 of Sailing On," and on, and ever on, until the 
 kindly hour of grace shall fully dawn, and the good 
 ship shall enter the harbor of the country for which 
 they look ! 
 
 New York, March, igi2. 
 
CONTENTS 
 
 CHAPTER PAGE 
 
 I. The Art of Sailing On ... 9 
 
 II. The Urgency of Christ ... 29 
 
 III. A Sound of Gentle Stillness . . 47 
 
 IV. The Ministry of the Little Hills . 61 
 V. Christ Calling Men .... 77 
 
 VI. A World of Song 93 
 
 VII. Our Own Rivers 105 
 
 VIII. A Song of the Heart About Christ . 125 
 
 IX. The Guild of Bricklayers . . . 143 
 
 X. The Honors of the House . . . 159 
 
 XI. Loads and Burdens . . . -173 
 
 XII. Blessed Be Laughter! . . .191 
 
 XIII. The Sacrament of Spring . . .207 
 
 XIV. Power from on High . . . -225 
 XV. The Passing of Simplicity . . .247 
 
THE ART OF SAILING ON 
 
" In your patience ye shad zvin your souls." 
 
 Luke 21 : 19. 
 
I 
 
 THE ART OF SAILING ON 
 
 Whatever else is known or said about Chris- 
 topher Columbus, we know that his was a stout 
 heart. For when the land for which he looked 
 failed to come into view, he wrote in the ship's log: 
 " This day we sailed on." And when the ship's 
 crew were upon the point of mutiny he wrote again 
 in the log: " This day we sailed on." And when 
 despair almost overwhelmed him and was like to 
 dim his great vision, he turned again to the ship's 
 log and wrote: "This day we sailed on." Day 
 after day, though his spirit may have quailed, his 
 pen wrote the words : " This day we sailed on." 
 And this is how we may know that the discoverer of 
 this Western land of ours was a man of stout heart. 
 
 There is a strain of sublime heroism in men that 
 daily makes the world a better place. The physical 
 and moral courage of men is an unfailing orna- 
 ment of humanity. Even if we knew the power of 
 endurance in human nature, watts and amperes 
 could not express it in comprehensible terms. 
 
12 The Art of Sailing On 
 
 Horse-powers are easy of computation, but man- 
 powers elude our grasp. When men are found to 
 be wanting in endurance, then the knight-errantry 
 of women appears. It is Browning who writes: 
 
 "The world's male chivalry has perished out, 
 But women are knights-errant to the last.'' 
 
 If we knew as we walk the streets, passing the 
 multitude on the way, if we knew the silent en- 
 durance of many, the heart would thrill with 
 amazement. The crowd contains many heroes. 
 How many uncalendared saints there are! Fra 
 Angelico may paint saints in every nook and cor- 
 ner of his monastery, with nimbuses and blue and 
 gold aureoles, but there is no one to paint halos 
 about the heads of the saints of common life. 
 There are unwritten histories that would fill the 
 alcoves of many libraries. There are untold stories 
 of endurance that would out-fiction fiction. Na- 
 thaniel Hawthorne dwelt fondly upon his " Twice- 
 told Tales." We need many other authors who 
 shall revel in untold tales. 
 
 It is only now and then that we open suddenly 
 some surprising chapter of human life and look in 
 upon the secret of power, as when we read in the 
 log of the bold discoverer: "This day we sailed 
 on." Everybody in England and America is read- 
 
The Art of Sailing On 13 
 
 ing a certain book just now — a story written in 
 leisurely style, with such a fine touch of romance, 
 and such a picturing of heroic character, as lit- 
 erature has scarce known since the days of " Henry 
 Esmond." It is instructive to learn of the trouble 
 the author experienced in publishing his book. 
 Across the sea he came from England to this 
 country, to offer his manuscript in turn to as many 
 as three publishers. Each of them declined it. 
 Back again to his own country he went, and there 
 success came. In the log of his life he might have 
 written: " This day we sailed on." 
 
 " Sailing on " is not a noisy virtue, but it is ex- 
 ceeding fine. The eloquence of quiet suffering is 
 often greater than the eloquence of orators. Wen- 
 dell Phillips could face the mob in Faneuil Hall 
 and speak in words that burned of the " pictured 
 lips " of those who looked down out of the past. 
 But it was a little slip of paper that came to his 
 hands just before the speech, written by his invalid 
 wife at home — " Wendell, no shilly-shallying now " 
 — that fired his heart with courage. If some one 
 could tell us the story of those who endure behind 
 the scenes, it would be a wonderful chapter in hu- 
 man history. 
 
 Biographical dictionaries have so little to tell us 
 after all. They begin with the date and place of 
 
14 The Art of Sailing On 
 
 birth. They mention their subject's parentage and 
 the early influences of his life. Next they begin 
 to relate his achievements, the things accomplished, 
 the positions occupied, the work done. Presently 
 they write down the date of death. Is that all? 
 One of the most important things has been left out, 
 the mention of how he " sailed on." Storms came 
 and difficulties multiplied — almost the shipwreck 
 of hope itself. Yet he " sailed on." 
 
 Biographers know so little of this. Encyclo- 
 pedias cannot depict the struggles of the human 
 spirit. In this sense biography is the most elusive 
 form of literature. Morley writes two volumes 
 in his " Life of Gladstone." Alden writes two 
 volumes in his " Life of Phillips Brooks." Even 
 so, the great statesman's power to " sail on " in 
 the face of adverse winds, the great preacher's 
 power to endure in the preaching of the Gospel, 
 are not fully defined. Our own great Lincoln has 
 had a score of biographers, but none of them has 
 been able to tell the meaning of the burden he 
 bore, often with a sad smile upon his face, nor 
 define the power by which he endured. 
 
 This is a monumental thing in human history — 
 the power to " sail on " when the seas are rough. 
 Patience is probably one of the greatest of the vir- 
 tues, yet it is a quiet virtue. It has behind it the 
 
The Art of Sailing On 15 
 
 massive power of silence. Men who are pressing 
 on are not like to proclaim it from the housetops. 
 Often it is a modest, shrinking virtue. It hides 
 away in the lives of men whose backs are bent and 
 whose hands are heavy with toil. 
 
 I have sometimes considered that the most sub- 
 lime spectacle we see from day to day is that of 
 men going to their toil in the early morning. It is 
 only the commonplace spectacle of endurance. 
 " This day we sailed on." We have seen this silent 
 force at work in the lives of pale-faced women 
 who have families to support. How wonderfully 
 they endure ! It is sublime. Now and then there 
 is a crisis, and they go tottering and breaking to 
 their toil. Nevertheless they go on. The story of 
 how men and women go on in this world will never 
 be told. No painter can paint the history of a soul's 
 struggle. Motion pictures are very wonderful — 
 they are now able even to show the growth of 
 flowers — but no motion picture is delicate enough to 
 show the patience of souls. How many there are 
 who suffer and grow strong! 
 
 Jean Francois Millet, the painter of " The An- 
 gelus " and of other wonderful canvases, has also 
 written some strong sentences. It is he who said: 
 " Art lives by passion alone, and a man cannot be 
 deeply moved by nothing." It is true that noth- 
 
1 6 The Art of Sailing On 
 
 ing great is accomplished without passion, and pas- 
 sion means patience, it means even suffering. Now 
 and then a discoverer stumbles upon some secret of 
 nature, or an inventor breaks in by accident upon 
 the hiding-place of some useful fact. For the most 
 part, however, nature's secrets are wrung from her 
 by the patience of souls that have held on. Re- 
 member Palissy the potter, remember Pasteur the 
 scientist, remember Cyrus Field and his Atlantic 
 cable, and the thousand others who gave gifts of 
 patience to the world. In many things our modern 
 world is growing impatient, losing the old secret 
 of long toil and the ancient art of " sailing on." 
 Boys to-day would rush pell-mell out of the gram- 
 mar school into the arena of life, while men would 
 build fortunes by speculation in a day which for- 
 merly required a quarter-century of persistent toil. 
 
 This, however, is only an outward aspect of our 
 quick age. To the most of us is still given the 
 discipline of patient doing of our tasks. It is still 
 true that Rome cannot be built in a day. If you 
 have a hard task to perform, look not to round it 
 to completion between the setting of suns. God 
 gives us long labors. Things too quickly done are 
 often weakly done. Cement requires time to 
 harden. Be patient about your task. Keep on ! 
 
 You will remind me that difficulties are like a 
 
The Art of Sailing On 17 
 
 thicket about us. Shakespeare wrote of the " sea 
 of troubles." He was thinking of the way in which 
 trouble follows trouble, so that everywhere the 
 mariner looks there is a " sea of troubles." It is 
 often so. For a long time there will be plain sail- 
 ing, then the rough seas ! One will often see a 
 man of affairs in the world, full of success, flushed 
 with victory — then suddenly a quick wind out of 
 the northeast, and the rough seas ! 
 
 Perhaps the crises come to draw forth the stout- 
 ness of hearts. We do not know. Moralists dis- 
 agree about this. It is certain that some break and 
 go down under crises. But it is also certain that 
 some rise and are stronger than before. Failure is 
 not necessarily the worst friend a man has; it may 
 be his best friend. It may teach him a score of 
 lessons that else he had not learned. It may enable 
 him to gather up his wasted powers, to hold him- 
 self in hand. A life without some failure is too 
 sure of itself. It is a fatal thing to say of a man 
 that he always succeeds. A life of invariable suc- 
 cess knows nothing of the growing pains of en- 
 durance, nothing of the " passion of patience." 
 
 Often there is nothing left to a man to do but 
 to write: "This day we sailed on." But the art 
 of sailing on is a wonderful art. It is the art that 
 men practise who have stout hearts and who nour- 
 
1 8 The Art of Sailing On 
 
 ish strong faiths in their breasts. When there is 
 nothing left to do but to sail on, that even is no 
 slight thing. Very sublime the spectacle of those 
 who go on with their work amid difficulty. There 
 is not a day that passes in this world that does not 
 witness tens of thousands of heroisms; and the 
 heroisms of failure are more wonderful than the 
 heroisms of success. It is easy to go with the wind, 
 but to trim sail and fight one's way into the teeth 
 of the wind — oh, that is wonderful ! " This day 
 we sailed on " — the day when foes were many and 
 friends were few. " This day we sailed on " — the 
 day when the grip of self began to weaken and the 
 rush and tumult of reason were at hand. 
 
 There are some men who, when they fail, fail 
 sublimely. It was so with Beaconsfield, whose 
 maiden speech only brought derision in the Eng- 
 lish Parliament. Out of the pain of his defeat 
 he arose to the height of patience as he cried out 
 to the Parliament, " The time will come when you 
 will be glad to hear me! " He failed sublimely. 
 If we could but learn to take defeat as a tonic to 
 the soul! Some stand still when they are defeated. 
 Others write in their life-book: "This day we 
 sailed on." 
 
 The labor of building character — what a patient 
 work this is! It is a moral task that is worth 
 
The Art of Sailing On 19 
 
 while. Nothing equals it for silent heroism. In 
 this we often misjudge men. We do not know 
 what is going on in their lives. We witness an 
 outburst of temper in a man, and we say, " What 
 an unreasonable man ! " If we only knew the other 
 side, if we only knew the story of his patient strug- 
 gle with himself ! 
 
 The Scripture urges moderation in judgment. 
 " Judge not, that ye be not judged." " Brethren, 
 even if a man be overtaken in any trespass, ye who 
 are spiritual, restore such a one in a spirit of gen- 
 tleness : looking to thyself, lest thou also be 
 tempted." If your neighbor's weakness is bad 
 temper, yours may be a gossipy tongue. The dif- 
 ference between ill-temper and gossip is that ill- 
 temper has outbursts, while gossip is a slow fire. 
 The truth is that the work of building a character 
 is no child's play. A carpenter can put together a 
 frame building in a few days, but if men wish to 
 build a marble hall they must have time and pa- 
 tience. " Let us run with patience the race that is 
 set before us." 
 
 How often a bit of an evil habit will trip a man 
 up in the race or bowl him over even in the pres- 
 ence of the world. We have seen strong men be- 
 come like a soft play-ball in the furry paws of a 
 kitten. Birds resting on the hands of the clock 
 
20 The Art of Sailing On 
 
 in our church clock-tower have been known to stop 
 the machinery. A little stone in the shoe is a 
 plague to walking. A slender arrow, so be it is 
 but properly tipped, may reach the heart of a giant. 
 It is sad that men are so often the victims of little 
 faults. It is the little foxes that spoil the vines. 
 It does not require a crocodile to spoil the oint- 
 ment. 
 
 No, the work of building character is not a task 
 for a day. It requires patient endurance and heroic 
 endeavor. In work like this we require the art of 
 sailing on. Moral force is cumulative. The wall 
 of resistance will after a while become impregna- 
 ble, if you keep on building the wall. Each time 
 an evil habit gains the upper hand there is a breach 
 in the wall. Go back again and fill up the breach, 
 only make the wall stronger than before. Char- 
 acter comes by not stopping, not giving up. " This 
 day we sailed on." 
 
 There is another test of patience, and that a 
 very severe one: it is when men experience the dif- 
 ficulty of establishing moral ideals in this world 
 of ours. If you should go into the heart of Africa, 
 among a heathen tribe, and there begin to set up 
 an ideal of human government, you would scarcely 
 be surprised if you failed. But even in the world 
 that calls itself moral the progress of moral ideals 
 
The Art of Sailing On 21 
 
 is slow. Ours is an enlightened nation, having 
 benefited as much as any by the light of govern- 
 ment, education, art, science, and religion. Yet 
 how slow are the ideals of peace and justice in 
 becoming established! If any man thinks that hie 
 can change the thoughts of men in a year, even in 
 a decade, let him buckle on his armor ! There are 
 still many who refuse to believe that the world is 
 round, and the number is legion of those who still 
 believe in the sign of a falling broom or the sign 
 of a black cat crossing the road, or who shiver at 
 the number thirteen. Moral enlightenment is ever 
 slow. Mushrooms grow overnight, but not ideals, 
 not institutions, not the greater structures of the 
 soul. 
 
 The difficult ideal of peace is very slow to be 
 realized. It has a thousand open and secret foes. 
 Its greatest foe is the belligerent nature of man. 
 Let us have patience. During the first ten years of 
 the twentieth century ninety-six arbitration treaties 
 have been signed. All previous centuries have wit- 
 nessed ten wars to one arbitration treaty. The first 
 ten years of the twentieth century have witnessed 
 fifty treaties to one war.* Peace is coming. " This 
 day we sailed on." 
 
 How often we have been disappointed in our 
 
 ♦"The Peace Problem," by Frederick Lynch, p. 30. 
 
22 The Art of Sailing On 
 
 American experiment at popular government! 
 Prophets of the Old World prophesied failure 
 when the experiment began, and now there are 
 not a few on both sides of the water who count 
 the experiment a failure. In this day of our sup- 
 posed failure what shall we ao? The answer is 
 this: " This day we sailed on." At times it seems 
 to us that the world's progress is beset by dif- 
 ficulty: but the art of sailing on is a wonderful 
 solvent of difficulty. 
 
 The Christian Church — is there any task in all 
 the world requiring such patience as the task that 
 has been undertaken by the Church of Jesus Christ? 
 There are hours and days when we wonder if the 
 cause of Christ is really making progress in the 
 world for which he died. Statistics often startle us. 
 The signs of the times frighten us. The indif- 
 ference of the world to the Cross of Jesus almost 
 blinds us. There are those who tell us that re- 
 ligion is a dream, immortality a beautiful illusion, 
 Christ himself a name for an ideal. Meantime 
 vast social changes have taken place that threaten 
 religious principle. One would suppose that there 
 are those who think that they may go to heaven 
 in an automobile, and who would really prefer it 
 to Elijah's chariot of fire. Others, it is to be 
 feared, will be without their vocation in the other 
 
The Art of Sailing On 23 
 
 world unless the other world can furnish certain 
 social diversions. Such vast numbers of people in 
 our modern world are devoting themselves so as- 
 siduously to the business of being entertained, 
 amused, having their sensibilities satiated, that one 
 wonders how they can possibly find anything to do 
 in the other world. 
 
 The difficulties the Church has to confront have 
 never been confined to the outside world. There 
 are internal difficulties as well. It is a difficult 
 thing to run a church, mainly because there are so 
 many people in the average church who do not 
 practise the art of sailing on. Organizations come 
 and go. Every ten years — even less than that — 
 much of the machinery has to be taken out and re- 
 placed by new machinery. Almost the only organ- 
 ization in modern days that seems to have the 
 power to go on for ever is the Woman's Mission- 
 ary Society. God bless the knight-errantry of 
 women in the Church ! 
 
 Strange to say, the most difficult thing to main- 
 tain in the average Christian Church is the prayer- 
 meeting. This is an anomaly which no one can 
 adequately explain. The Church believes in prayer. 
 One would suppose its prayer rooms would be filled 
 with worshippers seeking the help and strength 
 which come at God's altars. The truth is that a 
 
24 The Art of Sailing On 
 
 great many church members have taken the prayer- 
 meeting off their list of engagements and have 
 put something else in its stead. 
 
 One might easily write a new set of Beatitudes 
 for the churches: 
 
 Blessed is the man whose calendar contains 
 prayer-meeting night. 
 
 Blessed is the man who is faithful on a com- 
 mittee. 
 
 Blessed is the man who will not strain at a driz- 
 zle and swallow a downpour. 
 
 Blessed is the man who can endure an hour and 
 a quarter in a place of worship as well as two hours 
 and a half in a place of amusement. 
 
 Blessed is the church officer who is not pessi- 
 mistic. 
 
 Blessed is the man who loves the church with 
 his pocket as well as with his heart. 
 
 Blessed is the man who is generous to his neigh- 
 bor in all things except the application. 
 
 Blessed is the man whose w r atch keeps church 
 time as well as business time. 
 
 Blessed is the man who has grace to leave the 
 critical spirit on the sidewalk when he comes to 
 church. 
 
 Blessed is the man who loves his own church 
 enough to praise it. 
 
The Art of Sailing On 25 
 
 Blessed is the man who has patience as well as 
 piety. 
 
 Ah ! yes, there are difficulties enough, internal as 
 well as external, in the task which the Church has 
 undertaken ! Nevertheless, " this day we sailed 
 on." No one ever truly said that the Christian 
 life is easy. Often there are head-winds, and now 
 and then the storm comes out of the north. It is 
 " the Kingdom and patience " of Jesus Christ that 
 we need to know, the patience as well as the 
 Kingdom. 
 
 There are black moments and dark days, and 
 nights when the stars are blotted out. There are 
 times of discouragement, when you need all the 
 heroism that is born of faith to keep you going. 
 There are days of temptation when sin returns with 
 terrific force to lay siege at the citadel of the soul. 
 There are hours of silent crisis in life, of which 
 the world knows naught, when vital things seem 
 to be slipping away. There are periods even in 
 experience which are like blank pages in a book. 
 Sorrow has blotted out the handwriting, or care 
 and anxiety have written across the lines, or de- 
 spair has snatched away the meaning of the old 
 message that the heart loved. 
 
 What shall we say for such hours as these? 
 " This day we sailed on. This day we sailed on." 
 
26 The Art of Sailing On 
 
 Blessed be the fine art of sailing on which God 
 has given to men in the Gospel of his Son ! Let 
 us thank God that ours is a Gospel to make stout 
 hearts. Patience is a valuable commodity in the 
 Kingdom. The work cannot be done in a day. 
 Keep on ! Character cannot be finished in a year. 
 Work away ! The Church has not embarked in a 
 temporary business. Do not drop your tools! 
 
 Lord Rosebery spoke to his nation not long since 
 of the " grand, saving, adventurous touch " of the 
 Elizabethans. Thomas Carlyle wrote of the Norse 
 Sea-Kings: " In the old Sea-Kings what an indom- 
 itable rugged energy! Silent, with closed lips, as 
 I fancy them, unconscious that they were specially 
 brave: defying the wild ocean with its monsters, 
 and all men and things, progenitors of our own 
 Blakes and Nelsons. No Homer sang these Norse 
 Sea-Kings : but Agamemnon's was a small audacity, 
 and of small fruit in the world, to some of them." 
 
 When Henry M. Stanley found David Living- 
 stone doing his patient work in the heart of Africa 
 he wrote: " His is the Spartan heroism, the inflex- 
 ibility of the Roman, the enduring resolution of 
 the Anglo-Saxon — never to surrender his obliga- 
 tions until he can write ' finis ' to his work." And 
 he added: "The natives passing Livingstone ex- 
 claim, ■ The blessing of God rest upon you ! ' " 
 
The Art of Sailing On 27 
 
 The world seems very careless. Nevertheless 
 the world keeps its true love for those spirits who 
 sail on across rough seas, through fog and mutiny 
 even, to the haven of their hope and trust. 
 
 And the Master of us all prizes patient endur- 
 ance, for he said, " In your patience ye shall win 
 your souls." This is our Lord's appreciation of 
 the wonder-working power of patience. Men re- 
 quire to possess their own souls by patience. If 
 it be an ill-temper, the duty is plain enough; but 
 far more than that, it is patience that wins the soul 
 for life's battle and life's task. " In your patience 
 ye shall win your souls." A wonder-working 
 power indeed this is, when a man having possessed 
 his soul by patience gives himself daily to his work 
 in the world ! There are no great victories for 
 impatient men. The greater victories await the 
 coming of patience. Is not our Lord opening for 
 us a secret of life? If there be among those who 
 read these words a man who has failed, or one 
 who suffers discouragement, or even one who is in 
 blank despair, let him hear the good cheer of the 
 Master's word: "In your patience ye shall win 
 your souls." 
 
 And to those who are doing the Master's work, 
 what a tonic effect the words of Christ should 
 have! How often the hand wearies in the doing 
 
28 The Art of Sailing On 
 
 of our Christian task ! How frequent are the hours 
 of waning energy and of drowsy hope! How 
 many are the days in which we seem to see no 
 fruit of our labors, in which the slow fire of dis- 
 couragement burns in the heart, and the tempta- 
 tion is strong to lay down the tools and run away! 
 For such hours as these, as well as for all days 
 when the flush of success is on, we need to realize 
 the wonder-working power of endurance, we need 
 to add to our faith patience. Day by day as we 
 do our own work, and live our lives, let us write in 
 the log of life the sentence of the stout-hearted 
 mariner: " This day we sailed on." 
 
THE URGENCY OF CHRIST 
 
" Behold, I stand at the door and knock; if any 
 man hear my voice and open the door, I will come 
 in to him, and will sup with him, and he with me." 
 
 Rev. 3 : 20. 
 
II 
 
 THE URGENCY OF CHRIST 
 
 There is a tone of great urgency in the ministry 
 of Jesus Christ, like one who stands at a door 
 knocking, knocking, knocking. The eagerness of 
 the world's Saviour is very evident. There is no 
 mark of indifference upon his work. He is insis- 
 tent, almost intrusive. There is a certain impera- 
 tive about his appeal that fairly startles us. He is 
 seemingly conscious of an unusual authority and 
 power. We observe no hesitation, no wavering in 
 his sense of mastery, no lack of pressure, no lack 
 of passion, in his work. 
 
 It is this note of urgency that makes men's work 
 efficient everywhere. If there is no imperative 
 about what you are doing, how can you hope to win 
 the interest of men to your task? If ten men fail 
 through lack of ability, a hundred men fail through 
 lack of urgency. Indifference wins no victories. 
 Lack of urgency ties the hands and hobbles the 
 feet. It is not required that a man play always 
 31 
 
32 The Art of Sailing On 
 
 on the loud pedal: the soft pedal has many uses. 
 In either case let there be no uncertain sound. 
 
 We often miss the tone of urgency in the work 
 that men are doing. You will sometimes go away 
 from a store feeling that there was no urgency 
 about the salesman, no passion of interest and de- 
 sire. You will sometimes have this impres?ion 
 about people whom you meet. They may be never 
 so punctilious in their greetings, never so formal in 
 their outward seeming. But all the while you are 
 conscious of lack of heart, lack of urgency, lack of 
 insistence. The " apathy of anaesthesia " is upon 
 them. There is no imperative anywhere. 
 
 It is a great thing to say about one's work, " I 
 know," and it is a great thing to say, " I will," 
 and it is also a great thing to say, " I do." But 
 it is a greater thing than all to say, " I feel." We 
 demand that men shall take their work seriously, 
 and themselves feel its weight and its power. 
 
 " A ruddy drop of moving blood 
 The surging sea outweighs." 
 
 Is there motive power in the work you are doing? 
 Do you feel it for yourself? Has it gripped your 
 soul and become part of your life? No matter 
 what your work may be, is there urgency about 
 it? Is it fraught with importance? Have you any 
 
The Urgency of Christ 33 
 
 passion for it? Does it grip your own heart, com- 
 mand your faculties, inspire your forces? Does it 
 sing in your blood with a divine imperative that 
 will not be denied? The best work that the world 
 knows has always this mark of urgency upon it. 
 
 Shall we meditate together upon the degree of 
 urgency and imperative in the work which Jesus 
 Christ is doing for men? There is a profound im- 
 pressiveness about it — the fact that Jesus Christ 
 has ever such an urgent way with men, such a 
 masterful way. It was so when he was here, en- 
 gaged in his earthly ministry, and it is still the 
 same in that perpetual ministry which he carries on 
 among men through the Holy Spirit. It is the 
 perpetual, urgent ministry of Jesus that profoundly 
 interests us. At times it fairly startles us. It is 
 just this fact of our Lord's being so deeply inter- 
 ested in his work for men as to keep it constantly 
 before them that wins victories for his Gospel. 
 To him his own work is so very urgent that he 
 would make it so with men. He would not let any 
 man feel that he, the Master Workman, is indif- 
 ferent or ever can be. He would give his work 
 such pressure, such insistence, such imperative, that 
 no man in his right mind can possibly feel that it 
 is a small matter whether he shall give it attention 
 or not. 
 
34 The Art of Sailing On 
 
 I wish that we might see this eager, urgent side 
 of Christ's dealing with men: his own anxiety to go 
 as far as he can with them, his eagerness to meet 
 conditions, to go the full length of any man's needs, 
 and more than this, his readiness to break down 
 closed doors even, for the sake of coming into the 
 midst and living with men in their lives. Is not 
 this what his declaration means: " Behold, I stand 
 at the door and knock: if any man hear my voice 
 and open the door, I will come in to him, and will 
 sup with him, and he with me "? 
 
 We can scarcely escape this impression whenso- 
 ever we sit down to consider the mission of Christ 
 to the world. His cause is nothing if not urgent. 
 There is something startling in the New Testa- 
 ment. There is a thrill of passion about it: there 
 is a call of something strong. The philosopher 
 Kant spoke of the categorical imperative — the 
 something imperious in a man's reasoning that beats 
 upon his soul and will not be gainsaid. The New 
 Testament has its categorical imperative — the 
 something imperious and spiritual that presses close 
 upon a man's heart. How can a man read this 
 little Book without feeling the knocking at his 
 heart? The thrill of passion is in the ministry of 
 Jesus Christ. 
 
 Recall the urgent tone he used with his parents 
 
The Urgency of Christ 35 
 
 when they came seeking him in the Temple. " I 
 must be about my Father's business." Remember, 
 too, how he called his disciples when he found 
 them at their fishing or at the receipt of custom. 
 It was simply this: " Follow me." But a sense of 
 compulsion swept over the hearts of men with the 
 words. Not stopping to reason or to argue, they 
 left all and followed him. 
 
 Outside the circle of his followers men felt the 
 urgency of his presence. When the conspirator 
 Catiline entered the Roman Senate his fellow- 
 senators shrank away from the bench on which he 
 sat. The presence of Jesus Christ drew men by a 
 real imperative. Nicodemus must have felt it, for 
 he was drawn to him even in the nighttime. The 
 rich young man must have felt it, for he came run- 
 ning unto Jesus. When he went into the country 
 of the Gadarenes a demoniac rushed out of the 
 tombs under an apparent pressure, crying, " What 
 have I to do with thee ! " When the band came 
 out to the Garden on the fateful night seeking him, 
 and he came boldly forth and said " I am he," we 
 learn that " they went backward and fell upon the 
 ground." There is a strange compulsion about 
 Jesus which men often confess in irresistible ways. 
 The centurion at the crucifixion exclaimed, " Cer- 
 tainly this was a righteous man! " The disciples 
 
36 The Art of Sailing On 
 
 shut the doors for fear of the Jews, but they could 
 not shut out Jesus. It is such a wonderful truth — 
 this truth of Christ's being willing to insist, even 
 to break in — that we must dwell upon it: " Behold, 
 I stand at the door and knock." 
 
 Think of what it means that our Lord is so much 
 in earnest about his work that he cannot but be 
 urgent ! His work is of such worth to him that 
 he cannot do it lightly, cannot do it at all without 
 putting a strain of compulsion into it always. A 
 famous actor criticised a preacher severely: " If I 
 had as little earnestness in presenting the fiction of 
 the stage as you have in presenting the truth of the 
 Gospel I should lose my audience at once." And 
 often the world finds no compulsion in our Gospel. 
 Men come into our churches and find everything 
 fine and beautiful and stately, but they miss the 
 note of the urgent, the irresistible. Too much the 
 imperative mood has gone out of preaching and the 
 subjunctive mood has come in. Preaching is sooth- 
 ing, it is apologetic, it is entertaining, but it is not 
 often enough imperative. Men do not find the 
 urgent Christ because they find so little urgency in 
 his disciples. 
 
 No man could say this about the preaching of 
 Jesus. Be it fisherman, scribe, ruler, nobleman, 
 Sadducee, or Pharisee, they were all alike impressed 
 
The Urgency of Christ 37 
 
 with his earnestness. They said, " Never man 
 spake like this man!" They said, "He speaks 
 with authority, and not as the scribes." What- 
 ever any of us may think or do about Christ, we 
 have to say that his earnestness is beyond all doubt. 
 His words ring true. Urgency comes with all his 
 messages which stirs a man often in his very being. 
 " Behold, I stand at the door and knock! " 
 
 It is a very wonderful thing indeed, more won- 
 derful than any truth of science or philosophy, that 
 Jesus Christ is here in the world, content in a hun- 
 dred quiet ways to urge his cause. 
 
 It is Christ himself — the very fact of Christ — it 
 is himself that is urgent. There are personalities 
 that leave no impression upon us, or at least only 
 a negative impression. They originate no feeling, 
 they create no compulsion within us. We note 
 them casually, and then we pass on our way to 
 forget them. It is not so with Jesus Christ. His 
 is not a casual personality. He dares to say with 
 very pronounced emphasis, " Behold, I stand at the 
 door and knock." He is different from all others. 
 It is impossible to see him and then go one's way 
 forgetful. It is impossible to know about Christ 
 and not receive some impression. The impression 
 he leaves is not negative, it is positive. There is 
 somewhat that is urgent about the fact of Christ. 
 
38 The Art of Sailing On 
 
 You cannot think him away. He is there: "Be- 
 hold, I stand." You cannot evade the person of 
 Jesus Christ. It is a fact, it is an argument, it is 
 a force. It is impressive, persuasive, urgent, in- 
 sistent. 
 
 It is all so wonderful and so beautiful — this mys- 
 terious power of personality that emanates from 
 Jesus Christ. It is even wonderful among mere 
 men to observe the power of personality. The 
 English people paid a fond tribute to the personal 
 force of their noble statesman John Bright. They 
 were wont to say that when he had spoken all 
 others were silent. So of Gladstone. Enemies at- 
 tacked him, revolutions of political feeling surged 
 about him, nevertheless England acknowledged his 
 power. John Morley, his biographer, declares that 
 when William E. Gladstone slipped into his seat 
 in the House of Commons the entire House felt 
 the thrill of his presence. 
 
 Men of our day often try to imagine the effect 
 of the personal presence of Jesus Christ. A few 
 years ago books were written and sermons preached 
 on such topics as these: " If Christ came to the 
 City," " If Christ came to Church," " If Christ 
 came into Business Circles, into Society, into Poli- 
 tics." In a company of authors one day the con- 
 versation turned upon the great men of the past. 
 
The Urgency of Christ 39 
 
 If they should come again, any of them, and mingle 
 among modern men, what would our feeling be? 
 Charles Lamb spoke forth in his sudden and eccen- 
 tric way: " If Shakespeare came into this room," 
 he said, " each of us would stand upon his feet to 
 honor him. But if Jesus Christ came, we should 
 kneel in his presence." 
 
 That is the difference. The personalities of 
 great men call forth honor. The personality of 
 Christ is urgent and compulsive in a deeper way. 
 It calls forth reverence and worship. Is it not 
 true that Christ is knocking at the door, in view 
 of what he is in himself, in his personality? What 
 think ye of Christ? Men who have not settled the 
 question of who and what Jesus Christ is — how 
 urgent is the knocking at the door with such as 
 these! For Christ does not go away from our 
 thinking. He does not shrink beneath the shad- 
 ows: he does not drop below the horizon. " Be- 
 hold, I stand at the door and knock." 
 
 The call of Christ is urgent: " If any man hear 
 my voice!" "If any man hear my voice!" 
 There are many voices heard in the world, the 
 voice of the orator, the voice of the pleader, the 
 voice of the philosopher, the voice of the poet. 
 Among them all the voice of Jesus is the most 
 urgent, the most insistent. " Behold, I stand at the 
 
40 The Art of Sailing On 
 
 door and knock; if any man hear my voice." 
 The voice of Christ is speaking at the door. This 
 is no fancy of pietistic minds. There is an intense 
 spiritual realism about it. The call of Christ is 
 active to-day, as much so as when he found men at 
 their fishing on the Sea of Galilee, or at the re- 
 ceipt of custom in Capernaum, and bade them to 
 follow him. It is wonderful, this truth; one can- 
 not adequately express it. Only let us make it clear 
 that the voice of Christ is urgent. It is not a 
 casual voice, speaking in indifferent or careless 
 tones, neither is it a strident voice. It is a clear, 
 true, straightforward voice, speaking directly to 
 the soul — to the feeling, to the hope, to the desire, 
 to the conscience, to the will that are in the soul. 
 It is ever an imperative voice. 
 
 " If any man hear my voice! " The voice of 
 Christ has carrying power. It is not loud; often 
 it is a very quiet voice. We do not think of Jesus 
 Christ as shouting his call to men ! " He shall not 
 strive nor cry aloud, neither shall any one hear 
 his voice in the streets." The voice of Christ is 
 very quiet, very gentle, but oh, it is very intense, 
 very penetrative, very far-reaching ! It is the Holy 
 Spirit who makes the voice of Christ so strong in 
 the heart. He takes of the things of Jesus. When 
 the voice of Christ is heard in this spiritual way 
 
The Urgency of Christ 41 
 
 it carries quite into the inner precincts of the soul 
 and makes itself heard. 
 
 It is very wonderful how men are often made 
 to hear the voice of Christ, even when they are 
 not listening for it. They are going on their way, 
 like Saul of Tarsus on the way to Damascus, and 
 suddenly the arrest of a Heavenly Voice comes to 
 them. There is a certain musical value, as it were; 
 about the voice of Jesus Christ: it has awakening 
 power, the power to create response. If a room 
 were full of musical instruments, and some one 
 gifted with a true voice should come and speak a 
 pure tone in the midst of these instruments, they 
 would respond in silence — pianos, organs, violins, 
 harps, they would every one respond to a pure tone. 
 That is a wonderful truth of musical values. A 
 pure tone has a certain urgency, a certain com- 
 pulsion about it, that produces response. 
 
 Now the voice of Jesus Christ is not unlike this : 
 it is a pure tone and it has the power to awaken 
 response. Suppose our Lord were to enter our 
 room and speak his own Gospel in our presence, 
 surely we should know the urgency of his voice. 
 The strings of our hearts, like the strings of 
 pianos or harps, would respond in quiet music in 
 answer to his call. 
 
 Something of this we know by experience. 
 
42 The Art of Sailing On 
 
 What voice has ever spoken to us like the voice of 
 our Lord? Christ's teaching! — what a response 
 it has stirred in the human heart. What he said 
 about God, when he bade men to pray " Our Fa- 
 ther"; what he said about the restlessness of sin, 
 when he said, " Come unto me, all ye that labor 
 and are heavy laden, and I will give you rest " ; 
 what he said about immortality and heaven, when 
 he declared, " In my Father's house are many man- 
 sions " — this is the pure tone of the Gospel. It 
 has the urgency and force of truth about it. It 
 speaks away down into the human heart. It has 
 carrying power, it has power to awaken response, 
 musical response, if you please, spiritual response, 
 down deep in the soul. That is the wonder about 
 Jesus Christ — that his voice is thus urgent, urgent 
 in all the deep places of the soul, urgent in the real 
 needs of human life, urgent in the profound hopes 
 of the soul, urgent in the judgment and conscience 
 of the spirit. 
 
 Our Lord said a wonderful, a startling thing, 
 a thing to make us all pause and consider: " All that 
 the Father giveth me shall come unto me." Men 
 have turned this saying almost into a theological 
 puzzle. It has marked a dividing line between one 
 school of theologians and another. But how full 
 of meaning it is, and how clear in the light of this 
 
The Urgency of Christ 43 
 
 truth about responding to the Gospel: as if Jesus 
 had said, " I have come into the world among men, 
 among all these harps and violins and organs of 
 humanity, I have come to speak, the pure tone of 
 the Gospel, and every man who detects the pure 
 tone will answer and will respond. All such the 
 Father giveth unto me, and they will come unto 
 me, for I have power to draw all such unto my- 
 self." 
 
 The sentence in this reading may lose something 
 of its theological form, nevertheless it remains a 
 startling statement. If we have lived on in the 
 world with Christ standing at the door, and his 
 voice speaking in his Gospel, through his Spirit, 
 and have not responded in our deepest being to 
 him, have never been awakened to our need of 
 him, have never opened the door — that is a tragedy. 
 It is like the musical tragedy that transpires when 
 a pure voice speaks and all the musical instruments 
 respond, only there is one that has something lying 
 upon the strings so that it does not respond to the 
 pure tone. Take your own hands off the strings 
 of the harp! Open the door! Open the door! 
 Let the voice of Christ be heard far down in the 
 deep, dark, mysterious recesses of the soul. 
 
 It is the voice of a Friend. How urgent his 
 friendship is! how much we need his fellowship, 
 
44 The Art of Sailing On 
 
 his companionship ! He is the great Companion. 
 " If any man hear my voice and open the door, 
 I will come in to him, and will sup with him, and 
 he with me." Does any man feel the need of 
 divine companionship? That is the urgency of 
 Jesus Christ; his appeal is to every deep need of 
 the soul. 
 
 It is the voice of a Saviour, one whose call is 
 powerful with the appeal of sacrifice. How urgent 
 is the cross ! Jesus Christ and him crucified ! The 
 Apostle Paul thought it was sufficient to preach this 
 message. It is such an One who is standing at the 
 door. That is his final call, that is his greatest 
 urgency, the urgency of love, the urgency of his 
 sacrifice on the cross. 
 
 There is a hymn, you remember, that runs like 
 this: 
 
 " O Love that wilt not let me go." 
 
 That is Christ's urgency, his compulsory way with 
 men. And you remember how the hymn closes : 
 
 " O Cross that liftest up my head, 
 I dare not ask to fly from thee! " 
 
 That is the last article in the logic of God with 
 men, the cross of Jesus Christ. That is the knock- 
 
The Urgency of Christ 45 
 
 ing of the Gospel at the door. That is the urgency 
 of love and sacrifice. 
 
 In the annals of the State of Tennessee there is 
 a story of an early Indian raid. In one home a 
 family were all killed except a little child, who was 
 carried into captivity, and the mother, who was ab- 
 sent from home. The child grew to manhood 
 among the Indians, an Indian in appearance, in 
 language, in customs. Years went by, and Daniel 
 Boone with others led an attack against the hostile 
 red men. It was the same tribe. Among the 
 Indians captured was the one who had been carried 
 away captive. The mother, grown old, was called 
 to see the captive. She set herself to stir the mem- 
 ories of her long-lost child. She used many devices, 
 but there was no response. The Indian remained in 
 stolid indifference. At length the old mother said, 
 " I will try one thing more." She began to sing 
 one of the crooning songs of his childhood. Some- 
 thing in the mother's voice, the pure tone of love, 
 of motherhood, reached the heart of her child. 
 It awakened, it answered the call. Wherever there 
 is a closed heart, Christ is knocking, Christ is call- 
 ing at the door. His call is the call of love. 
 
 " Behold, I stand at the door and knock; if any 
 man hear my voice and open the door, I will come 
 in to him, and will sup with him, and he with me." 
 
A SOUND OF GENTLE STILLNESS 
 
" And he said, Go forth, and stand upon the 
 mount before Jehovah. And, behold, Jehovah 
 passed by, and a great and strong wind rent the 
 mountains, and brake in pieces the rocks before 
 Jehovah; but Jehovah was not in the wind: and 
 after the wind an earthquake; but Jehovah was not 
 in the earthquake : and after the earthquake a fire; 
 but Jehovah was not in the fire: and after the fire 
 a still small voice. And it was so, when Elijah 
 heard it, that he wrapped his face in his mantle, 
 and went out, and stood in the entrance of the 
 cave." 
 
 I Kings 19: 11-13. 
 
Ill 
 
 A SOUND OF GENTLE STILLNESS 
 
 Earthquakes do not as a rule convert men. 
 " A great and strong wind " is not of necessity a 
 valuable aid to the Kingdom; nor can a fire, how- 
 ever great, be depended upon always to warm the 
 heart to God. These forces of nature are power- 
 ful and spectacular enough, but they are not win- 
 some. Physical phenomena are not rich in spiritual 
 effect. Niagara creates wonder in the mind, but 
 Niagara has few conversions to its credit. Vesuvius 
 is an awesome place, but one does not hear that 
 volcanoes add to the piety of men. 
 
 The truth is that these forces and events of na- 
 ture are not of necessity moralizing. If it were so, 
 we ought to find those persons who live and work 
 amid the wonders and shocks of the world in the 
 front ranks of piety. If the shocks and perils of 
 the world have power to soothe and refine the 
 spirits of men, then danger were an adjunct and 
 an ally of the Kingdom. Coal-miners ought there- 
 
 49 
 
50 The Art of Sailing On 
 
 fore to develop a special type of piety, a little 
 better than that of men who live and work in the 
 safety of the open air. Sailors also ought to be 
 more reverent and more spiritual than other men. 
 Have they not often experienced the converting 
 and cleansing power of high seas and terrifying 
 storms ? To take a modern example, the airmen — 
 they who enjoy such vivid and spectacular views 
 of the glory and power of the world, who swing 
 like birds above plain and mountain, ride upon 
 the storm, and are caught betimes in the grip of 
 mighty forces that send them crashing to earth — 
 surely these men of peril and calamity ought to 
 be the most spiritual men now living ! 
 
 If earthquakes could make men moral, the best 
 thing to happen in some of our modern cities would 
 be for them to be caught in the grip of nature's 
 forces and shaken from center to circumference. 
 One would like to recommend an earthquake or 
 more for present-day politics as practised in some 
 of our illy-governed cities. Or one would like to 
 suggest a series of daily windstorms for a full 
 month. If windstorms could relieve us of graft 
 and other deformities and dishonesties; if fire 
 could burn away our social impurities and our pub- 
 lic injustices; if earthquakes could frighten us into 
 moral living and shock us into religious faith and 
 
A Sound of Gentle Stillness 51 
 
 practice, the reform of modern society would be 
 a simple matter. For each storm that blew up out 
 of the sea, crashing windows and doors and piling 
 debris in the streets, would after all be a civilizing 
 force. 
 
 Other phenomena of nature might be expected 
 to prove spiritually helpful. Zero weather might 
 improve our tempers, so that a man would speak 
 more gently to his wife. The Aurora Borealis of 
 the northern sky might fill the prayer-meeting 
 rooms with eager worshippers. Clouds scudding 
 across the sky might cause men to fall upon their 
 knees, and downfalls of rain or snow might pro- 
 mote church-going. If the wonders of nature and 
 the calamities of the world are needed to make 
 men do their duty, surely this ought to be a very 
 dutiful world. 
 
 But it is not earthquakes and windstorms that 
 men need to deepen their spiritual life and sharpen 
 their sense of duty. Earthquakes are strong, but 
 they have a dull edge. They do not reach, be- 
 tween bone and marrow, into the soul. The soul 
 requires softer agencies, which at the same time 
 work deeper effects. God's appeal is quiet, but it 
 is like thunder in the soul; it draws a man out of 
 his hiding-place to stand " in the entrance of the 
 cave." Not the crash of world-forces, not dead 
 
52 The Art of Sailing On 
 
 men's fears, not exhibitions of power — none of 
 these are the main method of God. 
 
 Hence our Lord once and again bade his dis- 
 ciples not to bruit abroad the story of his miracles; 
 hence also he added his sequel to the parable of 
 the Rich Man and Lazarus, wherein Abraham's 
 reply is so conclusive : " If they hear not Moses and 
 the prophets, neither will they be persuaded if one 
 rise from the dead." The omnipotent God could 
 cause some absent member of each home to rise 
 from the dead for the purpose of converting the 
 entire household — if that would do it! He could 
 lay hold upon those Christians who are living along 
 in an easy-going, lackadaisical, indifferent way, 
 making religion a game of battledore and shuttle- 
 cock, holding duty at arm's length, and starving the 
 Kingdom of the strength and help they ought to 
 give to it — he could come to such of his people with 
 a blinding sun or a ravaging fire, and turn them 
 again to the first works, to the doing of the loving 
 tasks of the Kingdom. That would be well enough 
 — if it would accomplish the desired end! But 
 men do not grow spiritually in this way: they re- 
 quire an inner voice that reaches the soul, that tells 
 them of the Presence of God, and woos them by 
 his love and pardon. 
 
 All this is the lesson that the prophet must 
 
A Sound of Gentle Stillness 53 
 
 learn in Mount Horeb. We cannot much blame 
 him: he had been under immense strain. When 
 men are under great strain they do not always 
 reason well. It is amazing that God dealt so pa- 
 tiently with his overwrought prophet. Think of 
 where he had been and what he had been doing — 
 the withering drought of three years' duration, the 
 flights by day and the vigils by night against royal 
 hatred, the doubt and disbelief of the people, the 
 mighty nerve-straining contest on Mount Carmel, 
 and the cruel threat of the wicked Jezebel. These 
 were enough, but there was more — there were the 
 doubts and fears of his own soul and the despair 
 that overtook him at the sign of the juniper-tree. 
 Oh, if Jehovah, his Jehovah whose power was with- 
 out limit, would but come crashing down upon the 
 world, and convince the people, and put his ene- 
 mies to rout by some exhibition of power! 
 
 Then he slept — under the juniper-tree. Blessed 
 be sleep ! When we are troubled, may God give us 
 the power to lie down and sleep! " So he giveth 
 unto his beloved sleep." How often in the morn- 
 ing the light breaks after refreshing sleep. " And, 
 behold, an angel touched him, and said unto him, 
 Arise and eat. And he looked, and, behold, there 
 was at his head a cake baken on the coals, and a 
 cruse of water." Then he slept again. Blessed 
 
54 The Art of Sailing On 
 
 be the second sleep of a tired man ! And the angel 
 touched him again and said, " Arise and eat, be- 
 cause the journey is too great for thee." Oh, that 
 wonderful care of God for his overwrought 
 prophet! If Elijah had lived to-day, some phy- 
 sician of the body would have sent him to a sani- 
 tarium for nervous prostration. God rested him 
 under the juniper-tree and then called him up to 
 the mountains, to whisper a great secret to his 
 heart. 
 
 See him there in Mount Horeb, a cave his lodg- 
 ing-place. He is the prophet of a lost cause. His 
 soul is crying out for power, for violence from on 
 high. Oh, if Jehovah would come and rend the 
 hearts of men ! 
 
 One day he stood in the mouth of the cave and 
 looked out upon a gathering storm. It was no 
 light zephyr of the hills, but a " great and strong 
 wind " that rent the mountains. It was Jehovah 
 passing by: nevertheless the prophet's heart told 
 him that Jehovah was not in the wind as he had 
 supposed he would be. Another day he was climb- 
 ing the mountainside when he felt the earth trem- 
 ble beneath his feet. Some strange force seemed 
 to tear the world apart, lifting it and shaking it 
 as a child shakes a toy. It was Jehovah passing 
 by — that he knew. Nevertheless his heart told him 
 
A Sound of Gentle Stillness SS 
 
 that Jehovah was not in the earthquake as he had 
 supposed he would be. The third day it was the 
 smoke of a great forest fire that rose from the 
 mountainside and filled the sky. Little by little the 
 fire crept up the mountain, until it swept in fury 
 around the prophet's hiding-place and drove him 
 into its innermost recesses. Surely this was Je- 
 hovah ! Yes, Jehovah was passing by. Neverthe- 
 less the prophet's heart told him that Jehovah was 
 not in the great fire as he had supposed he would 
 be. 
 
 Then came a memorable day: a gentle breeze 
 came murmuring and sighing out of the pines. It 
 was soft and tender, with a winsome something 
 that caught the hearing of the soul. It came 
 breathing sound, and as it came it grew, not in 
 volume, but in power of appeal; it became articu- 
 late. It was something human, nay, more, it was 
 something divine. It was " a still small voice " 
 — a sound of gentle stillness * — and it whispered 
 its message to the heart of a troubled man. " And 
 it was so, when Elijah heard it, that he wrapped 
 his face in his mantle, and went out, and stood in 
 the entrance of the cave." No longer was he the 
 despairing prophet of a lost cause. He had felt 
 the stillness of God's power. He had learned the 
 
 * Marginal reading, Revised Version. 
 
56 The Art of Sailing On 
 
 secret of the divine method. He had experienced 
 the wooing attraction of the still small voice in the 
 heart. • 
 
 It was a lesson worth learning. And so it is to- 
 day. God passes by in many outward events, but 
 his real business is with the soul. Therefore he 
 sends the voice to speak to men. Winds, earth- 
 quakes, fires, are not delicate enough for the soul. 
 Only the voice can be heard in the secret and won- 
 drous domain of the spirit. How penetrative the 
 voice is! Barriers may be set up, but the voice 
 overleaps them all and makes itself heard. How 
 persuasive the voice is! The voice is the wooing 
 note of nature. The tender maiden, how her heart 
 stirs at the voice of her beloved ! 
 
 " The voice of my beloved ! behold he cometh, 
 Leaping upon the mountains, 
 Skipping upon the hills." 
 
 With what matchless art the voice practises the 
 stillness of power! Its gift is not the gift of argu- 
 ment, its power is not the power of logic. It sings 
 to the heart a song that the heart knows and loves. 
 It enters the inner precincts, like a friend of old, 
 and woos the heart and wins it, calls forth its 
 affection, evokes its tenderness. 
 
A Sound of Gentle Stillness 57 
 
 That " sound of gentle stillness " — how it may 
 reach across the barren tract of years and sound 
 in the heart ! The voice travels afar, despises dis- 
 tance, laughs at bars and locks, knocks insistently 
 at the door of unwilling ears, masters the heart's 
 inattention. So it is that the " sound of a voice 
 that is still " echoes in many a heart. We would 
 not have it otherwise, for these voices of the past, 
 are they not tokens of life's sacredness? 
 
 Quite familiar is the incident, but satisfying still 
 is its personal lesson, of the workman who wrought 
 high up on the ceiling of a great cathedral. Then 
 there came one who was gifted with a wondrous 
 voice. This man stood in the pulpit of the sanctu- 
 ary and spoke one sentence of the Word of God. 
 High up on the ceiling the workman saw no one, 
 but he heard a voice, and it spoke to his soul. His 
 soul was awakened. 
 
 " The still small voice " seems to come from 
 afar. Yet it is so near as to sound like a whisper 
 in the ear. A young lieutenant in the English 
 Army went away to South Africa with his regi- 
 ment. His mother gave him her Bible, but he put 
 it at the bottom of his trunk and left it there. One 
 day he sat at the door of his tent and watched 
 the manoeuvres of a company of soldiers. He 
 heard the commands of the officers and witnessed 
 
58 The Art of Sailing On 
 
 the obedience of the troops. Suddenly he seemed 
 to hear a voice telling him that there is a Great 
 Commander whom men ought to obey. He rose 
 quickly from his place, went to his trunk and took 
 out his mother's Bible, and as he read it he gave 
 himself to God. 
 
 The soul's conscience is the wooing note of God, 
 calling men to better things. There is no roar of 
 windstorms or crash of earthquakes in conscience. 
 It is the quiet persuasiveness of the higher reason. 
 What an example this of the stillness of God's 
 power, for often amid the crash and ruin of out- 
 ward things the still small voice of conscience pre- 
 vails in the soul. Often the still small voice is 
 heard in the quiet thinking of the heart, in the 
 longings and desires, the quiet and tender feelings, 
 the unexpressed sorrow, the prayers that no man 
 has ever heard, in those solid though quiet con- 
 victions of the soul that are " deep-seated in our 
 mystic frame." 
 
 " Come now and let us reason together," says 
 the voice. Whereupon the soul's inborn traits and 
 honorableness, the gifts of nature lodged in the 
 blood by gracious parentage, the tendencies of life 
 accentuated by influence and training — these rise 
 and listen to the call. What an appeal is this — 
 the appeal to the better nature of the soul ! And 
 
A Sound of Gentle Stillness 59 
 
 often when all outward appeals have failed it is 
 this quiet call to a man's better self that avails. So 
 it is that men's hearts grow tender when the name 
 of " mother," " wife," or " child " is spoken, and 
 so it is that the springs of the soul's life are often 
 touched by the simple mention of some finer ambi- 
 tion of the heart or some conscious need, or by 
 the mention of some dark shadow of the soul or 
 some secret sin, as when the Master said to the 
 woman at the well, " Go, call thy husband ! " 
 
 God's way with us is a spiritual way. If he 
 looked for outward effects he would make earth- 
 quakes, winds, and fires the agents of the King- 
 dom. But his business is with the soul, therefore 
 he sends an articulate voice — a sound of gentle still- 
 ness in the heart. Events of nature pass away, 
 but the sound of a voice lives on. Its echoes are 
 heard in the halls of memory, its imperative lasts 
 on through the years. 
 
 It is thus that the Holy Spirit works in the 
 heart through the Gospel of Christ, by a sound of 
 gentle stillness. How deep and tender are his per- 
 suasions, how insistent his calls, how eager his out- 
 reachings ! The Holy Spirit is the wooing note of 
 God, the winsomeness of love. It is not to be 
 wondered at that the New Testament uses its 
 strongest words about the Holy Spirit—" resist 
 
60 The Art of Sailing On 
 
 not," " grieve not," " quench not." What a dire 
 calamity to resist or grieve or quench the still small 
 voice! "And it was so, when Elijah heard it, 
 that he wrapped his face in his mantle, and went 
 out, and stood in the entrance of the cave." 
 
THE MINISTRY OF THE LITTLE HILLS 
 
And the little hills:' 
 
 Psalm 72 : 3. 
 
IV 
 
 THE MINISTRY OF THE LITTLE HILLS 
 
 The writers of the Old Testament are con- 
 stantly speaking of the mountains and hills. They 
 have said many wonderful and beautiful things, 
 but none more comforting than the words of this 
 seventy-second Psalm: " The mountains shall bring 
 peace to the people, and the little hills." And it 
 is the latter part of the text that is most comfort- 
 ing of all, " And the little hills," or to speak it 
 with emphasis upon the right word, " And the 
 little hills." Our Revised Versions have omitted 
 this word. Nevertheless it is just the word that we 
 want most of all. The Hebrew uses two words 
 here: the Authorized Version translates one moun- 
 tains and the other little hills. The distinction is 
 a proper one, and our lesson to-day will hang upon 
 the word little. " The mountains shall bring peace 
 to the people, and the little hills." 
 
 " And the little hills." These have their part 
 to play in a man's life as well as the great and 
 63 
 
64 The Art of Sailing On 
 
 mighty mountains. It is well to say this, for we are 
 constantly forgetting it. So many of us, like the 
 Psalmist, lift up our eyes to the mountains, and 
 forget the little hills. We want the obvious, the 
 prominent, the great thing. It is so natural to ex- 
 pect that peace will come down out of the moun- 
 tains. Are they not very high and very strong? 
 Have they not untold resources in their great 
 heights? Nevertheless a man who lives only 
 among the great things is missing a great deal. 
 There are the little hills, and they also are ap- 
 pointed to bring peace to the people. 
 
 " And the little hills." Is it not possible that 
 a right grasp of this small text may do something 
 to broaden our view of life, and at the same time 
 deepen and sweeten its joy? The mountains are 
 here in our lives, the great truths, the large per- 
 sonalities, the obvious blessings. Let us thank God 
 for all these. And the little hills are here in our 
 lives also, the minor truths, the lesser persons, the 
 implied, the indirect blessings. Let us not fail to 
 thank God for these also. So it is my purpose to- 
 day to echo in your hearts this truth of the little 
 hills, and the text is so short that even a child may 
 remember it: "And the little hills," "And the lit- 
 tle hills." 
 
 As we reflect upon it to-day, a new truth, or at 
 
The Ministry of the Little Hills 65 
 
 least the new realization of an old truth, may 
 dawn upon us, the truth that the peace or happi- 
 ness of life depends more than we suppose upon 
 the way we use the margin of life. Away out there 
 at the edges of our lives there are things that are 
 not great or mountainous at all; they are rather like 
 the little hills that crowd in upon the edges of the 
 landscape. And these little things have peace in 
 them as well as the great things. Life has many 
 explicit things and obvious things that we have to 
 do with every day. But the implicit things, the 
 things that are not obvious at all, the things that 
 lie in the shadow, the things that often shrink away 
 into an obscure corner, the things that stand out 
 there on the margin — these also shall bring peace 
 to the people. It is this that we want to em- 
 phasize from one point of view and another. Do 
 not overlook the marginal things in life; make use 
 of the subordinate; live not altogether by the obvi- 
 ous and the great things; give place to the little 
 hills as well as the mountains. 
 
 " And the little hills." Let us be reminded first 
 that many of our choicest blessings belong to the 
 category of the little hills. If we are looking for 
 help and peace from great things only, we are 
 missing much that is in store for us. 
 
 There are so many unappreciated blessings in 
 
66 The Art of Sailing On 
 
 life, so many unappropriated sources of happiness. 
 If any of us would sit down to think of these it 
 would be an astonishment to us. Our trouble often 
 is that we count only the blessings that we can see 
 very plainly — the mountains. There are many lit- 
 tle hills beside the mountains. There are unnoticed 
 helps and forces in life, and not a few of them are 
 rich with God's goodness for us. If we would 
 take the trouble to look for the unnoticed, to dis- 
 cover the neglected and forgotten things of life, 
 many of us would grow rich by these. Years ago 
 in the Western silver mines men thought they could 
 afford to be careless of the smaller values because 
 the ores were so rich and so plentiful. So they 
 used the ores of highest percentage and threw the 
 lower ones on the dump. Of late years they have 
 grown wiser. New methods of extracting silver 
 have been invented, so that even the poorer ores 
 can be used. Now the miners are going back to 
 those same dump-heaps and finding riches there 
 such as were not before suspected. 
 
 None of us can afford to pass by the lesser values. 
 Lesser values often grow into great riches. For 
 this reason it is true that men may often find great 
 joy in life by going back over the way and finding 
 where they missed or failed to appropriate some 
 source of blessing. We need a little closer scrutiny 
 
The Ministry of the Little Hills 67 
 
 of the way, a little sharper vision for the unno- 
 ticed, a little finer appreciation of the smaller 
 values. 
 
 Two men were walking one day in a botanical 
 garden. The one went on his way, seeing and ad- 
 miring the garden and rejoicing in the great flowers 
 that were there. The other had a keener sight, 
 and he was looking for the flowers that hid them- 
 selves in the corners and bloomed in the shadows. 
 Suddenly he stooped to look at a poor little flower 
 that shrank away in a dark place. He had never 
 seen it before, but he had been looking for it for 
 many years, and he was very happy. I wonder if it 
 is not true that life would be more joyous for us if 
 we would but keep looking for those little flowers 
 that grow in quiet places and dark places and places 
 that are out of the way? 
 
 " And the little hills." It may be that this bit 
 of a text out of the Psalm will help us to pay more 
 attention to things obscure and unpromising in this 
 world. For in a world like ours the blessings of 
 life are often hidden away in deep shadows and 
 are found like rare flowers in unfrequented path- 
 ways. Where the trodden paths are, where the 
 world is always looking on and looking in, joy 
 often seems to wither away. 
 
 How many unnamed and unlisted blessings are 
 
68 The Art of Sailing On 
 
 at work to bring peace to our lives ! I believe In 
 the providence of God because I am aware that 
 I am upheld every day and hour by great and 
 strong forces of life that are like the girders of 
 a bridge beneath my feet. But there is even a more 
 striking evidence of providence than this. It is in 
 the fact that hundreds and thousands of little aids 
 and forces, unknown and mysterious ministries, un- 
 calendared, unlisted personalities, are busy in the 
 shadows of life, helping me to live. The ministry 
 of the unknown ! — this is one meaning of the little 
 hills that bring peace to the people. When you 
 sit down to con over the things that help your 
 manhood or your womanhood to blossom into the 
 best, you will recall all of the prominent and obvi- 
 ous forces, of course; but do not fail to give a 
 little thought to the ministry of the unknown. 
 
 How it enriches and enlarges our life to think 
 from day to day of the unseen forces and aids 
 that are ministering to us in life ! There are days 
 when we feel very poor and very weak and very 
 lonesome in the world. All the great powers have 
 gone away; the mountains are covered with mist. 
 But there are the little hills, the minor ministries 
 and helps of life. There is never an hour in which 
 the soul, however bereft of the great forces, is not 
 still buoyed up by silent and less obvious strength. 
 
The Ministry of the Little Hills 69 
 
 Such, for example, is the comfort of prayer. Many 
 a man who has lost sight of the mountains in his 
 life has been comforted by the memory of some 
 one's prayer, though it may have been only the 
 prayer of a little child. A friend of mine went 
 into a hotel and picked up from the writing table 
 an unfinished letter, evidently written by an erring 
 man to his wife and child at home. The letter ran 
 on in painful sentences until it spoke of the prayers 
 of the wife and child — there it stopped. The little 
 hills shall bring peace to the people ! 
 
 Blessed are those little comradeships of life that 
 feed our courage and minister to us indirectly and 
 silently of the strength of life! Many a man is 
 inspired and strengthened thus to breast the storm 
 by the quiet woman at his side. And many a man 
 is made a better man daily out there in the fierce 
 battle of life by the memory of a child's voice and 
 a child's light touch upon his hand. " A little child 
 shall lead them." 
 
 God's ministry to us through little children — 
 what a precious thing it is! A gentleman told me 
 the other day that it was the coming of a little 
 child into his life that had made the world a new 
 place. Formerly he had not noticed that the world 
 is full of little children nor had he cared for them. 
 When a man has a child of his own, there is all 
 
70 The Art of Sailing On 
 
 the difference in the world. Things in the world 
 have new meanings. The problems are here still, 
 but they are not so grave, not so hard. Unseen 
 strength seems to come even through the weakness 
 of a little child. A man buckles on his armor and 
 says, " Now I must fight with new faith and new 
 courage ! " The little hills bring peace. It is 
 George Macdonald who tells us: " The blessedness 
 of life depends upon its interest, not upon its com- 
 fort." And it is infallibly true that they who de- 
 spise not the little hills shall find wonderful com- 
 fort. 
 
 11 And the little hills." It is worth our while 
 also to-day to see how little duties and minor ap- 
 plications of the large truths of the Gospel are 
 comfortable to the soul. Oh ! that is a discovery 
 worth making, that a slight duty done with great 
 faithfulness is one of the little hills that send down 
 peace into the soul. Many of us must have made 
 this discovery long ago. Often our lives are sin- 
 gularly bare of comfort and of joy, and we look 
 abroad and say, " All the mountains are shrouded 
 in mist." In such an hour you can see none of 
 the great consolations of life. Friendship closes 
 its doors. Religion itself seems unfriendly and far 
 away. Yet if in the soul there is the consciousness 
 of some small duty of life splendidly done, the soul 
 
The Ministry of the Little Hills 71 
 
 may still look up and rejoice in the comfort of the 
 little hills. 
 
 Let us learn to bring our religion down to minor 
 duties and to many less obvious activities. A man's 
 religion may not enable him to testify before a mul- 
 titude, but if it help him to live gently and help- 
 fully in his own home, what a source of joy is that ! 
 Our Gospel is a faith that should reach to the 
 words and manners of men. It is a faith to make 
 the husband a strong man in his own household and 
 the wife a gracious reliance. It is a faith to give 
 the children a wondrous vision and to cause them 
 to be glad in the presence of their parents. It is 
 a faith also to make the heart tender, and the an- 
 swer of the lips soft, and the pressure of the hand 
 warm, and the light of the eyes friendly and lov- 
 ing. Bring religion down to the level of the little 
 hills. It will distil peace in the home and peace 
 among men. 
 
 But this truth we are echoing to-day about the 
 little hills is a reversible truth. If our lives are 
 blessed and strengthened in these ways, are we not 
 also to bless and strengthen others? Many men 
 soothe their sense of obligation by reminding them- 
 selves that they have little power or influence with 
 men. " It is not for me," they say, " to help other 
 men; I lack the power to help." You mean by 
 
72 The Art of Sailing On 
 
 that that you cannot help in obvious ways; you can- 
 not bring direct aid to men. This may be true. It 
 may be that your life is not a mountain of strength 
 and comfort to other men. 
 
 Even so there are the little hills that bring peace 
 to men. There are scores of indirect influences 
 that feed the courage of men. A man may say of 
 his life as a Christian for instance, " I am afraid 
 that I do not count for very much. I am very far 
 from perfect; my Christian life seems very feeble; 
 my Christian testimony surely does not reach very 
 far." This may be true. Nevertheless the fact 
 that you are trying, that you are willing to be 
 counted on God's side — that is an indirect influence 
 that is not to be overlooked. The fact that you 
 have made a decision for the Kingdom of God and 
 recorded it with your name upon the pages of a 
 Christian church, who shall say what influence this 
 act of yours may start in the world? 
 
 When the Apostle Peter went through the streets 
 of Jerusalem it was thought that his shadow falling 
 upon sick folk would make them well. The life of 
 every man has its shadow — his indirect influence 
 that falls updn the way. We are all of us probably 
 called to feed the courage and the faith of others 
 in ways unseen. If we grow weak and our faith 
 falters, others are losers thereby. But if our faith 
 
The Ministry of the Little Hills 73 
 
 is strong and our eye looks out unfalteringly upon 
 the world, some other heart will pluck up courage 
 and go on with fresh strength upon his way. Al- 
 most the worst heresy a Christian can be guilty of is 
 the heresy of doubting his possible influence in the 
 Kingdom of God. 
 
 We are called to be comrades to men and to help 
 them to know the peace and power of God. A 
 little bit of love goes a great way in a world like 
 ours, especially if it be shot through and through 
 by faith. It is uplifting love that the world needs, 
 strengthening love, the love that comes down out 
 of the high places into the lowly places and takes 
 hold upon human need. Our Lord's love was of 
 that kind, when he " must needs " go through Sa- 
 maria in order that he might meet a woman at the 
 well and uplift her by love. 
 
 " There are many kinds of love, 
 
 As many kinds of light, 
 And every kind of love 
 
 Makes a glory in the night. 
 There is love that stirs the heart 
 
 And love that gives it rest, 
 But the love that leads life upward 
 
 Is the noblest and the best." 
 
 Blessed are they who practise the comradeship 
 of love to their fellow-men ! They are as little hills 
 
74 The Art of Sailing. On 
 
 that distil peace among the people. And blessed 
 are they also who send peace into the world by 
 their own kindly spirit, and by their quiet, helpful 
 kindliness of deed ! There is nothing very obvious 
 or great or prominent about kindness. It is no 
 mountain rearing itself with lofty front before 
 men. No, it is a little hill. It stands in a quiet 
 place and it casts a modest shadow. Nevertheless 
 there is no hour in which it does not send peace 
 among the people. 
 
 " Lord, give me this to find, 
 How to be kind — 
 This heaven-born art 
 Of Thee a part. 
 
 " Small gift have I beside, 
 But this is deep and wide — 
 Pregnant with power to reach 
 All men in speech. 
 
 " God, give us this to know, 
 That we may show 
 A world that is so blind 
 How to be kind." 
 
 What a deep secret of life is this! And when 
 we have found it, peace is multiplied in our own 
 
The Ministry of the Little Hills 75 
 
 hearts. Is it not a truthful poet who says of " The 
 Reward of Service " : 
 
 " A child's kiss 
 Set on thy sighing lips shall make thee glad : 
 A poor man served by thee shall make thee rich: 
 A sick man helped by thee shall make thee strong: 
 Thou shalt be served thyself by every sense 
 Of service which thou renderest " ? 
 
 And this is an echo only of the great sentence of 
 our Lord, who, having helped a human soul, de- 
 clared, " I have meat to eat that ye know not of." 
 
 A book with a strange title was published a lit- 
 tle while ago. It is called " Everybody's Lone- 
 some." It is being spoken of as a masterpiece, not 
 because it is great or strong, but because it is sim- 
 ple and true. It is a sweet and artless tale of a 
 young girl who, being full of discontent, won her 
 way to happiness by finding out a wonderful se- 
 cret. The secret was this : " Just remember, 
 everybody's lonesome." 
 
 Yes, it is a lonesome world despite the multitudes 
 that are everywhere. It is the little comradeships 
 of life that all of us need. It is the smaller graces 
 of gentleness and kindness, and of goodly speech 
 and behavior, that the world craves. It is the cour- 
 age, not so much of great men, but of average men, 
 
76 The Art of Sailing On 
 
 that feeds our courage. It is the faith, not of 
 perfect men, but of fallible men, men who are strug- 
 gling, and winning sometimes doubtful victories — 
 it is the faith of these that helps. It is the bit of 
 love that is not brilliant, but that goes a great way, 
 that travels without weariness — it is love of this 
 kind that uplifts. " The mountains shall bring 
 peace to the people, and the little hills." Remem- 
 ber the little hills ! 
 
CHRIST CALLING MEN 
 
He salth unto them, Come, and ye shall see. 
 
 John i : 39. 
 
V 
 CHRIST CALLING MEN 
 
 The first chapter of John's Gospel is a chapter 
 of knowledge and thrill. There are scenes and 
 incidents here that have become an indissoluble part 
 of the world's thought. There are phrases and 
 sentences here that have become a part of the spirit- 
 ual vocabulary of men for all time. 
 
 " Behold the Lamb of God," " Come and ye 
 shall see," " Findeth his own brother," " Brought 
 him unto Jesus," and that masterful call of Jesus, 
 " Follow me " — these are not mere stock, expres- 
 sions of Christianity; they are integral and vital 
 expressions of the interest of Jesus Christ in men 
 and the interest of men in Jesus Christ. 
 
 To all men who are concerned for the spiritual 
 welfare of the world this chapter, written by John, 
 the fisherman of Galilee, must rank in importance 
 above even England's Magna Charta or America's 
 Declaration of Independence. It is in every way 
 a human document of profoundest interest to men. 
 
 79 
 
80 The Art of Sailing On 
 
 The absorbing thing in this chapter is the story 
 it tells of the Man of Nazareth beginning to gather 
 about himself a group of men who were to be the 
 protagonists of the Christian Gospel. See how it 
 came about. There was a certain day when Jesus 
 came to meet a man, a strange, rude, yet forceful 
 character, a man who had already been preaching 
 tremendously about righteousness. When this man 
 saw Jesus he spoke out immediately and spontane- 
 ously, "Behold the Lamb of God!" This was 
 the calling of John the Baptist, who, though he 
 was not permanently of the group of men that sur- 
 rounded Jesus, gave to his Gospel nevertheless the 
 advantage of his strong initiative and his intense 
 loyalty. 
 
 It was on the next day after that John repeated 
 his testimony to Jesus in the presence of two of his 
 own disciples, and they began to follow Jesus. As 
 they were following him, Jesus turned and ad- 
 dressed a question to them: " What seek ye? " to 
 which they replied, " Where abidest thou? " And 
 Jesus said to them, " Come, and ye shall see." How 
 natural, even commonplace, this meeting was. The 
 result of the invitation was that they went with 
 Jesus to his abode and spent two hours with the 
 Son of Man. What was said in that interview is 
 not recorded in the Gospel, but the interview was 
 
Christ Calling Men 8i 
 
 conclusive with the two men, and they became his 
 disciples. It is one of the unwritten conversations 
 of history that has weight and value to this hour. 
 
 One of the two was Andrew. His subsequent 
 history is not fully written for us. It is not proba- 
 ble that he became eminent, but it is recorded of 
 him on more than one occasion — and an honorable 
 record it is — that he brought others to his Master. 
 
 The other one of the two was undoubtedly John. 
 He does not record his own name, but it is a clear 
 inference. In winning this man to himself Jesus 
 secured a disciple who has added such spiritual 
 riches to the world as no man can compute. Think 
 for a moment of the place this Gospel narrative 
 by John the apostle has in the affection of the whole 
 world. Though he was a rude Galilean fisherman, 
 he was a diamond in the rough, and his contact with 
 Jesus polished and brightened his very soul until 
 it shone with uncommon brilliancy. His zeal was 
 unflagging and his devotion was monumental. He 
 was a man of violent, even thunderous temper, 
 therefore Jesus called him and his brother James 
 Boanerges, " sons of thunder." But the gentleness 
 of Jesus possessed him until his love burned like 
 a steady flame, and to this day the Church preserves 
 the tradition that when he was an old man of 
 ninety in Ephesus, he went about among the dis- 
 
82 The Art of Sailing On 
 
 ciples murmuring always one sentence, " Little 
 children, love one another." Late in life he wrote 
 out his story of the life of his Lord, mingling with 
 it his feelings and experiences, so that the fourth 
 Gospel, besides being a biography, is also a per- 
 sonal recital of what Jesus was to John himself. 
 
 Again towards the end of his life his faith 
 flashed out in those great spectacular visions of the 
 book of Revelation, the center and sum of which 
 is, " Behold the Lamb of God that taketh away the 
 sin of the world " securely established upon the 
 throne of the universe. 
 
 It was a wonderful day indeed in the opening 
 ministry of Jesus when he won two such disciples 
 as Andrew and John ! 
 
 And the next day was wonderful, too, because it 
 brought to his standard the disciple whom we know 
 and admire, despite his faults, as Simon Peter. An- 
 drew his brother found him and " brought him to 
 Jesus." The moment Jesus saw him he divined 
 the possibilities that were in him and said to him, 
 11 Thou art Simon, the son of John. Thou shalt 
 be called Cephas, which is by interpretation Peter." 
 He was destined to a troublous history. There 
 were elements of weakness in his nature that were 
 certain to appear, but there were also great and 
 solid elements of power. 
 
Christ Calling Men 83 
 
 When Jesus fully possessed this vigorous, virile 
 man, Simon Peter, he became a flaming torch, a 
 voice unhindered, a heart unpent, and there is little 
 reason to doubt the tradition that at last he suffered 
 martyrdom by crucifixion, with his head downward, 
 in behalf of his Lord whom three times he had 
 denied. 
 
 And the next day Jesus added another man to 
 his enlarging group. He found him in Galilee 
 and his name was Philip. He spoke but one simple 
 sentence to him: "Follow me," and it was suf- 
 ficient. There are some men who respond to the 
 call of Christ immediately, whensoever he has a 
 real opportunity to speak to them. They recognize 
 it as the " one clear call " that comes to the soul. 
 There are others who hesitate and postpone for 
 years before they heed his call, and there are 
 still others who live all their days in the same 
 world that was graced by the presence of that glori- 
 ous Person, and that echoes still with the sound 
 of his voice, but never really heed his call. What 
 losses through lack of promptness ! 
 
 We remember Philip especially as the disciple 
 who answered the call promptly. He was equally 
 prompt in setting to work, and the first trophy that 
 he brought to Jesus was Nathanael, a man whose 
 heart was already touched and whose mind was 
 
84 The Art of Sailing On 
 
 filled with vague longings and inquiries about spirit- 
 ual things. Only he did not understand himself, 
 as many of us do not understand ourselves in the 
 eagerness but sometimes contradictoriness and 
 doubt of our own minds. What Jesus did for Na- 
 thanael is what he will often do for men, flash in 
 upon their intellectual and spiritual bewilderment 
 the light of his own true presence. Nathanael an- 
 swered and said unto him, " Rabbi, thou art the 
 King of Israel!" 
 
 Thus we see it is a chapter of beginnings. The 
 first disciples, six in number, including John the 
 Baptist, are won. A group of persons assembles 
 about the central Person, and with this little com- 
 pany the Gospel moves out into the world. Let 
 us therefore repeat the statement already made, that 
 this chapter is a greater document than the Magna 
 Charta or the Declaration of Independence. 
 
 There are several useful lessons to be learned. 
 
 Jesus called men about him in arranging this 
 first group of his disciples. We speak no deroga- 
 tory word concerning women. Women have a 
 large place in these early Gospel records, as they 
 have in the whole history of the Church of Christ. 
 Nevertheless there is no woman's name in this first 
 chapter of John. Jesus is calling men and their 
 names are recorded here in indelible ink. Appar- 
 
Christ Calling Men 85 
 
 ently there was no doubt of the application of the 
 Gospel to men. It was masculine enough for An- 
 drew and Peter and John, and we can hardly sus- 
 pect them of effeminacy. In these early records 
 men came freely to Christ, as they may still do. 
 The rich young ruler came with his anxious though 
 selfish fears. Nicodemus came with his mind in- 
 flamed by interrogation points. The Pharisees and 
 scribes came also, because, like the moth, they could 
 not resist the attraction of the light. 
 
 And Jesus had his own method with each of 
 these men. Sometimes it was an invitation to in- 
 vestigation and fellowship: "Come and see." 
 Again it was an immediate and direct appeal: 
 " Follow me." Again it was a searchlight thrown 
 in upon the inner life of a man: " Behold an Is- 
 raelite in whom there is no guile." Or again it 
 was an appeal to the best that was in a man : " Thou 
 shalt be called Cephas, which is by interpretation 
 Peter." What wondrous ways he had with men ! 
 " He himself knew what was in man." 
 
 You will notice, too, that he called and won to 
 himself different types of men. Contrast Andrew 
 and Peter, sons of the same mother, and yet, in 
 that striking diversity which nature often brings 
 into the same household, as different from one an- 
 other as an agate from a pearl. Yet Jesus won 
 
86 The Art of Sailing On 
 
 them both to himself. Men will often excuse them- 
 selves. They will say, " I seem to be different from 
 other men; I am of another type; these things do 
 not much appeal to me." But Jesus Christ comes 
 with his call to all men. There is nothing in you 
 or in me that he cannot reach. He passes by no 
 type of man, skeptic, moralist, indifferentist, the 
 curious, the inquiring, the sinful. He has about 
 him a universality, a breadth of adaptation, a depth 
 of appeal, which includes every human type. He 
 is not a son of man, but the Son of Man, and it may 
 be no mere guess of ours that the twelve whom he 
 called about him for his ministry represented every 
 original type of humanity. All these Jesus called 
 and won to himself — and held them all except that 
 one whose halo has faded into darkness because he 
 loved, not his Master, but himself. 
 
 Now there is a question we ought to ask at this 
 point : What was it that drew men to Jesus Christ ? 
 — what is it now? You have noticed what he said 
 to those first inquirers. It was nothing profound 
 or philosophical at all, only a simple invitation, 
 11 Come and see." They said, " Master, where 
 dwellest thou? " And this was his answer. There 
 is something in Jesus himself that draws men. We 
 can ask the old question, " Who art thou, Jesus of 
 Nazareth? " and the question comes echoing back 
 
Christ Calling Men 87 
 
 across the ages unanswered and unanswerable. At 
 least the answer cannot be put into words, neither 
 into documents nor creeds nor theologies. You re- 
 quire not the botanist's knowledge to enjoy the rose, 
 nor the architect's skill to rejoice in the cathedral, 
 nor the rare talent and technique of the musician to 
 feel the spell of music. 
 
 It is not the words, the speech, the sermons of 
 Jesus alone that tell us what he is. Of him we 
 have to say almost at times, despite the charm and 
 impressiveness of his words that hang like music 
 on the ear, " What thou art speaks so loudly that 
 I cannot hear what thou sayest." On that day 
 when John the Baptist met him face to face there 
 leaped up within his rugged breast a flame of rec- 
 ognition, and out spoke his strong voice in words 
 that can never pass from our memory: " Behold 
 the Lamb of God that taketh away the sin of the 
 world!" What secret is this in Jesus that calls 
 men and draws them to himself? Napoleon medi- 
 tated upon this at St. Helena. One day after read- 
 ing in the New Testament he said to his attendant: 
 " I know men and I know that Jesus Christ must 
 be more than a man. Great generals and I myself 
 have been able to command men by their presence. 
 But Jesus Christ is able to reach across the chasm 
 of centuries and draw them to himself." 
 
88 The Art of Sailing On 
 
 What secret is this in Jesus that calls men? Let 
 us try to state it, however imperfectly. 
 
 Was it not that these forces that were in him, 
 in calling men, did not merely call but also went 
 out after men to seek them? " The Son of Man 
 is come to seek." 
 
 We have known noble personalities that lacked 
 nevertheless in the power of search: nothing in 
 them went out to seek men. With Jesus it is other- 
 wise. Not only is he " full of grace and truth," 
 but all this wholesome power that resides in his 
 sacred, divine Person sets out upon the trail of 
 men. It is a searchlight sweeping across the dark- 
 ness of our ofttimes barren life. It is a magnet 
 commanding the iron filings of our resistant nature 
 to respond. It is the noble music of a great voice 
 awakening our very life within us. 
 
 Are we not approaching a little the secret of his 
 call? Something infinitely truthful about Jesus 
 calls men, and in their hearts they understand him 
 when he says, " I am the Truth." Something pro- 
 foundly sacrificial about him, even before his Cross 
 is lifted, calls men, and they know his meaning 
 when he says, " I am the Way." Something inde- 
 scribably powerful about him, that reaches down 
 into the very being, calls men, and they appreciate 
 it when he says, " I am the Life." 
 
Christ Calling Men 89 
 
 " No fable old or mystic lore, 
 
 Nor dream of bards and seers, 
 No dead fact stranded on the shore 
 Of the oblivious years. 
 
 " But warm, sweet, tender, even yet 
 A present Help is he ; 
 And faith has still its Olivet, 
 And love its Galilee. 
 
 " The healing of his seamless dress 
 Is by our beds of pain: 
 We touch him in life's throng and press, 
 And we are whole again." 
 
 It has been left to a gifted author of our day to 
 paint in imperishable literature his picture of " A 
 Doctor of the Old School." You remember the 
 story in " The Bonnie Brier Bush," how William 
 MacLure traveled the country over ministering to 
 the sick, how he breasted the floods and fought the 
 fever by sheer endurance, and never knew that he 
 was a hero. Once when Saunders was so very ill 
 of the fever, the old doctor and Drumsheugh toiled 
 all the night with two weapons, milk to keep up 
 the patient's strength, and water from the spring 
 to cool the fever. Oh, that is like Jesus Christ! 
 He is always seeking men with infinite pains. He 
 
90 The Art of Sailing On 
 
 gave himself to his work. He spared not his own 
 self. Men knew that there was naught that he 
 would not do to help a man and win him to him- 
 self. So it is that he calls. 
 
 Let us see this also with great clearness, that 
 Christ's call to men is the kind of a call that reaches 
 every man's greatest need. If Nathanael has 
 doubts, he is calling to Nathanael. If Peter has 
 great weaknesses and great forces contending in his 
 pent-up nature, he is calling to Peter. If John the 
 Baptist has a great rugged faith, albeit an unedu- 
 cated faith, and some fears, he is calling to John 
 the Baptist. If any man has any struggle or 
 temptation, any history of his own heart that he 
 cannot tell, any secret longings of his soul or any 
 great sense of need in himself, Jesus Christ calls 
 him that way — calls him down deep in his own 
 nature, down where the need lies, or the fear, or the 
 doubt, or the sin. There are solitary places in the 
 mountains that men seldom see, so there are soli- 
 tary places in life, and Jesus calls us in that solitude. 
 His call is not like any ordinary call. 
 
 And when men listen to Jesus Christ speaking 
 to that deep something in them that needs him, 
 when they heed his invitation, " Come and see," 
 then they believe. And belief is one of the sweetest 
 things, one of the strongest things, that ever comes 
 
Christ Calling Men 91 
 
 to a strong man. There is no real living without 
 belief. Even the literature of doubt has no 
 premium upon it. The world wants your convic- 
 tions, not your doubts. You sit at your desk and 
 speak to a man away yonder in Pittsburg or Chi- 
 cago, and you can do that because there have been 
 men who pressed through the thickets of their 
 doubts and reached beliefs. Christ is calling men 
 to believe, and he is calling them to a great thing. 
 Happy indeed is the man who can say like this — 
 
 " If Jesus Christ is a man — 
 And only a man — I say 
 That of all mankind I cleave to him 
 And to him I will cleave alway. 
 
 " If Jesus Christ is a God — 
 And the only God — I swear 
 I will follow him through heaven and hell, 
 The earth, the sea, and the air." 
 
 So this lesson out of the first chapter of John's 
 Gospel is mainly a lesson for men. May men take 
 it to heart to-day. A more honorable career no 
 man could desire than to be a follower of Jesus 
 Christ. His work is so colossal, too, and the world 
 needs it so much. If the world should lose Jesus 
 Christ, or lose any part of his work or influence, 
 
92 The Art of Sailing On 
 
 new sorrows would come upon the world. Strong 
 men ought to help his cause and count it a joy to 
 link their names with his. If there is an ounce of 
 energy, a strain of life's music, a glint of love, 
 an iota of passionate devotion that we can give to 
 him, let us give, and give it freely. Let us live 
 close enough to him to know and share his spirit 
 and to reproduce it to the world. 
 
 This is what it must mean to hear him calling 
 and to become his disciple. 
 
A WORLD OF SONG 
 
" And when they had sung a hymn, they went 
 out into the Mount of Olives." 
 
 Matt. 26:30. 
 
VI 
 
 A WORLD OF SONG 
 
 " When they had sung a hymn." Our world is 
 a world of song. If it were not so, sin would soon 
 gain the upper hand. God's creatures everywhere, 
 high and low, are susceptible to the power of music. 
 Right well have men spoken when they have de- 
 scribed it as " the divine art," for is it not sug- 
 gestive of "the divinity that stirs within us"? 
 Very beautiful indeed is the providence that has left 
 in our sin-begirt humanity the capacity to feel the 
 majesty and power of music. Sufficient proof, this, 
 that God never intends to give this world over to a 
 reprobate condition. The Germans even say that 
 bad people do not have songs, such is the confidence 
 of one nation in the heaven-born origin and influ- 
 ence of the art. The history of music, could we 
 follow it in detail, would show a double truth, that 
 civilization has grown with the development of 
 music, and music has developed with the expansion 
 of civilization. It has been one of those subtler 
 
 95 
 
g6 The Art of Sailing On 
 
 influences that has wrought a quiet refinement in the 
 soul of man. 
 
 It is God himself who is the great Tone-Master 
 and Director, who will work out through many dis- 
 cords, many disenchantments, many breakings of 
 instruments even, an ultimate divine harmony. 
 
 That this world of ours is a world of song is 
 evident first of all from the fact that nature is full 
 of music. A beloved teacher of ours, long since 
 gone to join those who " handle the harp and the 
 organ " in a higher sphere, had a favorite lecture 
 on " The Music of Nature." His was a sensitive 
 soul and he heard harmonies everywhere, in the 
 cricket's chirp, in the hum of the bees, in the whirr- 
 ing of the partridge, in the swish of the farmer's 
 scythe, in the click of the cottage gate at night. 
 It is a proof of a certain refined sensibility to have 
 an ear for the music of nature, and they are to be 
 congratulated who are able to hear the tuneful 
 voices of God's lower creatures. How often in- 
 deed our poets and musicians seek to carry this 
 music of nature over into their rhythmic verse and 
 tuneful melody. They have even invented a great, 
 high-sounding word, taken from the Greek, to de- 
 scribe this kind of poetry. It is onomatopoetic, by 
 which is meant the reproduction of sound in words, 
 like buzz and hum and whirr and whippoorwill. 
 
A World of Song 97 
 
 In nature, too, there is noticeable appreciation of 
 music. The dull toad even can be whistled out 
 from his dark retreat and will lie in listening rap- 
 ture under the spell of low, sweet sound. Try it 
 and seel A quartet stood up to sing in the prac- 
 tice hour. Above the head of the tenor was a 
 spider's filmy cable, down which the unsightly in- 
 sect had crept so that he hung but a short distance 
 above the singer's head. Watching the movements 
 of the spider, it was discovered that at the high 
 notes of the tenor's voice the spider crept up a 
 certain distance, while the low tones brought him 
 invariably down again. Such measured sensitive- 
 ness to sound is often met with in the lower orders 
 of creation. 
 
 Three hundred and twenty vibrations per second 
 of the delicate filmy wings make the not too wel- 
 come music of the common house fly, and the fly 
 sings, it is said, always in the key of F. The first 
 chirp of the robin or the bluebird in the spring — 
 how quickly the door of the heart flies open at the 
 sound ! The frogs that sang in the old pond near 
 the farmhouse — sometimes you can hear them still, 
 though years have fled. 
 
 " The music in my heart I bore 
 Long after it was heard no more." 
 
98 The Art of Sailing On 
 
 Hold the sea-shell to the ear — that is Old 
 Ocean's music reduced to the compass and capacity 
 of the human ear. Sailors say that the sea is full 
 of fairies and spirits that make the noises of the 
 waves. 
 
 And the echo! What elusive, vanishing music 
 is that! The Hebrews called it " the laughter of 
 the voice." There is an echo in Ireland that re- 
 peats everything three tones lower, another that 
 repeats a word seven times in the day-time and 
 twenty times at night. An echo in Russia repeats 
 one word a hundred times, and one in Algiers re- 
 peats it a thousand times. There is music in the 
 air, too. French scientists ascended in a balloon 
 above the clouds at early morning and heard the 
 sounds made by the air in process of heating by the 
 sun, like a great ^olian harp. The ancients be- 
 lieved and spoke of the music of the spheres. In 
 the book of Job the poet refers to the time when 
 " the morning stars sang together." 
 
 We have read of the statue of Memnon, which 
 was said to give out musical sound at sunrise when 
 the sunbeams fell upon it. Those early peoples 
 felt the power of music and tried to describe it in 
 their mythology. Orpheus played upon his instru- 
 ment and drew rocks and trees after him. Apollo 
 played his lyre at the building of Troy and charmed 
 
A World of Song 99 
 
 great blocks of stone, which moved themselves into 
 place. 
 
 Nature is a symphony, with the Creator as Con- 
 ductor. Even a child will often catch the sound 
 of it and become thoughtful. " Hear him sing," 
 said a child who heard a catbird in the trees. " Did 
 he eat the flowers to make him sing so? " 
 
 It is man himself, God's highest creature, who is 
 the great musician of the world, both making music 
 and loving it. Hence all this variety in the music 
 world — sopranos, altos, tenors, basses, instruments, 
 tones, half-tones, staffs, measures, bars, majors, 
 minors, chords, times, arias, choruses, solos, can- 
 tatas, symphonies. Most of us know these only 
 by name, but they proclaim the truth that this is 
 a world of song, and that man most of all has music 
 in his soul. 
 
 Music makes an atmosphere of purity: let us 
 note this by way of recognizing its ethical value. 
 It is, so to say, like those medicines that preoccupy 
 the body against disease : it is prophylactic. " Let 
 me write the songs of a nation, and I care not who 
 writes its laws." If there were time to speak of 
 how men and nations have been inspired to sing in 
 times of danger, it would be indeed an interesting 
 story. Think of what the " Marseillaise Hymn " 
 has done for France, of what the " Wacht am 
 
ioo The Art of Sailing On 
 
 Rhein " has been to the Germans. Cromwell's 
 " Ironsides " sang the great heroic Psalms of David 
 and marched on to victory. Lord Wolseley wrote 
 in the Preface to the "Soldier's Song Book": 
 " Troops that sing as they march will reach their 
 destination more quickly and in better fighting con- 
 dition than those who march in silence." There is 
 a volume of sermons in the Field Marshal's sen- 
 tence. Let us not march " in silence." For this 
 reason the German army contains more than ten 
 thousand military musicians, able-bodied men, who 
 might have been soldiers. Scotch military history 
 could not be written without the story of the bag- 
 pipe. 
 
 Music helps men to bear their burdens. In the 
 Orient men carry very heavy burdens, but they 
 have learned to sing away their heaviness. On the 
 Nile the boatmen sing as they pull away at the 
 heavy oars of the boat. It is a strange, mirthful 
 song that they are singing, and they seem to forget 
 their toil. When it is interpreted we learn that 
 it is a song about the Ark, and the animals one 
 after another entering Noah's venturesome craft. 
 
 But if instances like these teach us to meet toil 
 with song, our Lord's example tells us also to meet 
 suffering with song. For on the night before his 
 crucifixion he led his disciples before they went out 
 
A World of Song ioi 
 
 to the Mount of Olives in singing the Psalms of 
 praise — the Hallel — which the Jews invariably 
 used in celebrating the Passover. Some have held 
 that music is truest when it is the child of suffer- 
 ing. A pupil went to a great teacher to be taught 
 how to sing. But the teacher said, " You cannot 
 sing. Go away, and when you have suffered some- 
 what come back and I will teach you to sing." 
 
 It was Luther who said that " the Devil hates 
 music," for when men begin to sing, visions of 
 purity begin to arise in them, imperceptible influ- 
 ences steal over them, and there is an unseen cable 
 drawing them upward towards the sky. Singers 
 and players may sometimes be insincere, but music 
 itself is always sincere; it is always calling men to 
 a higher level. If a man will learn a noble song, 
 and sing that song often as he goes on in life, he 
 will be a better man always. 
 
 Music has a power of indirection too that makes 
 its influence pervasive. Wherever men sing good 
 songs, other men are safe, and women too. Where 
 there are bad songs, woman's virtue even must be- 
 ware. If the story of the unconscious influence of 
 song could be written it would fill many volumes. 
 
 A college president, wearied in body and mind, 
 had gone to the mountains for rest. Walking 
 along the mountainsides in the twilight, his ears 
 
102 The Art of Sailing On 
 
 caught the strain of a sweet song, " Saviour, more 
 than life to me." By and by a cow appeared in 
 the distance; then a maiden driving it home to the 
 milking, and singing on the way; then a turn in the 
 path and they were hidden again, but the music still 
 floated up to the tired man. It rested and refreshed 
 him and gave him new courage. But the mountain 
 milkmaid never knew that she had helped a man 
 to do his great work in the world. Let us sing our 
 song in the world, sing it in faith, sing it in hope, 
 sing it out upon the air! Some tired heart may 
 find rest and peace even within the sound of your 
 poor song or mine. 
 
 In your own experience probably music has 
 moved you more often than sermons or prayers. 
 There is some old hymn of the Church that always 
 speaks to you instantly and irresistibly. Perchance 
 it is your mother's hymn. It is the anthem that 
 wafted some dear one out of the world, or the 
 hymn that marked some strong event or crisis of 
 your life. 
 
 Oh, if Jesus and his disciples sang their hymn 
 in Jerusalem, the disciples of that same faith must 
 keep on singing! It is a singing religion ! Sing not 
 less, but more. Sing more truly, more feelingly, 
 more reverently, more worshipfully. Sing the soul 
 into better moods. Sing the mind out of its sor- 
 
A World of Song 103 
 
 didness up to higher things. Sing the world away 
 from its sin and care. Let psalms and hymns and 
 spiritual songs run through the mind like water 
 cleansing a vessel. Let the heart make melody 
 within. 
 
 " Songs have power to quiet 
 The restless pulse of care, 
 And come like the benediction 
 That follows after prayer." 
 
 We are singing old songs now, but it shall not 
 always be so, for this Word of God tells us that 
 one day we shall sing " a new song." Let us make 
 ready to sing that new song, the Song of Moses and 
 the Lamb. For surely we must know that if this 
 world with all its sin and care is a world of song, 
 that other world to which we are going will fairly 
 burst with song. 
 
 " The tides of Music's Golden Sea 
 Are setting toward Eternity." 
 
OUR OWN RIVERS 
 
"Are not Abanah and Pharpar, the rivers of 
 Damascus, better than all the waters of Israel? " 
 
 II Kings 5:12. 
 
VII 
 OUR OWN RIVERS 
 
 It is an impressive fact, and quite as useful as 
 it is impressive, that men have the power to feel 
 at home in this great world. Vast as it is, a place 
 of magnificent distances, this world is nevertheless 
 our home. We are not to remain always here; we 
 are sojourners; nevertheless while we are on this 
 planet it is well to cultivate the home-instinct. Re- 
 ligious teachers often tell us that we should not 
 feel too much at home in this world. It is perilous, 
 they say. With the apostle of the New Testament 
 they warn us: "Love not the world, neither the 
 things that are in the world." This injunction is 
 both timely and true, yet we cannot think that it 
 militates against the duty of being at home in the 
 world. 
 
 If one would realize the value of the home in- 
 stinct, and the duty of feeling at home in this great 
 world, let him recall some one who has lived with- 
 out the home feeling. Quite familiar are the signs 
 of this — a certain dulness of feeling and lack of 
 107 
 
108 The Art of Sailing On 
 
 verve, a certain absence of attachment to locality 
 and lack of loyalty to place, a certain wanderlust 
 of the mind that carries one ever away into regions 
 beyond. In the presence of such signs we are quick 
 to conclude that the Bible never means by its warn- 
 ings to counsel men to disattach themselves from 
 the world or to cherish feelings of disloyalty to it. 
 This world is our home, albeit we are but sojourn- 
 ers here, and it is our privilege to love our home 
 and to make the most of it. 
 
 Out of this home-instinct flow some of our most 
 useful feelings, especially those sociable feelings of 
 the soul that establish relations of familiarity and 
 fellowship with men and things. Have we stopped 
 to consider how many of the real joys and utilities 
 of life come from the home-feeling that we have 
 here in the world? If any of us are cherishing in 
 our hearts, as indeed we ought to do, any bit of 
 sentiment about old friends or about the old home ; 
 if memory recalls now and then a feeling for some 
 early scene or locality, an old well or an old wall, 
 or an old house or a pathway through the woods, 
 or so intangible a thing even as the sound of a 
 church bell — is it not plain that these sweet and 
 tender influences of life are the product of the 
 home- feeling? The truth is that we ought to be 
 intensely loyal to our world-home. The Heavenly 
 
Our Own Rivers 109 
 
 Father has made it for us: through long tracts of 
 time his loving care was occupied in fitting up our 
 home. The world has beauty: he has made it. 
 The strength of the mountains is his, the song of 
 the bird in the valleys is his, and the " spell of the 
 wheat " on the undulating plains is his. The rivers 
 also are the rivers of God, for he has made them 
 to flow. " And God saw everything that he had 
 made, and, behold, it was very good." Into the 
 midst of all this God called his children, made in 
 his own image, bidding them to subdue the earth 
 and have dominion over it. So deep are the roots 
 of this home-instinct which we find in our hearts, 
 and which grow sometimes into bitter fruit, but 
 more often into many joys of life ! 
 
 Considering all this, we are ready to make a 
 half apology for Naaman the Syrian who spoke 
 forth so hastily about the rivers of his own land : 
 " Are not Abanah and Pharpar, the rivers of Da- 
 mascus, better than all the waters of Israel? " We 
 do not forget what is commonly said about him, 
 that his pride stood in the way of his welfare, that 
 it was wrong and hurtful for him to despise Jordan 
 because it was little and muddy, and in short that 
 he was a bigot as to his own country and his own 
 things, who would not humble himself to any level 
 beneath that of his own pride. The trouble was 
 
no The Art of Sailing On 
 
 that he wanted his own terms, that he would not 
 surrender to God's way as represented by the in- 
 structions of the prophet, just as there are those 
 now who will not humble themselves as little chil- 
 dren and come to God upon terms of penitence and 
 forgiveness for sin. We hold no brief for Naa- 
 man. The indictment against his hurtful pride 
 must stand. 
 
 Nevertheless there is a ring of something fa- 
 miliar and friendly about his words: "Are not 
 Abanah and Pharpar, the rivers of Damascus, bet- 
 ter than all the waters of Israel?" There is a 
 touch of that home-feeling in the world to which 
 we have just referred, and a bit of that sentiment 
 for places and things which rightly used is a very 
 helpful thing in life. One can understand his feel- 
 ing and venture even to appreciate his hesitation. 
 And while this is no apology for what sounds at 
 once like blustering pride and boasting, it is at 
 least an open door in the direction of something 
 that has real value for us all. And though the 
 lesson be an indirect one, it is none the less a useful 
 one. 
 
 Shall then a man not be fond of his own rivers, 
 the Abanah and Pharpar of his own Damascus? 
 Who would not cherish at least a bit of sentiment 
 about the rivers of his own land? Lay blame to 
 
Our Own Rivers hi 
 
 the Syrian captain, if you will, because of his stub- 
 born pride ; but do not fail to credit him also with 
 a romantic attachment to his own familiar places, 
 to the rivers of his own land. 
 
 It is a thing to be deplored to be lacking in senti- 
 ment. He who is devoid of sentiment goes through 
 life with few romantic attachments and with little 
 warmth of feeling. One house is much the same as 
 another to him, one friend differs little from an- 
 other. 
 
 " A primrose by a river's brim 
 
 A yellow primrose was to him 
 
 And it was nothing more." 
 
 But a man with sentiment in his heart has warmth 
 and light in his feelings. His affections twine 
 themselves about facts and places and memories of 
 life. Such a man might well use the language of 
 Naaman: "Are not Abanah and Pharpar, the 
 rivers of Damascus, better than all the waters of 
 Israel?" 
 
 It is easy to understand this fondness for one's 
 own rivers. A river is a familiar and friendly 
 thing. It is not quite so with the ocean. We ven- 
 ture the statement that while many persons are 
 filled with wonder at the ocean, and are even fas- 
 cinated by it, there are nevertheless few persons 
 
ii2 The Art of Sailing On 
 
 who have a tender sentiment, a romantic attach- 
 ment, for the ocean. It is too vast for attach- 
 ment, too great for sympathy. But for the rivers 
 that flow through the earth there is a fine neigh- 
 borliness that develops the power of attachment in 
 the heart. 
 
 Make a test of this some day with any group 
 of persons. Ask the question, " Which river in all 
 the world is the best?" While the note of sec- 
 tional pride and prejudice may jar upon your ears, 
 you shall hear all hearts ring true with loyalty to 
 their own rivers. If the group represent several 
 nations, you shall feel the power of national senti- 
 ment. The Scotchman will speak for his brawling 
 rivers that dart forth from Highland glens; the 
 Swiss will praise his rivers born in icy mountain- 
 tops and kissed into purity by skies of everlasting 
 blue; the Englishman will sing the praise of the 
 Avon and other like leisurely streams that move 
 through beautiful meadows and under overhanging 
 boughs. 
 
 If the group be of our own countrymen, you 
 shall hear each American sing the praise of the river 
 of his own portion of our great domain. Some will 
 speak with unceasing pride of the noble Hudson 
 that moves majestically out to the sea. Western 
 hearts will glow with praise and pride for the Mis- 
 
Our Own Rivers 113 
 
 sissippi's mighty flood or the Ohio's beautiful 
 sweep (the French called the Ohio la belle riviere) . 
 Men of Southern birth will enshrine the name of 
 some stream of the Southland that has borne their 
 hearts away, such as that sweet and mellow Suwa- 
 nee that has touched so many hearts with the pathos 
 of song.* 
 
 We rejoice in such attachments. We must needs 
 have them. They make for our joy and useful- 
 ness. If aught of this sentiment be in Naaman's 
 heart, we are at one with him. The heart must 
 find objectives in places and things and persons. 
 Sentiment must cling to something. The soul must 
 feel at home in the world. God wills it so. He 
 has bidden us come and live in the earth and build 
 our home here. Though it be Robinson Crusoe 
 building his home through dire necessity on a soli- 
 tary island, the heart will soon attach itself. 
 
 In our day the home-instinct suffers many in- 
 vasions through change. " The vertigo of civiliza- 
 
 *" Every river that flows is good, and has something worthy 
 to be loved. But those that we love most are always the 
 ones that we have known best— the stream that ran before 
 our father's door, the current on which we ventured our first 
 boat or cast our first fly, the brook on whose banks we first 
 picked the twin flower of young love. However far we may 
 travel, we come back to Naaman's state of mind : 'Are not 
 Abanah and Pharpar, the rivers of Damascus, better than all 
 the waters of Israel? ' " — " Little Rivers," by Henry van Dyke. 
 
ii4 The Art of Sailing On 
 
 tion " has reached the home. One peril of our day 
 lies in the waning of those instincts of the soul that 
 go out and create a local center, a Damascus of 
 one's own, with Abanah and Pharpar, familiar 
 rivers of life, flowing by the door. Nowadays men 
 move all too rapidly from one dwelling to another. 
 Many are travellers, not dwellers at all. Life in 
 great cities has even changed the house itself in 
 its form and structure. Men no longer build their 
 own houses, framing into the very architecture their 
 sentiment and affection. When men become wan- 
 derers, mere dwellers in tents which can be picked 
 up and carried on, there is little sentiment in the 
 heart for locality and little of that romantic at- 
 tachment which is one of the charms of a beautiful 
 life in a home. Then affection for familiar scenes 
 and backgrounds of life wanes and dies away, and 
 men come forth into the light of common day, 
 their sweet illusions lost, their hours of vision 
 dimmed, their tender attachments weakened, their 
 home-instinct obscured. Pitiful indeed the waning 
 of the home-feeling among men ! Against such a 
 peril let us set our faces like a flint! 
 
 But let us not mourn overmuch. The home- 
 instinct is strong in the soul. God has placed it 
 there. It will have surprising recoveries. We shall 
 always love the touch of familiarity and ownership. 
 
Our Own Rivers 115 
 
 The time is far distant when men will say without 
 a glow in the heart, " This is mine own, and it is 
 best of all." The child wants his own toys, and as 
 he touches them there comes to him a response of 
 familiarity and ownership. The student must have 
 his own books, and daily in his room he cons their 
 titles and reaches forth to touch them with his 
 hand. They are friends of his, familiar compan- 
 ions of his thinking, and when he opens their pages 
 to read, and observes where he has read and 
 marked before, and notes also how many a familiar 
 passage glows in the light of some new feeling, the 
 language of the Syrian captain frames itself upon 
 his lips : " Are not Abanah and Pharpar, the rivers 
 of Damascus, better than all the waters of Israel? " 
 They are his own; they have enlisted his heart's 
 affection, they have grown familiar and friendly, 
 they are the best of all. 
 
 The desire of property is so far a beneficent 
 thing. It is the home-instinct at work, the desire 
 to become attached and localized in this great 
 world. A man labors and by dint of toil and skill 
 he attains to ownership. Into this product of his 
 genius he may thenceforth pour the richest senti- 
 ments of his life, the true affection of his heart. 
 Round about it as a center he may assemble many 
 gracious amenities, many tender relations. It is his 
 
n6 The Art of Sailing On 
 
 home and the home of his loved ones. Standing 
 upon the threshold of his own home he may justly 
 say, " Are not Abanah and Pharpar, the rivers of 
 Damascus, better than all the waters of Israel?" 
 For he who does not regard his own home as the 
 best and does not labor each day to make it the 
 best, has admitted a root of bitterness into his life 
 whence may grow much dismay and many sorrows. 
 Thus ownership in the world is beneficent, and 
 so also are those legitimate feelings of strength 
 and superiority that spring from the sense of own- 
 ership. And this is true despite the fact that own- 
 ership is so often a disastrous thing. There is 
 another peril here which men of generous thought 
 will ever seek to avoid. The child may hug his 
 toys to himself, not only in the glow and joy of 
 ownership, but also in the desire to keep them from 
 other children. The man may hug his money and 
 grasp his property to himself in such a way as to 
 betoken something other than a beneficent desire 
 for ownership. Thus there grows in the soul that 
 devastating power which is called selfishness, 
 which lives and fattens itself upon property, even 
 though other men grow lean and suffer loss. Sor- 
 rowful indeed and bitter are the fruits of selfish 
 ownership. Such men establish their Damascus 
 and bid their Abanah and Pharpar to flow, and 
 
Our Own Rivers 117 
 
 count it the best of all : nevertheless there is a vast 
 illusion about it all, for there can be no true Palace 
 of Art for the soul that permits selfishness to cross 
 its threshold and be at home. 
 
 Let it be noted also that the home-instinct is 
 not concerned merely with documents and official 
 titles, for men may be at home in God's world in 
 a far larger sense, and may rejoice quite justly 
 in their own Abanah and Pharpar, albeit they have 
 no written title to produce. Always let us keep 
 in mind the thought that God has placed us in 
 the world to win it and own it for ourselves, al- 
 though not to use it selfishly for ourselves. Think- 
 ing of this a man will say: "I am not here by 
 accident, but by the Heavenly Father's love, who 
 has placed me here. I am here to build and to 
 grow and to serve, to make beauty and to produce 
 utilities, and to require my portion of the world to 
 blossom like the rose. This is my place, which 
 God has given me, and it is Abanah and Pharpar 
 to me; it is the best of all." 
 
 The secret of contentment lies here, and also the 
 origin of usefulness, as well as of that rich experi- 
 ence by which men grow into a larger being. Thus 
 are we to deal with the precious fact of friendship. 
 There is something wrong with the man himself 
 who cannot feel that his own friendships are better 
 
n8 The Art of Sailing On 
 
 than others — better, not because he is a bigot in his 
 friendship, but because he is rich in discernment 
 and eager in the power of ownership. Thus also 
 should we regard that elusive thing that we call 
 Opportunity. Let each man feel that his oppor- 
 tunity is rich and large, that a " great door and 
 an effectual " is opened, and that nature is not par- 
 simonious nor can God be unjust. 
 
 Thus will a man grow by experience and become 
 owner by the home-instinct of many things which 
 are not listed as property. Discipline even will be 
 his teacher and will give much precious treasure 
 into his keeping. Observation of men and things 
 will also turn out to be his friend and the purveyor 
 of much treasure for the soul. In this way it comes 
 to pass that men are often poor in this world's 
 goods, but rich in the world itself and rich in the 
 higher things of God. 
 
 The enrichment of memory by the precious ex- 
 periences of life is not to be despised, and many are 
 they who can truly say, " This my memory is my 
 Abanah and Pharpar, carrying rich freightage 
 through the years out into eternity." The vision 
 of the old home, its gracious personages and tender 
 voices, lose it not ! It is Abanah and Pharpar to 
 the soul. If tree or landscape or trellised vine, or 
 river or mountain, or voice of loved one or face of 
 
 
Our Own Rivers 119 
 
 friend — if any of these have entered into life — 
 they are yours, and they are better than Golconda. 
 They are yours. They drew forth your sentiment 
 and affection, to them your heart leaps up in real 
 response. If we mistake not, you have journeyed 
 all the years in the goodly company of such mem- 
 ories as these. Lose them not! 
 
 Such as these are the true riches of life, not 
 merely what a man has title for, but what a man has 
 in the resources of his own soul, what he has learned 
 to love and feel, what he has possessed by the real 
 experiences of his life. Thus may one be truly at 
 home in a thought, in an ideal, in a doctrine, be- 
 cause his experience has led him into the heart of 
 it. Of this he may say, " It is Abanah and Phar- 
 par to me," and in this he is no bigot, but one who 
 rejoices in the truth that has grown up in his own 
 heart. 
 
 What treasures of feeling and ownership the 
 home-instinct may bring to the soul operating thus 
 in broad fields of God's world ! Men may filch our 
 purse and invade our property, but no man can take 
 away our joy in beauty, our real experience of truth 
 and sacrifice, and of those other rich treasures that 
 are stored in the halls of memory. What we have 
 seen and felt of God's world, the glorious posses- 
 sions that have come to us through art and litera- 
 
120 The Art of Sailing On 
 
 ture, through love and friendship, as well as 
 through duty, fidelity, and suffering — these are the 
 real treasures of life. 
 
 A company of travelers on the deck of a little 
 steamer on the river Nile looked out over the desert 
 and saw the sun going down behind the Pyramids. 
 The whole land seemed flooded with bronze beauty, 
 and upward from those ancient piles seemed to 
 rise a stairway that might have entered the very 
 presence of the Eternal. Ah! as long as memory 
 remains the soul will keep the treasure of that 
 scene ! Each day it ministers unconsciously to faith 
 and helps to build the soul outward toward invisible 
 things. 
 
 Alfred Tennyson tells us that all his life long 
 he was helped by the memory of a wall of a school- 
 building of his boyhood on which were clinging 
 vines, and by the memory also of a single line of 
 Latin poetry, sonus aqua desilientis — " the sound of 
 falling water! " Who that knows his poetry can 
 fail to notice that the touch and sound of such fa- 
 miliar things are in much that he has written? 
 
 And shall we not remind ourselves that life is 
 enriched in this way by that which we possess 
 through our experience? Thus "the witchery of 
 the soft blue sky " and " the pomp that fills the 
 circuit of the summer hills": thus also the influ- 
 
Our Own Rivers 121 
 
 ence of the rivers that " ran before our father's 
 door," the sound of voices that are still, the vision 
 of faces that have passed into the Beyond; and thus 
 also the memory of those great and notable experi- 
 ences of joy or sorrow, of those emotions that 
 stirred the heart when it mused and when vision 
 was free and large, and of those ambitions and re- 
 solves which registered the reach of the soul to- 
 wards higher things. These also are Abanah and 
 Pharpar, and they are of the best that the soul has 
 known. 
 
 How incomparably rich and valuable are such 
 truths as these in those experiences of love and 
 faith wherein religion grows deeply personal and 
 brings to the soul a joyous sense of ownership in 
 things both human and divine ! What joy and 
 contentment belong to the true child of God whose 
 home-instinct has gone out into the Kingdom and 
 established relations of fellowship and trust! 
 " Our fellowship is with the Father and with his 
 Son, Jesus Christ." 
 
 With what enthusiasm the Old Testament be- 
 lievers voice their home-feeling, their sense of at- 
 tachment, to the sanctuary and Kingdom of God ! 
 " The river of God is full of water," and the right- 
 eous man " shall be like a tree planted by the 
 streams of water." Blessed are they who are at 
 
122 The Art of Sailing On 
 
 home on the banks of the rivers of God! Fruit 
 cometh in its season, and there are no withering 
 leaves. The dew of youth abides where flow the 
 rivers of God, and the heart of one who dwells 
 there goes out in love and attachment. 
 
 Shall not the rivers of God become our own 
 rivers? How sweet it is to gain citizenship and 
 ownership on the banks of " the river of water of 
 life, bright as crystal "! It is no mocking unreal- 
 ity when an apostle declares, " Our citizenship is in 
 Heaven." 
 
 The Kingdom of God and Heaven! — if the 
 Gospel means aught, it is that the soul may have 
 spiritual possessions there; that the home-instinct, 
 with which the heart is gifted, may reach out and 
 possess unseen properties; and that the heart, valu- 
 ing this heavenly citizenship, may grow in the ex- 
 periences of the Kingdom, building altars and sanc- 
 tuaries all the way through life, like Abraham, en- 
 riching them with sentiment, crowding them with 
 beauty, surrounding them with affection, and pour- 
 ing over all the joy of consecrated memory. 
 
 The love of the sanctuary! — what an enriching 
 love it is, and how full are the rivers of God that 
 flow by its door ! How much it means to us all 
 that we can think of the Church as the Church of 
 our fathers and our fathers' fathers, can recall that 
 
Our Own Rivers 123 
 
 their footsteps preceded ours to the altars of God, 
 that their devotion in advance of ours hung 
 draperies of beauty and festoons of love upon the 
 sanctuary! In the joy of such affection the Psalm- 
 ist sings his song of the sanctuary, " How amiable 
 are thy tabernacles "; " Blessed are they that dwell 
 in thy house "; "I had rather be a doorkeeper in 
 the house of my God." God give us Naaman's 
 mood for our houses of worship ! Are they not 
 Abanah and Pharpar, and are they not better than 
 all others? Better? Yes; not because they are 
 more beautiful or more grand, but because they are 
 more personal, because there is a grace of senti- 
 ment about them and a touch of familiarity and 
 ownership. Can you sing it now out of your heart ? 
 
 " I love thy Kingdom, Lord, 
 The house of thine abode, 
 The Church our blest Redeemer saved 
 With his own precious blood. 
 
 " Beyond my highest joy 
 
 I prize her heavenly ways, 
 Her sweet communion, solemn vows, 
 Her hymns of love and praise." 
 
 Do we see and feel the truth now ? The rivers 
 of God are ours, our Abanah and Pharpar, better 
 
124 The Art of Sailing On 
 
 than all else. " All things are yours." Let the 
 heart grow daily and let it cherish sweetly the senti- 
 ments of the Kingdom. Let the soul be at home, 
 and let it grow always into that romantic and beau- 
 tiful sense of attachment which nothing can break 
 apart. "Who shall separate us?" Let the un- 
 seen treasures of the Word, of the sanctuary, of 
 the Kingdom itself, make the believer rich indeed. 
 
 Thus coming into the House of God, the wor- 
 shipper may look about him and see imaged to his 
 soul that which has grown familiar and dear to 
 him. To himself he can say, " This is mine; my 
 love and faith possess it; and it is test of all. My 
 Damascus is here, and my Abanah and Pharpar, the 
 rivers of God, flow by the door." 
 
 Blessed are they who are at home, who are 
 "planted in the house of Jehovah"; they shall 
 11 flourish in the courts of our God " ! 
 
A SONG OF THE HEART ABOUT 
 CHRIST 
 
" Thou hast the dew of thy youth." 
 
 Psalm 110:3. 
 
 
VIII 
 
 A SONG OF THE HEART ABOUT 
 CHRIST 
 
 " Thou hast the dew of thy youth." This 
 luminous sentence is written in a Psalm that belongs 
 to that great Song of the Heart which men have 
 sung through the ages about Jesus Christ. It is 
 strongly and plainly Messianic in its reach and 
 meaning. Our Lord made distinct use of it in a 
 discussion with the Pharisees when he was seeking 
 to establish the Lordship of the Messiah. He 
 asked them why it was that David had referred to 
 the Messiah as " my Lord." It is in this connec- 
 tion that Mark records that " the common people 
 heard him gladly." It was an instance, no doubt, 
 of our Lord's wonderful use of the Scripture, like 
 that other instance when he met the disciples on 
 the way to Emmaus, and opened to them the Scrip- 
 ture in such a remarkable way that their hearts 
 burned within them. If our Lord were here to 
 take this Psalm and open it to us, he would show 
 us how deeply impregnated it is with the thought 
 127 
 
128 The Art of Sailing On 
 
 of himself, how deeply freighted it is with the ideas 
 of his Kingdom, and how rich it is with the poetry 
 of spiritual emotion and prophecy. 
 
 The sentences of this Psalm were repeated as in 
 a great whispering gallery generations after the 
 time of their utterance. Not only did Jesus take 
 them upon his lips to repeat them : Peter also, on 
 the Day of Pentecost, quoted from the Psalm to 
 the disciples and the multitude. In almost a dozen 
 places also the writer of the Epistle to the He- 
 brews draws his language from this ancient song. 
 This alone makes the Psalm a precious one. It 
 has been the instrument of spiritual expression 
 through generations of time. • 
 
 Also it has a background of history. It is like 
 the mountains: first the foothills, back of them 
 the front range, back of that the Continental Di- 
 vide, and back of that the great, limitless sky 
 itself! This Psalm is like that. First it is appar- 
 ently a description of some human ruler whose 
 name is not given. And back of that sits David the 
 King in royal apparel. And back of that rises the 
 mysterious figure of Melchizedek, the Priest of 
 Salem. And back of that stands the silent, fas- 
 cinating figure of the world's Messiah. Strange 
 and wonderful Book that can paint many pictures 
 in one ! 
 
A Song of the Heart About Christ 129 
 
 One cannot read the Scripture as he reads his 
 morning newspaper, merely to note the event of 
 to-day or yesterday. One must read the Scripture 
 rather with his mind sweeping across the ages. 
 One must read the Bible, whether it is a conscious 
 thought or not, as one would read some great but 
 simple treatise on civilization, like Guizot's, or as 
 one would read Bacon's " Novum Organum " or 
 Newton's " Principia " — read it, I mean, with the 
 feeling that this Book is sweeping across earth and 
 sky, touching and illuminating incidents here and 
 there, lifting isolated events into lofty connections, 
 and linking all things together in that spiritual 
 logic which the Apostle Paul describes as the sum- 
 ming up of " all things in Christ, the things in the 
 heavens and the things upon the earth." 
 
 Historians call this the gift of " historical im- 
 agination." One can scarcely understand the 
 prophecies without regarding it and linking it to 
 the high fact of inspiration. To one so gifted there 
 are no isolated events. Things far distant reach 
 down to our day. Away yonder in the dim places 
 of the early years events and persons are moving 
 in the dawn of history, and their shadow is falling 
 down the ages, with new events and new figures 
 ever emerging into new light and new life. 
 
 One will not appreciate the Scripture as he ought 
 
130 The Art of Sailing On 
 
 until he learns to read it with this sweep of thought 
 backward and forward across the wide tract of 
 years and centuries. 
 
 Let us listen thus, eager to hear the Song of 
 the Ages, to the singer who penned the one hun- 
 dred and tenth Psalm, whose royal fingers knew 
 the sweet twanging of the harp, and whose heart 
 was in love with divine things — listen to him as he 
 sings his song of the world's Messiah. We can 
 touch but two or three of his sentences. 
 
 " Thou art a Priest for ever after the order of 
 Melchizedek." This sentence of the song arrests 
 our attention. 
 
 Turn back the pages quickly until you have come 
 to the Book of Genesis. It is the fourteenth chap- 
 ter of that book of beginnings. You will need to 
 read it again to refresh your memory of it. Abram 
 the Hebrew, upon whom the light of sacred history 
 is already resting, is returning from the rescue of 
 Lot and his family, and is passing the city of Sa- 
 lem, its name an emblem of peace, and its founda- 
 tions the rock-ribbed hills that are later to be 
 touched by the feet of the Son of Man. Down 
 from the hill yonder, from Salem, comes a mys- 
 terious person to greet Abram and to bring to him 
 bread and wine. Nothing do we know of him^ 
 neither father nor mother, nor tribe nor origin — 
 
A Song of the Heart About Christ 131 
 
 except that he was " priest of God Most High." 
 And his name was Melchizedek, which means my 
 king is righteous. Only three verses there in Gen- 
 esis, and the history sweeps on. 
 
 But the incident fastens itself upon the minds of 
 biblical writers. Here is David in this sweet Psalm 
 catching up the incident and lifting it into new light. 
 " Thou art a Priest for ever after the order of Mel- 
 chizedek." To his fine prophetic insight this an- 
 cient priest of Salem, who came down from the 
 mountains to bless Abram as he passed by, to him 
 as he sings his Song of the Heart, Melchizedek 
 was a type of the Messiah, coming down from the 
 high places to meet men in their journey. That 
 strange, unexpected figure of the priest of Salem, 
 the City of Peace, bursting suddenly upon the scene 
 yonder in the Old Testament is impressive indeed. 
 
 It is the impressiveness of mystery, his origin 
 unexplained, the order of his priesthood undefined. 
 And yet it is the impressiveness of dignity also, for 
 he is plainly the priest of the Most High God, his 
 very garments fragrant with the incense of lofty 
 altars. It is the impressiveness of spiritual wealth 
 also, for he brought to the traveler those gifts 
 which are typical of bountiful nourishment, the 
 bread and the wine. And it is the impressiveness 
 of authority, too, for to him as by something irre- 
 
132 The Art of Sailing On 
 
 sistible Abram gave " a tenth of all." Still more 
 it is the impressiveness of the supernatural, for he 
 came from heights that no man could tell. See 
 the stately tread of that far-away figure of Mel- 
 chizedek, coming down out of Salem to the 
 passerby — and he such a representative spiritual fa- 
 ther of the race as Abram too! — with gifts of 
 bread and wine, with gracious and hospitable bene- 
 dictions; and then turn to hear the royal harpist 
 in Jerusalem, his mind swelling with the vision of 
 the Christ. " Thou, thou, thou," he declares, 
 " art a Priest for ever after the order of Mel- 
 chizedek." 
 
 But this is not all. The current of this great 
 Book of the generations sweeps on, carrying this 
 thought upon its heaving bosom. Open the New 
 Testament now, in the Epistle to the Hebrews. 
 This is the book of the Bible that deals especially 
 with the priesthood of Jesus Christ. This writer 
 also is looking back at that stately, mysterious fig- 
 ure of Melchizedek. The sentence of David, too, 
 is in his memory. It has hung in the thoughts of 
 men, this sentence has, for generations. It has 
 grown richer, fuller, like some song of youth which 
 men still sing in their old age, and which is now 
 mellow, sweet, and low, with the flavor of years 
 about it. This writer in Hebrews is singing it still, 
 
A Song of the Heart About Christ 133 
 
 its application to Jesus as clear to his mind as the 
 sunlight, his understanding of it rich and full, hav- 
 ing the glow of personal acquaintance with the 
 great and true High Priest of God. Read those 
 chapters, five, six, and seven, in the Epistle to the 
 Hebrews, and you seem to hear the pipes of some 
 wonderful organ swelling out in the Song of the 
 Ages. (Hebrews 5:5-10; 6:19, 20; 7:1-3, 15- 
 17, 22, 24-28; 8 : 1, 2.) 
 
 Read these words of the Holy Scripture in the 
 manner suggested, the mind alive to the fact that 
 God's thought is filling the years, and suddenly as 
 we link these writings together, Genesis, Psalms, 
 Hebrews, we realize that we have been following 
 God's Messianic thought, " thinking God's 
 thoughts after him," as Kepler, the astronomer, 
 said, tracing his purpose from its early beginnings 
 on to its flowering out, as one might begin with 
 the sources of a stream in the mountains and follow 
 it down the mountainsides, sparkling and growing 
 every inch of the way — and suddenly it flashes out 
 upon us in full, great, splendid, glorious sunlight, 
 the thought of the eternal, unending, ever-living, 
 irresistible Priesthood of Jesus Christ: "Thou art 
 a Priest for ever after the order of Melchizedek." 
 
 No one can question who it is of whom he 
 speaks. It is that Grand Stranger to the world 
 
134 The Art of Sailing On 
 
 who came down from God's high hills, down to 
 Judea's low hills and valleys, to meet men, to 
 bring them God's own gifts of grace and love, to 
 receive from men their gifts and tithes, the Priest 
 of the Most High God, a Priest for ever — for 
 ever! A Priest whose priesthood is " after the 
 power of an endless life " ! Men think that they 
 can be indifferent to Jesus Christ, that they can 
 treat him with cavalier unconcern. But God has 
 written this sentence of him throughout his Book : 
 " Thou art a Priest for ever after the order of 
 Melchizedek." 
 
 This is one vista of this sweet and wonderful 
 Song of the Heart about Christ. 
 
 And there are still other insights of this spirit- 
 ual poet, still other contributions to the Song of 
 the Ages about Christ. Think of this for a mo- 
 ment: "In holy array, out of the womb of the 
 morning." Recently there have been many criti- 
 cisms of the author of " The Battle Hymn of the 
 Republic " for those fine lines — 
 
 " In the beauty of the lilies Christ was born across the sea, 
 With a glory in his bosom that transfigures you and me." 
 
 It may be that Mrs. Howe had these words of the 
 one hundred and tenth Psalm in mind : " In the 
 beauties of holiness from the womb of the morn- 
 
 
A Song of the Heart About Christ 135 
 
 ing " (A. V.). If you recall at this moment some 
 great sunrise that you have seen — in the mountains, 
 for example — you will know what the Psalmist is 
 saying. It is the Messiah coming like the dawn 
 upon the world, " from the womb of the morn- 
 ing." And what an insight of the truth about 
 Jesus Christ as the Light of the world ! 
 
 O sleeper, awake! Over hill and valley and 
 plain, down out of the sky, comes the mysterious 
 light. It is morning; the dawn of the day is here! 
 It is knocking at thine eyelids, it is pleading for 
 entrance at every closed door and shutter. See 
 yonder ! the very womb of the morning opens, and 
 the Light of the world comes forth. It is morn! 
 the dawn of day is here! "Awake! thou that 
 sleepest, and arise from the dead, and Christ shall 
 shine upon thee." 
 
 Ah, David, sweet harper of Jerusalem, thou 
 couldst not understand the full meaning of this ! 
 Thou hadst an insight of the truth that will later 
 bloom like a flower. Thy thought shall live on 
 until later singers shall lift the song high, singing 
 of the " Dayspring from on high," of the Light 
 of the world that came at Bethlehem, of the dark- 
 ness that fled at the coming of Jesus. 
 
 Christ has brought morning light into the world. 
 This is another vista of the Psalm. 
 
136 The Art of Sailing On 
 
 There is one more description that is worthy of 
 pause : " Thou hast the dew of thy youth." Think, 
 of this for a little time. The dew! the dew! — 
 that mystery of the morning, strange product of 
 nature's alchemy, wrought in the darkness of her 
 wonderful laboratory. Down from the embracing 
 air the dewdrops come trooping upon the earth, 
 an army of them, shining like pearls and diamonds. 
 The dew ! Is it not the Creator pouring life daily 
 upon the earth, renewing it, making it perpetually 
 young? It is an old world, this is, gray and 
 decrepit and bent and twisted with age, but God 
 keeps the world young with dew. God's elixir, 
 is it not? the secret of youth which philosophers 
 have sought in vain. " Thou hast the dew of thy 
 youth ! " It is the echo of Isaac's benediction upon 
 Jacob : " God give thee of the dew of heaven." 
 
 What a sentence it is ! What a swing it has 
 outward towards the beauty of the world, inward 
 towards the secrets of nature, and upward towards 
 the glory of God! 
 
 And this is the great thing the sweet singer is 
 saying about Christ. In the vision of his own 
 heart he is gazing at the sublime figure of the Son 
 of God, mysterious, stately, simple, wondrously di- 
 vine, yet wondrously human, treading the moun- 
 taintops in grand solemnity, coming down like 
 
 
A Song of the Heart About Christ 137 
 
 Melchizedek with bread and wine out of Salem; 
 and suddenly, with the vision and longing of his 
 heart for a great Friend, an eternal Priest between 
 God and man, rising in his soul, the song swells 
 out to the accompaniment of the harp into this 
 great utterance — " Thou — thou hast the dew of thy 
 youth." 
 
 Oh, it is a wonderful thing to say about the 
 world's Friend and Saviour! It proclaims the 
 truth of the unending vigor of Christ. " Thou hast 
 the dew of thy youth." No wonder that Eng- 
 land's laureate addresses him in the lines of " In 
 Memoriam " — 
 
 " Strong Son of God, Immortal Love." 
 
 No wonder that William E. Gladstone answered 
 the letter of a skeptical friend thus : " All I think, 
 all I write, all I am is based upon the divinity of 
 Jesus Christ." 
 
 " Thou hast the dew of thy youth." There is 
 no decay or decrepitude about Jesus. The world 
 waxes old, but Jesus never grows old. Plato and 
 ten thousand other great ones of the earth are 
 hoary-headed with age. Jesus is fresh and strong 
 like a May morning. 
 
 It is the note of strength that is in Jesus that 
 
138 The Art of Sailing On 
 
 strikes the heart. His appeal is that of the Strong 
 Son of God, blooming in immortal youth, " the 
 same yesterday and to-day, yea and for ever," no 
 burden or weariness of the ages upon him ! " Thou 
 hast the dew of thy youth." 
 
 How much this thought of the inexhaustible 
 vigor of Christ — the living, active, youthful Christ 
 — meant to the early Christians is clear in more 
 ways than one. In his essay on " The Roman 
 Catacombs " Dean Stanley describes a picture of 
 the Good Shepherd that is to be seen on those sub- 
 terranean walls. It is a " beautiful, graceful figure, 
 bounding down as from his native hills, with the 
 happy sheep nestling on his shoulder, with the 
 pastoral pipes in his hand, blooming in immortal 
 youth." Perchance it was an Hellenic conception; 
 it was the Greek idea mingling with the Christian 
 thought. Still more it was the prophetic thought 
 of Christ, as in this Psalm. The dew of God was 
 upon him, the bloom of youth was about him. And 
 it matters much to us to think of him in this way, 
 to know that this Grand Stranger, who came into 
 our world like Melchizedek from Salem, is a 
 Friend who never wearies of his cares, is never ex- 
 hausted by his burden, is never aged by his suffer- 
 ings. He has a " priesthood unchangeable." 
 " Wherefore also he is able to save to the utter- 
 
A Song of the Heart About Christ 139 
 
 most them that draw near unto God through him, 
 seeing he ever liveth to make intercession for 
 them." 
 
 And this same vigor and youthfulness of Christ 
 have been imported into Christianity itself to give 
 a certain character of strength, a certain strain of 
 heroism, a certain mark of sublimity. When Rob- 
 ert Weir had completed for the Capitol at Wash- 
 ington his noble painting, " The Embarkment of 
 the Pilgrims," he called in some of his artist 
 friends to inspect it. They told him the truth 
 about it. The coloring was fine, the positions were 
 good, but the faces were expressionless. Then the 
 artist knew that there was a secret of the life of 
 the Pilgrims that he had missed. He began to 
 study their history, he caught their spirit, he be- 
 came, it is said, a converted man. Then he took 
 up his brush again, to leave his imperishable record 
 in the rotunda of the Capitol. In the olden time 
 the Lord made an artist of Bezaleel. So did this 
 artist learn how to give expression to the faces of 
 the Pilgrims, when he knew by experience the 
 strength of their faith. 
 
 Pilgrim Fathers, were they ? Yes, but they were 
 not old. They were literally young men, only one 
 of them being in middle life at the time of the 
 landing. Miles Standish was scarcely more than 
 
140 The Art of Sailing On 
 
 thirty-five. Governor Bradford was thirty-one. 
 Edward Winslow the diplomat was thirty-seven. 
 In another sense they were young too — young be- 
 cause the dew of spiritual youth was upon them, 
 because they were inspired to do their work by a 
 faith that knew no obstacles, that suffered no de- 
 crepitude of age, that could build a new country 
 and a new State, because it was a new faith. Mat- 
 thew Arnold, in one of his essays, imagines 
 Shakespeare and Vergil accompanying the Pilgrim 
 Fathers. " Think," he says, " what intolerable 
 company Shakespeare and Vergil would have found 
 them." Yet these same intolerable Pilgrims had 
 learned the secret of Jesus Christ. Young men 
 they were, and yet Pilgrim Fathers also — fathers of 
 all who share the inspiration of Jesus Christ, fa- 
 thers also of the best elements of our national life 
 even to this hour. 
 
 And so it has been all along the centuries with 
 those who have done the work of Christ's King- 
 dom. The dew of youth, its vigor, its strength, 
 its joyfulness, has rested upon those who have 
 touched hands with Jesus Christ. 
 
 Shall not the Church, shall not all who are his 
 friends, rejoice in this? Let us put a joyful note 
 into our work for him. Let us labor ns in the 
 company of One who is strong and unwearied. Let 
 
A Song of the Heart About Christ 141 
 
 us know that his cause is not moribund, nor can 
 it ever be. Let us beware lest our own faith be 
 decrepit and weak with age. Let us grow, not old, 
 but young, in the service of our Lord. 
 
 For of our Lord it is written : " Thou hast the 
 dew of thy youth." 
 
THE GUILD OF BRICKLAYERS 
 
" / am doing a great work, so that I cannot come 
 down: why should the work cease, whilst I leave 
 it and come down to you?" 
 
 Nehemiah 6:3. 
 
IX 
 THE GUILD OF BRICKLAYERS 
 
 Nehemiah was at work on the wall. He was 
 laying bricks. He was a member of that Guild of 
 Bricklayers which from the beginning until now 
 has done God's work of building. There was a 
 fine, brave spirit about him. His words ring out 
 clear and strong. Plainly he loved his work, and 
 he wrought honorably and joyously at his task. 
 Quite unconsciously he spoke here one of the great 
 strong sentences that men have uttered about their 
 work for God. 
 
 Apparently he was a quiet man, this man on the 
 wall. Yet he was intense. It is impressive to see 
 him there working away with his trowel. Nothing 
 counted with him but to do his work according to 
 command, and to keep on working until the work 
 was done. We are apt to admire a man of this 
 kind. We say, " That is thoroughgoing and mas- 
 terful!" 
 
 The messengers came from Sanballat and Tobiah 
 and Geshem the Arabian ; five times they came and 
 145 
 
146 The Art of Sailing On 
 
 invited the silent man on the wall to come down 
 and confer with them. It was an honorable invi- 
 tation. Nevertheless, he never stopped his work, 
 but went right on. These were great and impor- 
 tant worthies, with high-sounding names — San- 
 ballat, Tobiah, and Geshem! "No matter," he 
 said to their messengers, " it is of no use to call 
 me down. They are very great and important men, 
 and I thank them for the courtesy extended to me 
 in the village of the Plain of Ono; but I cannot 
 come down; I am too busy. I am doing a great 
 work. Why should the work cease? " 
 
 If they were not utterly lacking in comprehen- 
 sion, Sanballat, Tobiah, and Geshem must have be- 
 gun to suspect, with the same answer coming back 
 over and over, that the quiet man on the wall was 
 master of the situation. There was something 
 strong in his attitude, and his words contained that 
 forthright thrust of human speech out of the heart 
 that gets beneath the guard. We might stop to 
 admire the finesse of the man, his quick wit, his 
 keen perception, his ready diplomacy. So also we 
 might spend time upon his gift of language, the 
 felicitous way he had of speaking a quick and 
 quotable sentence. Let us rather try to reach the 
 heart of the man, to know the spirit that was in 
 him. 
 
The Guild of Bricklayers 147 
 
 He believed in the magnitude of his work. 
 Plainly this is his thought when he says, " I am 
 doing a great work." It was common labor that 
 he was doing — fitting bricks and stones into their 
 places on the wall — but to him it was like fitting 
 diamonds in a crown. It was not his own work; it 
 was God's work. He was doing it with that 
 thought in mind. There is a ring in his voice, and 
 there is a fashion of gesture about him, both of 
 which carry conviction as to his own views of what 
 he was doing. It is easy to judge whether a man 
 believes in his work. 
 
 He never knew what an exalted sentiment he 
 had uttered that day on the wall. Nor did he 
 realize what help his words would bring to men 
 in the long years to come. It is one of the- strong 
 and stirring pictures of the Word of God. If we 
 could hang it upon the walls of memory what help 
 and stimulus it might prove to be ! 
 
 The best work that gets itself done in the world 
 is done in this fashion — out of the heart, with 
 mighty conviction. With such workmen there is 
 no shrinking or shirking and no missing of the 
 point. With such workmen there will be a ring of 
 pride and joy in the voice. A man must believe in 
 his own work. Then he will do it out of a full 
 heart. 
 
148 The Art of Sailing On 
 
 It was an exalted sentiment that Nehemiah ut- 
 tered, but not better than his work deserved. This 
 he knew. He was only laying bricks on the wall, 
 but it was the wall of Jerusalem that he was help- 
 ing to rebuild. "A man's reach must exceed his 
 grasp." He saw and touched in his heart far more 
 than his hands could handle. It was the invisible 
 Kingdom of God, far-stretching, far-working — it 
 was for this that he was laboring. Hear him as 
 he lifts his trowel and fixes a stone in its place: 
 " I am doing a great work. Every stone that goes 
 into this wall helps to build an everlasting cause. 
 This is why I cannot come down. Why should 
 such work as this cease? " 
 
 May we catch the spirit of this quiet workman 
 on the wall as we think of the magnitude of God's 
 work in the world ! What a work it is ! What a 
 just pride one may feel who is doing it as best he 
 may! It is not the magnitude of what the work- 
 man does, it is the magnitude of the work, that 
 counts. Yonder in the far south our nation is do- 
 ing a work of vast magnitude. A thin isthmus that 
 binds two continents is yielding to the tools of 
 men. The waters of two oceans will soon flow 
 together. The eyes of the nations of the world are 
 upon this task. It is one of the colossal labors of 
 history. The commonest workman there who han- 
 
The Guild of Bricklayers 149 
 
 dies pick or shovel, or oils machinery amidst dirt 
 and grease, or runs upon errands from place to 
 place, might hold up his head and say with pride 
 in his voice, " I am doing a great work." It is 
 not the magnitude of what we do, it is the mag- 
 nitude of the work, that counts. 
 
 It is well for God's workmen to realize this. 
 The work itself has vast magnitude. The work 
 exalts the workman. It matters little as to the par- 
 ticular task: the work itself is great. The Old 
 Testament worshippers grasped this. To snuff 
 candles in the Tabernacle, or to carry wood for the 
 sacrifice, or to wear a linen ephod like Samuel — 
 this was honor enough. What pride and joy are in 
 the heart of the Psalmist: "I had rather be a 
 doorkeeper in the house of my God than to dwell 
 in the tents of wickedness." Anything for God 
 is a great work. It need not be large in itself. His 
 work is never otherwise than large. 
 
 Have we not often watched the glee of a little 
 child in doing a slight task? Every movement is 
 one of secret pride and happiness. His little shoul- 
 ders seem to him like those of Atlas bearing great 
 burdens upon them. It is a scene that teaches pro- 
 found lessons. Too often as the years go by the 
 joy of workmanship passes away. The burdens 
 of the Kingdom are full of pressure. Slight tasks 
 
150 The Art of Sailing On 
 
 even seem hard. We forget how great the work 
 is. Let us keep a childlike joy in the work of our 
 God. Let us move with free and happy step. Let 
 us not fail of uplift in the soul when we think of 
 the magnitude of his work. Our work may be 
 measured by shovelfuls or by a meager tale of 
 bricks; but if so be we are at work on the walls of 
 God's city, it is always a great work. 
 
 But the man on the wall who was laying bricks, 
 however much he magnified the work, never forgot 
 the importance of the workman. " I am doing a 
 great work, so that I cannot come down: why 
 should the work cease whilst I leave it? " I — I — 
 I — all this has an egotistical sound. A score of 
 Nehemiahs might " come down " and still the work 
 would go on. Surely this workman is overesti- 
 mating his own importance ! God's work is greater 
 than all the workers ; the failure of the workman is 
 not the failure of the work. 
 
 All this is true. Nevertheless there is a just 
 form of egotism that belongs to the Kingdom of 
 God. It is the same emphasis of self-importance 
 which the workman on yonder building must feel. 
 " If I come down the work will cease — my work 
 will cease — and my work is part of the whole." 
 The workman must believe in himself, in his rela- 
 tion to the work, else the work will suffer. He 
 
The Guild of Bricklayers 151 
 
 must believe in his own responsibility and obliga- 
 tion. He must believe that every workman has 
 his work to do. If any of the workmen drop out 
 or " come down," the work will suffer. This 
 sense of obligation is in Nehemiah's words: " Why 
 should the work cease whilst I leave it?" 
 
 Many fail to realize how dependent God's work 
 is upon the individual workman. They say, " The 
 work is great; it will go on; I shall not be missed." 
 Yes, the work is great, but it ceases the moment that 
 any workman comes down from the wall. If we 
 could realize that our unfaithfulness in some minor 
 duty in reality causes God's work to cease, it would 
 almost terrify us to think of deserting any real post 
 of duty. Consider what a serious thing it is to 
 come down from the wall, and thus to cause God's 
 work — the work that he has put in our hands — to 
 cease. 
 
 One of the greatest difficulties which the Church 
 has to face is failure at the point of individual re- 
 sponsibility. So many workmen " come down " ! 
 So many excuses are offered for quitting the work ! 
 " They all with one consent began to make ex- 
 cuse." What a clear understanding the Master 
 has of our little travesty of excuses ! There will 
 be some of us who will say, " I have no ability 
 for the work." This may be true; but are you 
 
152 The Art of Sailing On 
 
 willing to work with such ability as you have? 
 There will be others who will say, " I have no 
 time; I have other work to do." This may be 
 true; but are you willing that God's work should 
 cease? There will be still others who will say, " I 
 believe in the work, but I cannot do it myself; let 
 others do it." This may be true; but how can any 
 other workman do the work that belongs to you? 
 
 In the Kingdom there is marked emphasis upon 
 the individual. Let each worker do his own work 
 — his own work. " Each man shall bear his own 
 burden." The Master Workman gives room for 
 individual abilities and personal traits, yet he would 
 melt these all together into a common stock for 
 God. The Old Testament contains striking exam- 
 ples of variety in type. Elisha was called from 
 among a dozen farmers who were holding a 
 ploughing-bee. Gideon came forth from the 
 threshing-floor with the sweet smell of the crushed 
 wheat upon him. Moses was engaged at his shep- 
 herd's task when the bush flamed forth on the 
 mountainside and God's call came to him. Many 
 individuals and many personal traits and experi- 
 ences these represent, but all of them to become 
 useful in the Kingdom. The emphasis is laid upon 
 the spirit of the workman. 
 
 No matter about learning and position. What 
 
The Guild of Bricklayers 153 
 
 spirit has the workman for God's work? No mat- 
 ter about appearance. " Perchance he was behind 
 the door when beauty was passed around." What 
 is his purpose as a workman? Will he lay bricks 
 on the wall if the Master Workman should set him 
 to do this common task? 
 
 There are great structural traits of character 
 that are essential to good workmanship for God. 
 Some of these are so commonplace as to be easily 
 overlooked. Promptness and alertness are very 
 necessary. Napoleon remarked about one of his 
 generals that he was the " first to awake on the day 
 of battle." The cause of Jehovah is important 
 enough to quicken all our faculties. " It is time 
 for you to awake out of sleep ; for now is salva- 
 tion nearer to us than when we first believed." 
 " Awake, thou that sleepest, and arise from the 
 dead, and Christ shall shine upon thee." 
 
 The gift of action is another structural trait. 
 It is well for the Guild of Bricklayers to assemble 
 on occasions and pass resolutions. But what of 
 the gift of action? " I have heard very little," 
 said Horace Mann, " of the resolutions of the dis- 
 ciples, but a great deal of the Acts of the Apos- 
 tles." Keep your trowel busy all day long, O work- 
 man on the walls ! " The Great Taskmaster's 
 eye " is upon you, and his work is enough to fill 
 
154 The Art of Sailing On 
 
 the hands and hearts of all who love the thrill of 
 a great task. No day ever dawns in the Kingdom 
 of Christ in which there is not something to do 
 that is worth the doing. 
 
 To these traits of character let us not fail to 
 add also the gift of imagination, to make efficient 
 and joyous workmanship in the Guild of Brick- 
 layers. In the American Revolution there were 
 two generals operating in the same field. One of 
 them was reckoned as an abler commander than 
 the other, but his biographers tell us that he lacked 
 what the other possessed — the gift of imagination. 
 He could not see through the mist of circumstance, 
 he could not follow a plan of campaign afar off, 
 he could not project himself into a victorious idea. 
 The workman who is overborne by the " eternal 
 commonplaces of religion," who cannot lift him- 
 self by his grasp of spiritual ideals and hopes above 
 the common level, will yield all too easily to the 
 temptation to " come down." High thoughts on 
 the wall where the work is being done, and trans- 
 forming hopes, together with lofty and untiring 
 visions of all that overlies and underlies the task 
 — these make the work great. 
 
 And besides these structural forces in the spirit 
 of the worker, there are those grand old virtues of 
 courage and perseverance and purpose that keep. 
 
The Guild of Bricklayers 155 
 
 right on with the work through a thousand dif- 
 ficulties and apparent defeats. 
 
 " Hard upon hard makes a poor stone wall, 
 Soft upon soft makes none at all." 
 
 Bricks and mortar together harden into the true 
 defence of Zion. Difficulties may thicken on every 
 side. Even so, to a true workman there is a fierce 
 delight in doing one's duty and going on with the 
 work. "Having done all — to stand"! What a 
 high sense of privilege there is in this — that God's 
 work, though so great, is ever dependent upon 
 man ! And if a privilege, it is also an obligation. 
 If there is aught that you can do to strengthen the 
 wall, do it heartily as unto the Lord. If you can 
 lift only so much as the weight of a finger of the 
 burden, fail not to do it. Throw all your powers 
 into the work. Believe in your own importance. 
 Indulge a sanctified egotism. Dare to say, " I am 
 doing a great work." Dare to believe that God's 
 work is dependent upon you. 
 
 When this is the spirit of the workmen, then 
 great building eras come in the Kingdom of God.* 
 If God's people everywhere had something more of 
 
 *See Dr. Horace Bushnell's sermon, "Building Eras in 
 Religion." 
 
156 The Art of Sailing On 
 
 Nehemiah's spirit, how rapidly the work, would go 
 forward ! Every man would await orders from the 
 Master Workman, and there would be a gleeful 
 tone among all the workers. Brains would be 
 clearer and hands more skilful, for a high spirit 
 of workmanship invariably clears and strengthens 
 the faculties; the tools of the workers would sound 
 a triumphant note and everywhere there would be 
 zest and purpose. In such times also difficulties 
 seem harmless to foil the success of the work. 
 Rather difficulties seem made to be conquered; and 
 the high chivalry and adventurous touch of an 
 heroic Gospel sing in the blood of men. In such 
 building eras men rejoice in the work and thrill 
 with its discipline and hardness. In such times 
 nothing stands in the way. When the Kingdom of 
 God has its building eras, the old pride of work- 
 manship lays hold upon all the Guild of the Brick- 
 layers. Then every one must take a hand, and no 
 man will find an adequate excuse. In such a day 
 men may grow tired in the work, but never tired 
 of the work. Then will the members of the Guild 
 come with their inventive genius, and their initia- 
 tive, and their enterprise, and their noble idealism, 
 and their constructive ability, and place all these 
 and more at the service of the work. Then will 
 the workman say valiantly out of his heart — there 
 
The Guild of Bricklayers 157 
 
 will be a ring of courage and conviction in his voice 
 — " Why should the work cease whilst I leave it? " 
 O Lord our God, give us many workmen on the 
 walls like unto thy servant Nehemiah! Increase 
 the number and the strength of the membership in 
 the Guild of Bricklayers, and give them a high and 
 joyous spirit for their task, so that " muscle-mak- 
 ing toil " may not dismay them, so that nothing 
 may cause them to come down, so that a new and 
 vaster building era may come into thy Kingdom 
 on the earth 1 
 
THE HONORS OF THE HOUSE 
 
" / entered into thy house, thou gavest me no 
 water for my feet; but she hath wetted my feet 
 with her tears, and wiped them with her hair. 
 Thou gavest me no kiss; but she, since the time I 
 came in, hath not ceased to kiss my feet. My head 
 with oil thou didst not anoint: but she hath 
 anointed my feet with ointment." 
 
 Luke 7 : 44-46. 
 
X 
 
 THE HONORS OF THE HOUSE * 
 
 Our Lord and Master seldom rebuked men. 
 He was all gentleness in manner and deeply tender 
 in speech. He sought to lay the foundations of 
 his Kingdom, not in denunciation, but in appeal. 
 He approached men more often with entreaty than 
 command, and his lips were utter strangers to the 
 bitterness of blame. His disciples in the world 
 who are growing in likeness to him will likewise 
 turn away from bitterness and rebuke, and will 
 value gentleness and gracious courtesy and tender 
 entreaty, for " the wisdom that is from above is 
 first pure, then peaceable, gentle, easy to be en- 
 treated." 
 
 Jesus of Nazareth was the Prince of Gentlemen, 
 and his manliness had that winsome dignity and 
 grace which mark the high soul of courtesy behind 
 the gracious manners of the man. In our day men 
 would do well to study the courtesy of the Man 
 of Nazareth, especially his manners toward the 
 
 * An Address at the Sacrament of the Lord's Supper. 
 161 
 
1 62 The Art of Sailing On 
 
 poor and needy, his regard for women, and his 
 open sincerity toward the heart of a friend. 
 
 It strikes one with surprise at first to find several 
 instances in the Gospels in which Jesus seemed to 
 forget his gentleness and to allow himself to speak 
 words of rebuke. Such instances however do not 
 disprove his gentle spirit. How often it has been 
 shown that profound feelings of indignation may 
 not be incompatible with the greatest gentleness of 
 soul. The rebuke of a gentleman therefore against 
 an act of incivility or discourtesy is more severe 
 than that of others, for it is the stern judgment of 
 a courteous soul upon acts of rudeness, it is the 
 stamp of indignation placed by a sensitive spirit 
 upon the inconsiderate and ungracious acts of men. 
 To be rebuked by Jesus of Nazareth for a common 
 act of impoliteness was to be rebuked with double 
 severity, for his own instincts of courtesy were so 
 true, his own appreciation of the fineness of a 
 gracious act was so unerring and sincere. 
 
 It is not one of our theologians, but a poet rather, 
 who reminds us that the art of courtesy is one of 
 the most important practised in the world, and of 
 all the fine arts it is probably the only one that is 
 cultivated in the next world as well as in this. 
 When we have fully learned this lesson of the life 
 of Jesus and the Gospel which he preached and 
 
The Honors of the House 163 
 
 practised among men, his Church will become the 
 most hospitable place in the world, where men will 
 learn to think twice before they speak ill of one an- 
 other, where gentleness will abound and religious 
 incivilities will be unknown, where courtesies to 
 the stranger and the unknown will be prompt and 
 eager, where the poor and even the outcast will find 
 a welcome whose sincerity is like that of the Mas- 
 ter himself, and where courtesy to the Lord and 
 courtesy to men will be written on all the vestments 
 and on the very walls of the sanctuary itself. 
 
 One day our Lord and Master was a guest — an 
 invited guest — in the house of a Pharisee. His 
 name was Simon; he was one of the several Simons 
 of the New Testament narrative. He had desired 
 Jesus to come to his table; yet his hospitality was 
 " qualified and condescending," his welcome was 
 " cold and measured." He received his guest, but 
 not with " the honors of the house." 
 
 It was the custom of the day, upon the arrival of 
 a guest in the house, to show him immediate atten- 
 tion. There were courtesies of the house that were 
 due to the guest. Servants brought water, no mat- 
 ter whether his journey had been long or short, 
 that he might bathe his feet. Oil also was brought 
 that he might anoint his head. And more impor- 
 tant than anything else, when the guest arrived the 
 
164 The Art of Sailing On 
 
 host came forward at once and gave him a kiss of 
 welcome. These were the ordinary civilities, the 
 " honors of the house," which every guest had a 
 right to expect. 
 
 But when Jesus entered the house of Simon none 
 of these courtesies was shown to him. The Phari- 
 see's hospitality had an air of condescension about 
 it, as if to say, " It is enough for me merely to 
 receive him at my table." Our Lord evidently no- 
 ticed his host's want of politeness and considera- 
 tion, and it pained him deeply, although he uttered 
 no complaint. 
 
 Strangely enough there came another person into 
 Simon's house, who was not bidden to the feast. 
 It was a woman of the town, a sinner, withal a 
 penitent sinner whose heart had in some way been 
 touched by the transforming love of Christ. She 
 had so little importance that her name is not even 
 mentioned — simply a nameless woman whom Jesus 
 had helped. Her act was one of almost unwar- 
 rantable interference; yet so wonderful also in its 
 surprise and spontaneity of love that it has been 
 written down here in the imperishable record of 
 the Gospel of Luke. Learning that the Master 
 was reclining at Simon's table, she made her way 
 into the presence of the host and his guest. Be- 
 neath her cloak she carried a flask, " an alabaster 
 
The Honors of the House 165 
 
 cruse," not of ordinary oil but of perfumed oint- 
 ment. Her purpose was to anoint the feet of Jesus 
 as he lay at the table. 
 
 It must have been a silent and impressive scene. 
 In the midst of her preparation for the anointing, 
 she burst into tears, as she thought of her own life, 
 her sorrow and sin. Her tears rained down upon 
 the Master's feet, and because she had no cloth to 
 wipe them, she unbound the coils of her hair, and, 
 weeping still, she wiped his feet with the hair of 
 her head, notwithstanding that it was the greatest 
 humiliation for a woman to be seen in public with 
 her hair down. And as if this were not enough, in 
 the very abandon of grief and love she stooped and 
 kissed his feet, not once, but again and again and 
 again, for the word here says that she " kissed 
 much." And when this had been done she poured 
 the contents of the alabaster flask upon his feet. 
 Thus did this nameless and penitent sinner pay to 
 Simon's guest the honors of the house. 
 
 This was not all. The Lord looked at his host's 
 face and knew what was passing in his mind. To 
 himself he was saying, " This man, if he were a 
 prophet, would have perceived who and what man- 
 ner of woman this is that toucheth him, that she is 
 a sinner." Then Jesus spoke. " Simon," he said 
 — his tone must have been deeply tender even as 
 
1 66 The Art of Sailing On 
 
 he uttered his indignant rebuke — " a certain lender 
 had two debtors: the one owed five hundred shil- 
 lings, and the other fifty. When they had not 
 wherewith to pay, he forgave them both. Which of 
 them therefore will love him most? " And Simon 
 answered, " He, I suppose, to whom he forgave the 
 most." And he said unto him, " Thou hast rightly 
 judged." Then turning to the woman, he went on 
 to the end of his quiet and unerring rebuke. " Si- 
 mon," he said, " seest thou this woman? I entered 
 thy house, thou gavest me no water for my feet: 
 but she hath wetted my feet with her tears and 
 wiped them with her hair. Thou gavest me no 
 kiss; but she, since the time I came in, hath not 
 ceased to kiss my feet. My head with oil thou didst 
 not anoint; but she hath anointed my feet with oint- 
 ment. Wherefore I say unto thee, her sins, which 
 are many, are forgiven, for she loved much ; but to 
 whom little is forgiven, the same loveth little." 
 
 Ah ! it was a keen rebuke and well deserved ! nor 
 do we read that Jesus' host spoke a word in reply. 
 Let us believe that Simon felt especially the weight 
 of Jesus' words, " Thou gavest me no kiss." Our 
 Lord might have foregone the water for his feet, 
 the oil for his head, but — " Thou gavest me no 
 kiss ! " It was not vanity that directed this rebuke. 
 It was the hurt soul of One who knew that he was 
 
The Honors of the House 167 
 
 the servant of men for the best things of earth and 
 heaven. He craved the welcome of his host, not 
 in words alone, but in deeds. He desired the out- 
 going of the heart in love, the sign of hospitality, 
 the token of friendship, the pledge of loyalty. He 
 missed the neglected honors of the house, the marks 
 of civility in the very manners of men, which might 
 have told him that at least he had the welcome of 
 an ordinary guest. 
 
 Still he was silent until the woman came — came 
 with her broken alabaster-box and her broken heart 
 as well, came with her unbidden, unrestrained tears 
 of penitence, came with her strange acts of devo- 
 tion. Still he was silent — he might never have ut- 
 tered his rebuke at all — until the Pharisee in his 
 heart complained — complained of the character of 
 the woman and of Jesus' toleration of her, com- 
 plained of her unwonted show of devotion, her un- 
 expected and surprising abandon of love and peni- 
 tence. Then the indignation of Christ spoke ! — not 
 indignation for himself alone, but for one who had 
 done him the neglected honors of the house. Yes, 
 the indignation of Jesus Christ, the Prince of Gen- 
 tlemen, the gentlest spirit known among men — his 
 indignation flashed forth. " Simon," he said, 
 " thou gavest me no kiss ! " What a solemn re- 
 buke was this ! 
 
1 68 The Art of Sailing On 
 
 Jesus Christ is the guest of our house to-day. 
 Let us speak these remaining words to one another 
 quietly and intently. We have spread our table 
 and have desired him to come. The honors of the 
 house belong to him. Let every civility, every 
 courtesy of the soul, be paid to him. This is the 
 place of love because it is the place of forgiveness. 
 It is the atonement for sin that is set forth in this 
 broken bread and this cup. It is pardon in the love 
 of Christ that is spoken of here. It is peace 
 through his blood that is proclaimed by this table. 
 It is his table, and it is ours; we have spread it in 
 remembrance of him. He is the Guest of the 
 House. It is the place of forgiveness, therefore it 
 is the place of love. Other differences may stand, 
 riches or poverty, social position or obscurity, power 
 or weakness. In one thing we are alike: we are 
 pardoned men and women, pardoned through the 
 blood of Jesus Christ. He has paid the price of 
 our freedom; we are redeemed with a price. 
 
 What a levelling place this is — the Lord's table! 
 The rich and the poor, the strong and the weak, 
 all are here on the same platform — forgiveness. 
 Jesus Christ is the center of a great democracy, and 
 this table of his is the common table for all peni- 
 tent, trusting souls, for the saint and for the sinner. 
 Thomas Carlyle thought that democracy was born 
 
The Honors of the House 169 
 
 at Bunker Hill. It was born much longer ago than 
 that: it was born, says another, at Bethlehem. It 
 was this that Simon did not understand. He did 
 not understand that the woman had a place at the 
 feast, a surer place than his own. She stood on 
 the platform of forgiveness. She had been much 
 forgiven, therefore she loved much. Hence her 
 tears and her kisses and her broken jar of per- 
 fumed ointment. But Simon fancied himself on 
 another platform. In his soul he did not realize 
 forgiveness. He would have said that he scarcely 
 needed forgiveness. He had naught as he sup- 
 posed to repent of. He gave the Master no water 
 for his feet, no oil for his head, no kiss for his lips 
 — no honors of the house — for his heart had never 
 melted, his soul had never gone out in love, he had 
 not come to stand on the platform of forgiveness. 
 
 We see it all now. May we feel it too in our 
 hearts ! We are all alike ; we have nothing to pay. 
 Some of us have been forgiven five hundred shil- 
 lings, and some of us but fifty, yet none of us had 
 anything wherewith to pay. For the saint as well 
 as for the sinner, it is the place of love because it 
 is the place of forgiveness. 
 
 So then all the honors of the house belong to 
 the Lord who bought us with his precious blood. 
 There will be no courtesy wanting that we can show 
 
170 The Art of Sailing On 
 
 to him. " This do in remembrance of me." It is 
 a feast of those high courtesies of the soul that are 
 born of faith and love. Let not the Master re- 
 quire to say to any of us in the house where he 
 is the guest, " Thou gavest me no kiss." We shall 
 look into his face and remember what he has done 
 for us. We shall recall again with reverent atten- 
 tion the sacred story of his passion for the sons of 
 men. We shall know again that fresh wonder of 
 the soul, like the surprise of a little child, at the 
 glory of his Cross. Our Lord who is our Guest 
 shall have no " cold and measured welcome of the 
 Pharisee." 
 
 It would be no strange thing if some of us who 
 sit here were to break an alabaster-box for Jesus 
 Christ. "Love I much? I'm much forgiven." 
 It may occur to some of us here that we have never 
 done much for Christ. It may come upon us with 
 almost overwhelming power that we have only 
 done the ordinary things, the things we could scarce 
 avoid doing, the duties that were plainly laid upon 
 us. It may occur to some of us that we have neg- 
 lected some of the honors of the house, some of 
 the courtesies which only a forgiven heart can pay. 
 It may appear, as we think of it, that we have had 
 little enthusiasm, little overleaping joy in the heart, 
 little of that eager, passionate, unrestrained love in 
 
The Honors of the House 171 
 
 the soul, which at times will rise and go to meet the 
 Master with a kiss, out of pure welcome in the 
 heart; that will now and again " kiss the Son " — 
 it is the Psalmist's phrase — as a token of sheer, 
 strong, happy, undisturbed friendship, as a pledge 
 of eager, willing, abounding loyalty in the soul. 
 May this be the spirit of the sacred hour to which 
 we are now come ! 
 
LOADS AND BURDENS 
 
" Each man shall bear his own burden." 
 
 Galatians 6:5. 
 
 " Bear ye one another's burdens, and so fulfil the 
 law of Christ." 
 
 Galatians 6:2. 
 
XI 
 LOADS AND BURDENS 
 
 Here are two texts of Scripture that appear to 
 contradict one another. With one pen-stroke the 
 Apostle Paul writes to the Galatian Christians, 
 " Bear ye one another's burdens," and with almost 
 the next stroke of the pen he says, " Each man 
 shall bear his own burden." 
 
 The contradiction, however, is only apparent, as 
 a little study of the chapter, and especially of the 
 Greek words used, will at once reveal. This clear- 
 headed apostle does not write without measuring 
 his words with great care, and his double statement 
 is very helpful in understanding the subject of 
 burden-bearing. 
 
 " Each man shall bear his own burden." This 
 is nature's law. It belongs to the constitution of 
 things. 
 
 When he wrote this sentence the apostle used 
 a word which the Greeks were accustomed to em- 
 ploy when they spoke of the freight or lading of 
 175 
 
176 The Art of Sailing On 
 
 a ship — phortion. Every man has his appropriate 
 load or burden, his life-freight or lading, to carry. 
 There is a burden in this sense for each of us. It 
 belongs to the inner circle of life where each man 
 dwells alone, in a solitude which no man can break. 
 There may be mysteries and difficulties about this, 
 but it is very plain that much of the meaning of 
 life lies here. If life had no burden it would be 
 a " dead level." Instead God has given to each 
 man his task, his duty, his burden. 
 
 No man has any right to ask me to bear his own 
 burden, his own proper burden. Society is thrown 
 into utter confusion when men begin to ask others 
 to relieve them of the proper burden that belongs 
 to them. I cannot do your work: you cannot do 
 my work. Each of us must carry his own load of 
 toil. Every philosophy, social, political, or reli- 
 gious, is unsound that forgets our individuality and 
 tries to melt us together in an indistinguishable 
 mass. 
 
 Now there are many evasions in one way and 
 another of this law of the individual. There are 
 always some who are unwilling to bear their share 
 of toil. This is patent enough, and he who will 
 not bear his own burden soon becomes a social 
 burden. Of this class are the idlers, the ne'er-do- 
 weels, the tramps, and all men who scamp their 
 
Loads and Burdens 177 
 
 work or seek in whatsoever way to escape the bur- 
 den that is rightly theirs. Of such persons the 
 Scripture says with the utmost frankness, " If any 
 will not work, neither let him eat." 
 
 But these are not the only shifters of burdens. 
 Other instances of evasion are less obvious but 
 fully as real. Such are they for example who 
 will not bear their burden of responsibility. In 
 our day scientific men have preached the doctrine 
 of heredity, and have pressed the theory so far 
 that it is increasingly hard to hold men to the 
 thought of individual responsibility. A man has 
 an uncontrollable appetite for strong drink. Now- 
 adays instead of preaching to such a one the sin- 
 fulness of drunkenness and the individual re- 
 sponsibility of the drunkard, soft preachers of 
 science comfort and excuse him with atavism, which 
 means literally grandfatherism. His grandfather 
 or his great-grandfather had a strong appetite for 
 drink. It has come to him in his blood; he cannot 
 help it; he is scarcely responsible at all. And be- 
 cause the theory has some truth in it, men are 
 easily blinded to the other truth of individual re- 
 sponsibility. No one can doubt that the Heavenly 
 Father who knows us from the beginning has full 
 sympathy for us in all that mingling of the ele- 
 ments of life that comes in the course of the gen- 
 
178 The Art of Sailing On 
 
 eratlons. Nevertheless his Book insists that each 
 man must bear his own burden of responsibility. 
 
 Still less obvious, but also fully as real, is that 
 kind of shifting of burdens which comes when men 
 evade the great decisions of life. It is manifest, 
 for instance, in the important matter of religious 
 decision that every man must bear his own burden. 
 A man's father or his wife or his friend cannot 
 make his decision for him. If they were willing 
 to do so, it would be impossible, because a de- 
 cision — a real decision — is something in which a 
 man is absolutely alone. He may have many helps 
 and helpers, but in the moment in which he makes 
 a decision he enters into a solitude as great as that 
 of an African forest. The appeal of the Gospel 
 is always to individual men : " What think ye of 
 Christ?" "Come unto me"; "Follow me"; 
 " Open the door." 
 
 If there be those of us who have been in this 
 manner evading or postponing decision about 
 Christ and his Gospel, let us say to them the words 
 of this text : " Each man shall bear his own bur- 
 den." Decision has a sharp edge and it cuts clear 
 down to the heart, to the inner life of the man. 
 What is your decision about Christ? 
 
 Thus it is plain that men go through life like a 
 ship sailing upon the high seas, each man with 
 
Loads and Burdens 179 
 
 his own freight, his burden, to carry. This con- 
 stitutes life and we cannot escape it. In that lading 
 of our life's ship will be found for each of us our 
 share of work, our share of responsibility, our 
 share of problems, our share of decisions, and even 
 our share of sorrows. There is a burden of sorrow 
 that is mine own. " The heart knoweth its own 
 bitterness." No man can cross the intimate line 
 and enter the sacred precinct of another's heart 
 where sorrow hath its throne. If there is mystery 
 and pathos in this, there is also beneficence. It is 
 no inconsiderable thing if a man can rise up with 
 his burden of sorrow and say, " It is mine own," 
 and determine therewith to be a better man. And 
 of all this the sentence is written — " Each man 
 shall bear his own freight " — bear it on across the 
 high seas until eternity dawns upon the sight. This 
 is the gospel of the personal burden. 
 
 This is the gospel that many need to hear first 
 of all. It is the gospel of duty, of independence 
 and responsibility, of self-reliance and individuality. 
 Rise up with your burden, whatever it is; throw 
 off your lackadaisical air; do your part; fling away 
 your idleness and despair; cease waiting upon 
 others; bear your own burden, your own, your 
 very own, the burden that belongs to you, the 
 burden that was made for you, the burden without 
 
180 The Art of Sailing On 
 
 which your life will even lack the sense of finish, 
 the touch of creative completion. 
 
 But this is not all. If it were all, life would 
 be melancholy indeed. Mere laws of nature are 
 inexorable. They work hardship, even catastro- 
 phe. You shall see how men take advantage of 
 this law of natural burden-bearing and leave their 
 fellow-men unassisted in their distresses. In the 
 Oriental world, in China, in India, in Palestine, 
 men look at human disease and trouble and say with 
 fatalistic precision, " It is their burden, and they 
 must bear it." Therefore they build no hospitals, 
 no refuges, no philanthropic institutions of any 
 kind. Even in Christian lands men tend to fall 
 back too easily upon the law of natural burden- 
 bearing. They say, " Every man for himself, 
 every man to his own burden. It is enough if a 
 man can live his own life and bear his own bur- 
 den. As for others, we cannot help, and ' let the 
 Devil take the hindmost ' ! " 
 
 Out of this grows that withering individualism, 
 that dangerous selfishness, which is a blot upon our 
 Christian civilization. 
 
 Now the apostle's other direction is the assertion 
 of a law that is higher than the law of nature, 
 " Bear ye one another's burdens, and so fulfil the 
 law of Christ." There is no contradiction. Nev- 
 
Loads and Burdens 181 
 
 ertheless the two laws are brought into contrast 
 with one another, that law of nature and this law 
 of grace. 
 
 You must bear your own burden because it be- 
 longs to you. It is of the natural order of things. 
 But Christ comes to establish a law that is higher 
 than this, to ordain that you shall have sympathy 
 and fellowship and love. This is Christ's law of 
 burden-bearing. He says you shall not leave men 
 alone. You shall not desert them or leave them 
 unassisted in the hour of their distress. " Bear ye 
 one another's burdens, and so fulfil the law of 
 Christ." 
 
 As if to mark the distinction between the natural 
 law of burden-bearing and Christ's law, the apos- 
 tle has used another Greek word for burden — 
 baros. It differs from the other word in that it 
 suggests, not the freight of a ship which belongs 
 to it rightly, but the weight that presses upon it 
 from without — the trouble, the heaviness, of life. 
 Indeed it is the very word from which we have 
 constructed our word barometer. This useful in- 
 strument measures the weight or heaviness of the 
 atmosphere and thereby predicts the weather. 
 Now we might paraphrase the sentence of the apos- 
 tle, " Bear ye one another's trouble, bear ye one 
 another's heaviness." Granted that there is a bur- 
 
1 82 The Art of Sailing On 
 
 den which every man must bear for himself: that 
 is his ship's lading. But his trouble, his weight — 
 the pressure and heaviness of life upon him — you 
 must not be careless of this. It is this burden that 
 Christ's law requires us to bear, and in so doing 
 to fulfil his law. 
 
 In the case of the Galatians to whom the apostle 
 was writing, the application was to the bearing of 
 the burden of the faults of others. It is true that 
 a man is responsible for his own faults and every 
 man must bear that burden. But just here Christ's 
 law steps in. You must not leave a man to his 
 faults; you must help him. You must try to bear 
 his burden, and so fulfil Christ's law. " Brethren, 
 even if a man be overtaken in any trespass, ye who 
 are spiritual, restore such a one in a spirit of gen- 
 tleness, looking to thyself, lest thou also be tempted. 
 Bear ye one another's burdens, and so fulfil the law 
 of Christ." 
 
 How divine and wonderful is this law of Christ I 
 What beneficent results it has brought into the life 
 of the world! What transformations it works in 
 the feelings and deeds of all mankind ! That the 
 world is as good a world as it is is due in large 
 measure to Christ's law for burden-bearing. 
 
 Glance back through the centuries and see how 
 this law of Christ has entered into human affairs 
 
Loads and Burdens 183 
 
 and taught men how to bear not only their own but 
 one another's burdens. 
 
 In the Roman amphitheater matrons looked 
 down from the galleries upon gladiatorial contests 
 and turned their thumbs down as a sign to the victor 
 to kill his opponent. In that day there was no 
 sympathy and men knew little about bearing one 
 another's burdens. In that day, as in pagan lands 
 to-day, no hospitals were built, no asylums, no 
 refuges for infirmity and age. But when Christ 
 came his Gospel touched that undeveloped spring 
 in the human heart called Sympathy, and men be- 
 gan to be aware of the burdens of their fellow-men. 
 
 In early mythology there is the symbolic story of 
 Niobe. Niobe had lost all her twelve children, 
 slain by the darts of Apollo and Artemis. Then 
 the proud, hard heart of Niobe broke and her 
 tears flowed in a stream. In this way the ancients 
 pictured winter and summer. When the rays of 
 the sun strike the children of Winter, the months, 
 then old Winter, icy and hard, begins to melt, and 
 there flows out a stream that makes glad the earth 
 with the warmth and bounty of the summer-time. 
 Once the heart of man contained winter; it was 
 hard and icy toward his fellow-man; but when 
 Christ came he wrought a great softening of hearts, 
 and he who was himself the great burden-bearer 
 
1 84 The Art of Sailing On 
 
 taught men to regard his law and to be themselves 
 burden-bearers. 
 
 Slow indeed has been the progress of this 
 thought of Jesus Christ, for against it all the re- 
 luctance, all the selfishness of the human heart, has 
 been arraigned. Until a late date England fos- 
 tered an inhuman system of imprisonment for debt, 
 and her prisons and prison laws were severe and 
 thoughtless to the last degree. Then God sent 
 John Howard to England to awaken the nation to 
 the duty of bearing the burden of the faults of the 
 criminal classes in the name of him who said: " I 
 was sick and in prison, and ye visited me." 
 
 In England also, almost within our own mem- 
 ory, the condition of workmen, operatives in fac- 
 tories and miners toiling beneath the ground, was 
 pitiable in the extreme. Women and little children 
 were working long hours at tasks which were far 
 beyond their strength. Then God sent the sev- 
 enth Earl of Shaftesbury, a true burden-bearer 
 among men, endowed with wealth and also with 
 sympathy, and when he spoke England awoke and 
 by her new factory laws and laws for mines and 
 mining began anew to bear the burdens of man- 
 kind. 
 
 In our own country, later still, need has been 
 found for this law of Christ. For when it was 
 
Loads and Burdens 185 
 
 discovered that prisoners issuing from prison were 
 everywhere frowned upon and the doors of society 
 and of business closed against them, a sweet-faced 
 woman of the Salvation Army stood forth in plain 
 dress and scoop bonnet and said, " We must help 
 bear the burdens of these men who have been in 
 prison, and so fulfil the law of Christ." Much has 
 been done, but much more should be done. A man 
 called one day to see the minister, whether an im- 
 postor or not the minister could not tell. The 
 story he told was pitiful. He had spent years in 
 prison for forgery and had there resolved upon a 
 better life. When he came forth from prison he 
 obtained a position and wrought honestly until de- 
 tectives followed him and told his story to his em- 
 ployers. Time after time this was done until he 
 felt himself driven to the wall. It was Victor 
 Hugo's story of Jean Valjean over again, who, 
 driven from inn to inn and from door to door, at 
 length took refuge in a dog's kennel, only to find 
 that beasts as well as men were against him. 
 
 Not yet has society fully learned Christ's law of 
 burden-bearing. Nevertheless this law is more and 
 more beating its way into human affairs. It is the 
 true Christian socialism, which means nothing more 
 than Christ's opposition to every theory or act of 
 society that pronounces Paul's sentence, " Each man 
 
1 86 The Art of Sailing On 
 
 shall bear his own burden," and leaves the matter 
 there at the mercy of a distressing and destructive 
 individualism. Christ insists, and Paul after him, 
 that society must go farther and bear the burdens 
 of other men. This simple, magnificent law of 
 Christ is the strongest force in civilization to-day. 
 Winter slowly leaves the heart and summer dawns. 
 Our Gospel spells — brotherhood. 
 
 Ten thousand hospitals and other institutions 
 of philanthropy proclaim that men are trying to 
 fulfil Christ's law of burden-bearing. It is a new 
 age to-day, and growing newer, despite its black 
 clouds, because men are bearing burdens as never 
 before. You say, " The world is growing worse, 
 is it not? " And the answer is " Yes," if it is to 
 be judged by the boldness of its sins. But the an- 
 swer is " No," if it is to be judged by its quantity 
 of burden-bearing, by the scores of ways in which 
 Christ has taught us to restore one another and 
 care for one another's heaviness in life. 
 
 In this era of burden-bearing, therefore, our very 
 language has been enriched by new words and 
 phrases. The word egoism was an earlier addition 
 to the language, but later years have brought us the 
 counterpart of that, altruism. Ten thousand books, 
 papers, pamphlets, and sermons to-day have as 
 their theme " the Parliament of Man " of which 
 
Loads and Burdens 187 
 
 the English Tennyson wrote. And because these 
 words and phrases are upon many lips and in many 
 hearts we know that Christ's law is at work. The 
 peculiarity of our day is that men are concerned 
 with every kind of problem " from the existence of 
 God to the sanitation of a village." 
 
 For one thing, Christ's law of burden-bearing 
 makes indifference impossible. Our Christian faith 
 praises strength, yet it calls for champions of the 
 cause of the weak, because it stands written in the 
 little Book that is greater than all others, " We 
 that are strong ought to bear the infirmities of the 
 weak." 
 
 Wealth is often selfish and indifferent, but more 
 and more wealth is learning the lesson of burden- 
 bearing, and many of earth's noblemen and noble- 
 women are they who are endowed with wealth. 
 
 One of the perils of great cities to thoughtful 
 and good men is the peril of indifference to the 
 multitude. Indifference brings hardening, and one 
 of the most difficult things we have to contend with 
 in our modern cities is the hardening of the heart 
 of the individual toward the multitude. Their 
 cares do not concern us, their burdens do not af- 
 flict us. Do we not know that " the loss of pity 
 is a return to savagery without the excuse of sav- 
 agery " ? All the more must men remember him 
 
1 88 The Art of Sailing On 
 
 and live in the company of him who when he saw 
 the multitude had compassion on them. 
 
 All this emphasizes the fitness of the Christian 
 Gospel to teach and guide men. For the Gospel 
 defines our mission to one another. It affirms, not 
 only that each man is responsible for himself, but 
 that he is responsible for others. What a strange, 
 unworldly doctrine, that we are responsible for 
 others' faults ! This is what Paul is writing to the 
 Galatians. It was a new thought when Christ in- 
 troduced it into the world. We are to restore one 
 another, build one another up, share the burden of 
 one another's weaknesses, and help in the building 
 of one another's characters. 
 
 The faults of others, the sins of the world, are 
 not merely a target for attack. " Ye who are 
 spiritual restore such a one." Christians cannot 
 live in an atmosphere of criticism and contempt. 
 Christianity teaches men how to live, but that is 
 not all, it teaches men how to live with others, 
 which is even a more difficult art. 
 
 Years ago, twenty or more, James Anthony 
 Froude printed the " Life and Letters of Thomas 
 Carlyle." The book created a sensation, because 
 it appeared from it that the gifted author had 
 grievously wronged his wife and made her life 
 utterly unhappy. Reading this book, with all their 
 
Loads and Burdens 189 
 
 admiration for " the greatest and wildest genius of 
 his time," men felt a certain keen disappointment 
 in him. Within a few years another book has been 
 published in two volumes, " The New Letters and 
 Memorials of Jane Welsh Carlyle," revealing to 
 some extent the other side of the story. While 
 these two gifted persons, Thomas Carlyle and Jane 
 Welsh Carlyle, loved one another with an undying 
 affection, yet they permitted certain elements of 
 disturbance to come between them. They were too 
 much in fear of one another and were lacking in 
 sympathy and understanding. It was diamond cut 
 diamond. They were too merciless, too harsh, too 
 severe with one another. It was too easy to say 
 hard things, and they had too little charity for 
 one another. They were guilty both of them of 
 the sin of scorn. In short they knew too little of 
 the duty of bearing the burden of one another's 
 faults. It is certain that two persons, even though 
 they love one another, cannot live happily under 
 the same roof unless they learn something of 
 Christ's law of burden-bearing and try to bear the 
 burden of one another's faults. 
 
 This is how practical the Gospel is. It has a 
 grand message of social amelioration and it has 
 also a very personal message of individual help- 
 fulness. As men learn the law of Christ they will 
 
190 The Art of Sailing On 
 
 more and more be willing to put their shoulders 
 beneath the world's burden, and so fulfil the law of 
 Christ. It is called the law of Christ because it 
 was the law which he fulfilled in his own life and 
 death. He shifted no burden of humanity. He 
 bore our griefs and carried our sorrows, and he 
 took the burden of our faults as well. With what 
 mighty emphasis, therefore, may Jesus Christ, the 
 Great Burden-Bearer, through his apostle turn to 
 us and say, " Bear ye one another's burdens, and so 
 fulfil the law of Christ." Loads belong to indi- 
 viduals; burdens belong to us all. 
 
BLESSED BE LAUGHTER! 
 
" Then was our mouth filled with laughter." 
 
 Psalm 126: 2. 
 
XII 
 BLESSED BE LAUGHTER! 
 
 Blessed be laughter! It will strike many of 
 us as a very worldly topic. Nevertheless we may 
 find that it has spiritual and heavenly bearings, as 
 everything that is worth while in this world is apt 
 to have. If there were anywhere in all the range 
 of God's universe " a land of no laughter," to use 
 an imaginative poet's phrase, life both here and 
 hereafter would be less attractive. 
 
 Imagine if you can a world without laughter ! 
 Now and then we hear of a house without laughter. 
 We enter it almost as we would enter a charnel- 
 house. There is something dank and dark about 
 such a place; it causes one to shiver; it gives one 
 a creeping sensation; it makes the heart cold. In 
 such a place we are apt to utter this new Beatitude: 
 " Blessed be laughter." For it is true that the 
 home without laughter, without mirth and humor, 
 lacks one of God's benedictions. 
 
 There was a home where the husband and wife 
 had had a quarrel over some trivial thing. The 
 193 
 
194 The Art of Sailing On 
 
 one threw a bitter taunt at the other, and a harsh 
 reply was made. Then they vowed each of them 
 that they would never speak again the one to the 
 other. So they lapsed into silence, which con- 
 tinued for days and weeks and months and even 
 for years. Can you imagine a greater human ab- 
 surdity than this — two human beings living together 
 under the same roof and pitting themselves against 
 each other by silence! If there had been a saving 
 bit of humor in that home the situation would have 
 changed very soon. One day the saving sense of 
 humor came to the rescue. They were seated at 
 table, eating their meal in dreadful silence. Sud- 
 denly the absurdity of the situation came over the 
 husband, and he burst out laughing. Then the 
 wife joined in, and they laughed immoderately for 
 ten minutes. It is needless to say that from that 
 time on conversation flowed in a stream as it had 
 done of yore. 
 
 You will have your quiet smile at this incident, 
 but be sure that you are not yourself practising 
 somewhere and somehow in life some little piece of 
 human absurdity which would melt away like snow 
 before the sun if only the saving grace of humor 
 should come to the rescue. Blessed be laughter 1 
 It has dissipated many a grievance and prevented 
 many a quarrel. It has often cleared the air when 
 
Blessed Be Laughter I 195 
 
 a storm has been gathering and has proved a pro- 
 phylactic against bitterness in the soul. 
 
 Half our troubles and misunderstandings with 
 one another would pass away if we but had the 
 grace to smile in the face of them and melt the 
 bitterness out of them with the warmth and light 
 of good-humor. When next the temptation comes 
 to be at odds with another human soul, try the 
 preventive of laughter. It was Charles Lamb, in 
 that quaint humor of his that has saved the world 
 much pain, who exclaimed one day to a friend who 
 was upon the point of presenting another man to 
 him, " Oh, don't introduce me to that man ! I 
 know I'm going to hate him ! " Hatred in the 
 heart is next to impossible when the mouth is full 
 of laughter, as Lamb's was when he said this. If 
 these things are not worth saying now and then 
 in a Christian pulpit, it is proof that our doctrine 
 is still in the clouds, and has not yet learned to 
 go on all fours on the solid earth of human affairs. 
 
 We can go a step further and say that in a house 
 or a land of no laughter physical ills as well as 
 moral ills are apt to accumulate. Physicians cor- 
 roborate this. Old Dr. Hall, as wise in human 
 logic as he was in physic, used often to prescribe 
 a " pill of laughter," while " John Ploughman," 
 full of the quaint wisdom of men and things, af- 
 
196 The Art of Sailing On 
 
 firms that we need not one doctor but three. They 
 are Dr. Diet, Dr. Quiet, and Dr. Merryman. 
 
 There is no doubt that laughter is one of God's 
 automatic plans for keeping us in health. Who 
 knows how many fevers and humors of the blood, 
 how many miasms and contagions of the air, are 
 rendered harmless by the hygiene of laughter? 
 Does not the book of Proverbs declare that " he 
 that is of a cheerful heart hath a continual feast "? 
 It goes even further, and says, " A cheerful heart 
 is a good medicine." " There is not the remotest 
 corner or little inlet of the minute blood vessels of 
 the human body that does not feel some wavelet 
 from the convulsion of good hearty laughter. . . . 
 The blood moves more rapidly, and conveys a dif- 
 ferent impression to all the organs of the body, as 
 it visits them on that particular mystic journey 
 when the man is laughing, from what it does at 
 other times." 
 
 Blessed be laughter! Unhappily our times are 
 not favorable to laughter. True there are multi- 
 tudes who are in hot pursuit of laughter. Comic 
 theaters are crowded, and the comic press has a 
 multitude of patrons : but such laughter is too often 
 " inane, frivolous, and senseless." Hearty laugh- 
 ter — laughter that comes out of the inner depths of 
 feeling, out of a vast appreciation and humor of 
 
Blessed Be Laughter! 197 
 
 life — is at a premium to-day. Men are tempted 
 to neglect God's medicine chest, and therefore they 
 forget to laugh. The cares of the world multiply 
 and the heart's merriment dies away. Ten thou- 
 sand pities for the man who grows every hour into 
 the world's successes, but loses meanwhile his 
 heart's fresh and bounding joy! We lift a quiet 
 prayer to-day in behalf of the weary men of affairs 
 who are in danger of losing the power to laugh. 
 
 But the things we are saying to-day are being 
 said quite too lightly in some quarters. There is 
 an easy-going philosophy of smiles and laughter 
 which commends itself to many who do not take 
 the trouble to think very far. Teachers have 
 arisen who are mere philosophers of good cheer. 
 They wave aside with a motion of the hand the 
 solid facts of life and the serious doctrines of grace, 
 and tell us that all we need to do is simply to smile 
 and be brave, and all will come right. If grief 
 come, let us but smile in the face of grief, and grief 
 will dissolve away! If perplexity overtake us, 
 smile on, laugh on, and perplexity will cease ! All 
 this is plausible: it is even fascinating; but it is not 
 adequate. There is a time when laughter will die 
 away on the lips. 
 
 The Scripture has a score of wise counsels on 
 this subject. There is " a time to weep, and a time 
 
198 The Art of Sailing On 
 
 to laugh." Laughter alone cannot produce great 
 men and noble women. Sorrow has a deeper, finer 
 touch than joy. It is noticed that the Son of Man 
 is never said to laugh or smile, although it is often 
 implied, as on that occasion when he took little 
 children into his arms and blessed them. It was not 
 necessary for the Gospels to say that Jesus smiled. 
 But the Scripture does take pains to tell us that 
 he was " a man of sorrows and acquainted with 
 grief," and that he suffered agony in the Garden 
 of Gethsemane. Sorrow leads us deeper into life 
 than joy, and the far-off interest of tears is greater 
 than that of laughter. 
 
 So it is that the great poets have not been men 
 of laughter only, but of sorrow as well. In the 
 Valley of the Shadow beautiful flowers have sprung 
 forth. It was sorrow that brought forth Tenny- 
 son's " In Memoriam " and Milton's " Lycidas." 
 It was the pensive spirit in man that gave birth to 
 Gray's " Elegy in a Country Churchyard," while 
 Emerson's " profound, passionate, lovely Thren- 
 ody on the death of his little son " was the out- 
 growth of an early tragedy that touched the poet's 
 soul, leaving him, as he said, lacking " a piece of 
 sunshine well worth my watching from morning 
 to night." 
 
 Great souls learn to suffer and be strong. Noth- 
 
Blessed Be Laughter! 199 
 
 ing — not even the most fascinating doctrine of 
 men — can permanently cajole the spirit of man into 
 a theory of universal laughter, laughter for pain, 
 laughter for grief, laughter for all the serious 
 problems of life ! Sorrow is a wonderful teacher, 
 and thinking of this our Lord pronounced a bene- 
 diction upon those who sorrow not in vain: 
 " Blessed are ye that weep now, for ye shall 
 laugh." On the other hand he spoke of woe for 
 those who laugh now, who never grow serious in 
 their souls, and live on in the hollow mockery of 
 laughter unto the end: "Woe unto you, ye that 
 laugh now ! for ye shall mourn and weep." 
 
 In the New Testament laughter is mentioned 
 very seldom, but it is spoken of once in a very piti- 
 ful way. It was when Jesus the Master of men, 
 he who was able to make death, in Tennyson's 
 phrase, " a laughable impossibility," entered the 
 chamber of death where the little daughter of 
 Jairus lay and prepared to raise her up. We are 
 told that the people " laughed him to scorn." 
 Nothing is so appalling in all of human life as 
 the hollow mockery and scorn of those who laugh 
 on heedlessly amid the serious questions of life. 
 Other men laugh too, but they have learned a 
 larger truth, that sorrow and seriousness are always 
 lurking beneath laughter. " Even in laughter," the 
 
zoo The Art of Sailing On 
 
 Proverbialist of the Old Testament declares, " the 
 heart is sorrowful." 
 
 How true it is that there is always an element 
 of sadness at the heart of things ! Men who are 
 learning God's lessons for life know this, and their 
 laughter has no hollow sound, no mocking insin- 
 cerity toward the solemnity of life. The second 
 Psalm paints a very dire picture; it is a picture of 
 men in high places, men of power, men of vast 
 opportunity, who have never really faced the sol- 
 emn things of life, who are concerned only about 
 building up their own little selfish kingdom; and 
 who laugh away the restraints of God's Kingdom, 
 crying out in their glee, " Let us break their bonds 
 asunder and cast away their cords from us ! " 
 Then occurs a solemn and startling sentence of 
 the Word of God, one of the few places where 
 laughter is attributed to God : " He that sitteth 
 in the heavens will laugh : the Lord will have them 
 in derision." They who never have a solemn 
 thought about life and eternity, who laugh their 
 way through the world, untouched by the serious 
 meaning at the heart of things, how can it be other- 
 wise than that they will some time be objects of 
 the world's derision and of the laughter of God? 
 
 When Jesus Christ hung upon the cross of Cal- 
 vary there were those who passed by wagging their 
 
Blessed Be Laughter! 201 
 
 heads and went laughing on their way. How hide- 
 ous is the sound of human laughter in the presence 
 of the sorrows of the Son of Man ! Oh, it is the 
 heart of fools that is in the " House of Mirth," 
 when Christ hangs upon the Cross tasting death 
 for every man ! It is the crackling of thorns under 
 a pot that rattles noisily, but soon burns away to 
 the ashes of sorrow — sorrow that the world cannot 
 cure. " Woe unto you, ye that laugh now ! for ye 
 shall mourn and weep." 
 
 Blessed be laughter! These qualifications do 
 but help us to understand the truth. Let us say it 
 now with all the emphasis and joy of the " glorious 
 Gospel of the blessed God." What if we say that 
 ours is a Gospel of laughter in the soul, that 
 Christ's Kingdom is a kingdom of laughter for the 
 heart of man? This cannot mean for any of us 
 that the Gospel is a mere counsel of merriment or 
 artificial joy for men. On the contrary God's people 
 are called to walk in the footsteps of the Son of 
 Man, and his way is often the way of sorrow and 
 pain. It must mean for us all, however, that the 
 wells of salvation are wells of joy, and that from 
 such as these we may draw water for all the days 
 and hours. It must mean for us, as in the sublime 
 vision of Isaiah, that Christ is here with his people 
 " to give unto them a garland for ashes, the oil 
 
202 The Art of Sailing On 
 
 of joy for mourning, the garment of praise for the 
 spirit of heaviness." 
 
 Blessed be laughter! — the laughter which Christ 
 has made possible in the soul of man. Believers 
 and seers of the Old Testament knew this laughter 
 of the heart when they beheld the promise afar off. 
 When the promise of a son was given to Abraham, 
 it is written that Abraham " fell upon his face 
 and laughed." And when the child Isaac was born 
 to Abraham and Sarah — the child of their old age 
 — his mother said, " God hath made me to laugh; 
 every one that hears will laugh with me." The 
 pure joys of life, the affections and hopes of do- 
 mestic relations, the prosperities and successes of 
 toil, the gladness and rewards of friendship — let 
 us hold these as from God, and laugh before God 
 daily and go upon our way rejoicing! 
 
 And when sorrow comes and lays its touch upon 
 the heart, and the heart shrinks with cold and fear, 
 let us ever keep the heart's secret joy, and rejoice 
 still before the Lord, who giveth " the oil of joy 
 for mourning." 
 
 The Psalmists too — one and another of them — 
 taught this lesson of God's laughter in the soul: 
 " He hath put a new song in my mouth," " Then 
 was our mouth filled with laughter." This was 
 their Song of Deliverance, and it echoed on through 
 
Blessed Be Laughter! 203 
 
 days and years, by the lips and pens of prophet 
 and singer and seer, until Christ came. 
 
 Why did he come as a little child, if it was not 
 to fill our mouths with laughter, to touch and open 
 true springs of joy in the human heart? Listen 
 to the joyous laughter in the words of the aged 
 Simeon when the child was brought to the Temple : 
 " Now lettest thou thy servant depart, Lord, ac- 
 cording to thy word, in peace : for mine eyes have 
 seen thy salvation." 
 
 How truly we can say of Christ, " He has filled 
 our mouths with laughter! " For he has opened 
 up for us a very world of joy and has taught us 
 how to rejoice. He has put a new song in our 
 mouth and has made us both sing and laugh in our 
 souls. The world's laughter is often very hollow; 
 it is like " the crackling of thorns under a pot." 
 Christ puts meaning into laughter, gives reality to 
 joy. He hath made me glad! 
 
 Think of his teaching about God the Heavenly 
 Father. It is not weariness to believe in God, but 
 joy, gladness, laughter in the soul. It is light to 
 the mind and wings to the feet. He taught men to 
 enjoy God. Is he not "Our Father"? Has he 
 not sent his Son and Heir to us? Has he not in 
 his wise counsel sought the peace and joy of men? 
 Surely we can say of all that Jesus has told us about 
 
204 The Art of Sailing On 
 
 God and life and salvation and eternity, " Then 
 was our mouth filled with laughter." Think of 
 those elect words of his: "Let not your heart be 
 troubled : believe in God, believe also in me. In 
 my Father's house are many mansions." Homes, 
 abiding-places! These words should never make 
 us solemn and sad. Rather they should make us 
 glad, stirring the heart to laughter. 
 
 Blessed be laughter ! In the Kingdom of Christ 
 this beatitude has a thousand meanings. There 
 is a traditional saying of an early century about 
 Christ that has come down to us : " He that is near 
 me is near the fire." There is joy in the heart 
 where Christ is and there is laughter in the mouth. 
 Joy is integral in the Gospel. You cannot untwist 
 the colors of the rainbow, nor can you take joy 
 away from the Gospel. " With joy shall ye draw 
 water out of the wells of salvation." Oh, the 
 Cross is solemn and portentous ! Its shadows lie 
 across the world, its sadness echoes in human bos- 
 oms. " A man of sorrows and acquainted with 
 grief." Strange and wonderful anomaly — this 
 Man who tasted death for every man has taught 
 us to laugh! Down into the depths of human life 
 he went, its sorrow, its need, its pain, its sin, in 
 order that he might come forth again to give us 
 the oil of joy for weeping and a garment of praise 
 
Blessed Be Laughter! 205 
 
 for heaviness. Oh, he is the Master of the soul's 
 laughter, he is our Peace, our Light, our Joy, our 
 Life. 
 
 And because his very Kingdom is Joy, let us 
 often have this beatitude upon our lips : " Blessed 
 be laughter ! " Let us enter the Kingdom like little 
 children, and let us strive to keep our hearts fresh 
 and new in the service of Christ. And although 
 we grow in knowledge and put away childish 
 things, let us never cease to be as little children in 
 the Kingdom, free-hearted, glad, eager, our mouths 
 filled with laughter. May his tasks never be 
 drudgery to us. May we learn to laugh as we work 
 and laugh as we give. Is it not written, " God 
 loveth a cheerful giver"? Stop upon that word. 
 It is hilaros in Greek — hilarious, glad, laughing! 
 
 Oh, to have such an interest in the Kingdom of 
 my Lord that when I am called to any duty of 
 his cause there shall be spiritual laughter in my 
 soul ! Oh, to live in the midst of the years in such 
 a way that when the end draws on and the curtain 
 lifts, the laughter of my soul may turn out to be 
 the song of my Lord, the song that shall never die 
 away ! 
 
THE SACRAMENT OF SPRING 
 
" And why are ye anxious concerning raiment? 
 Consider the lilies of the field, how thy grow: they 
 toil not, neither do they spin: yet I say unto you, 
 that even Solomon in all his glory was not arrayed 
 like one of these. But if God doth so clothe the 
 grass of the field, zvhich to-day is, and to-morrow is 
 cast into the oven, shall he not much more clothe 
 you, O ye of little faith ? " 
 
 Matt. 6: 28-30. 
 
XIII 
 
 THE SACRAMENT OF SPRING 
 
 On this goodly day in the month of April one 
 remembers his Chaucer, in the first lines of the 
 Prologue : 
 
 " When that Aprile with his showers swoot 
 The drought of March hath pierced to the root, 
 And bathed every vein in such liquor 
 Of which virtue engendered is the flower." 
 
 Sweet and gracious as are the words of earthly 
 poets, none can ever equal the words of that Mas- 
 ter of nature and men, who, looking out upon the 
 glory of the Father's world, said " Consider the 
 lilies." The springtime has come again, and we 
 need his words in the fresh new days of this young 
 season to interpret its meaning to us. There is a 
 new feeling in the heart to-day; something here in 
 our pulses responds to the thought of Jesus Christ. 
 How simply he speaks, yet with what thorough 
 209 
 
210 The Art of Sailing On 
 
 understanding of all the heart's emotions! Shall 
 we let him lead us forth in this bright new era of 
 time to teach us some new lessons, which are also 
 old lessons, about the Father's world and his chil- 
 dren who dwell in it? 
 
 There is first of all the surprise and the rebuke 
 of a new season. This is not in his words, never- 
 theless it is the spirit of his words: " Consider the 
 lilies of the field." A little while ago there was no 
 promise of this marvellous thing. It was winter 
 then, and the earth was cold and hard. Winter 
 is an atheistic time; God seems to have gone away. 
 It is a term we use to describe cold things, things 
 hard and disagreeable and insoluble. The great 
 bard speaks of " the winter of our discontent." 
 Men tell of winter in the heart, winter in their 
 emotions, winter in the enterprises and institutions 
 of the world. It is a symbolism we use to acknowl- 
 edge our skepticism, and to say furtively that we 
 do not know whether life will survive or not. In 
 the winter men are skeptics, because they cannot 
 see, because there is a pall of death everywhere. 
 
 Now the Master comes among the skeptics of 
 the world and says, " Consider the lilies." Look 
 out now upon the earth. The miracle has been 
 wrought again. The earth is all green and soft 
 and tender once more. 
 
The Sacrament of Spring 211 
 
 " For, lo, the winter is past: 
 The rain is over and gone: 
 The flowers appear on the earth: 
 The time of the singing of birds is come, 
 And the voice of the turtle-dove is heard in our land." 
 
 Is there not a new feeling in your heart to-day? 
 It is the voice of a new season. It is the miracle of 
 God's creation returning again. It is the rebuke 
 to all our doubt and atheism. It is the Father of 
 Lights once more shining upon us, he with whom 
 there is no variableness nor shadow that is cast by 
 turning. The springtime is here again. Has win- 
 ter been in your heart? "Consider the lilies." 
 Winter has gone away. The time for life and 
 eagerness has come back again, the time for emo- 
 tion, for overflowing tenderness, for the release of 
 all repressed and frozen instincts of the heart. I 
 know that this feeling is in my heart to-day, and my 
 Lord knows it, for he says, " Consider the lilies." 
 
 He means to tell us in his own gracious way as 
 well that the world is not old, but new. There afe 
 so many who forget this. The theologian talks 
 about this sin-cursed world. The man of many 
 affairs talks about this weary, burdensome world. 
 The pessimist speaks about this worn-out world. 
 But Jesus Christ talks of birds singing and flowers 
 blooming. This is the difference between our Mas- 
 
212 The Art of Sailing On 
 
 ter and other masters. He knew all about the 
 curse, nevertheless he knew that there was a Way. 
 He was not dumb to the confused and jangling 
 voices of Sin and Sorrow and Pain : nevertheless 
 he knew that there was a Father of Lights. He 
 knew that oftentimes the world seems old and worn 
 and troubled to men, but he knew in reality that 
 the world is young. 
 
 You do not find Jesus Christ talking about things 
 growing old. You find him thinking and speaking 
 of things growing young again. This is his mes- 
 sage to us : " Behold, I make all things new." You 
 have been dwelling upon the problems too much. 
 It is so that the world grows old to you. Jesus 
 bids us look out and look up. Come away from 
 your problems a moment, come out with me into 
 the fields and " consider the lilies." Back there 
 it is a weary world; out here it is a fresh world. 
 Back there everything is ancient and worn; out here 
 everything is young and fresh and new. Atheism 
 is often relieved by flowers better than by books. 
 If you are weary of men and affairs, if the face 
 of humanity looks haggard and the problems are 
 darker each day, " Come away with me," says 
 Jesus Christ, " and consider the lilies." 
 
 I think he is speaking to jaded minds. Yester- 
 day I was tired. It was winter. My task seemed 
 
The Sacrament of Spring 213 
 
 heavy to me. I was troubled with detail, with cir- 
 cumstance, with sheer worn-outness. To-day I am 
 not weary. There is a new feeling tugging at my 
 heart. I have heard the words of my Lord, and 
 he understands ! He knows that what a man needs, 
 when his task seems heavy and the world about 
 him seems old and dreary, is not to sit down and 
 study his problems, but to go forth and meet the 
 rich, glorious facts of God's love and grace. 
 
 And so he is saying to you and me, " Consider 
 the lilies of the field." 
 
 He is telling us that we have not yet seen all. 
 He is bidding us take a little time to consider. He 
 is reminding us that if it took the forces of the 
 universe and the shining of a thousand suns to make 
 one lily, then it may be worth our while down in 
 this busy world of ours to stop and consider the 
 lily. This feeling is in my heart to-day. I find 
 that I have not done justice to God's works. I 
 have glided over them and have accepted them as 
 a matter of course. All surprise has gone out of 
 them. Why, I can actually take one of these flow- 
 ers and break it in pieces and scatter it or cast it 
 into the oven. That is how thoughtless and how 
 lacking in wonder I am. I can actually look at it 
 and think how beautiful it is, but never ask any 
 questions about it, never express any wonder about 
 
214 The Art of Sailing On 
 
 it. That is how dense and unfeeling my mind is. 
 Surprise has gone out; it is a matter of course. 
 
 Now to men in that state Jesus Christ comes 
 with his message about the new world and the new 
 season and the new flower. He wants to stir our 
 minds with surprise once more. He wants to 
 awaken us out of all our dullness, all our sluggish- 
 ness, all our coldness and our oldness, and make us 
 see that here is something new, something gracious, 
 something wonderful, that we have not fully 
 known. " Consider the lilies! " A rare poet has 
 caught this thought of nature's surprise — 
 
 " O little bulb, uncouth, 
 
 Ragged and rusty brown, 
 Have you some dew of youth? 
 
 Have you a crimson gown ? 
 Plant me and see 
 What I shall be— 
 God's fine surprise 
 Before your eyes! 
 
 " O fuzzy ugliness, 
 
 Poor helpless, crawling worm, 
 Can any loveliness 
 
 Be in that sluggish form? 
 Hide me and see 
 What I shall be— 
 God's bright surprise 
 Before your eyes! " 
 
The Sacrament of Spring 215 
 
 When the world seems young men delight in it 
 and learn how friendly and rich it is. Jesus Christ 
 says consider, and therefore Christianity makes 
 men students, and sets them to exploring the rich 
 stores of nature and the deep secrets of the world. 
 In the seventeenth century a quaint and gentle per- 
 son named Izaak Walton, a London shopkeeper, 
 wrote a simple book of nature called " The Com- 
 pleat Angler." And it may be questioned whether 
 even Baxter's " Saints' Rest " or Bunyan's " Pil- 
 grim's Progress " has had a larger mission to per- 
 form than this pleasant, quaint little book of Izaak 
 Walton's, which took men away from the dusty 
 streets and from musty dwellings into the 'fields and 
 woods, to the banks of streams and the companion- 
 ship of birds and beasts and fishes. 
 
 It is not the theologian alone who can bring us 
 to God. We read Hooker and Baxter and Bunyan 
 and Cotton Mather and Jonathan Edwards and 
 Luther and Calvin and John Knox, and we thank 
 God for these mighty men of theological valor. 
 They have seen God through his Word and through 
 the minds and hearts of men. We need also some 
 who see God in the flower, in the green field, in 
 the brook and the mountain stream, in the cloud 
 and meadow, in the robin and the skylark. We 
 need those teachers as well who " dwell by the 
 
216 The Art of Sailing On 
 
 rugged pine," who rejoice in blossom-time, who un- 
 derstand the sacrament of spring, who wander on 
 the summer hills, and who never cease to be sur- 
 prised at finding the wakerobin in the valley. 
 
 It is remarkable that where the Gospel goes, 
 bearing Christ's " consider " upon its lips, men are 
 filled with the spirit of inquiry. Stagnation comes 
 with man-made faiths. Mohammedanism builds 
 no laboratories, endows no agricultural colleges. 
 In Syria to-day men are still scratching the earth 
 with stick plows drawn by camel or donkey or cow. 
 Christianity puts away the crooked stick and makes 
 a steel ploughshare in its stead. In Egypt three 
 thousand years ago, according to the monuments, 
 the fellahin were lifting the water of the Nile in 
 buckets and pouring it for irrigation on the land, 
 just as they are doing to-day. But representatives 
 of a Christian nation in recent times have entered 
 that ancient land and are teaching the natives the 
 use of dams and pumps. Soon that ancient valley 
 will blossom like the rose. 
 
 If you would know the fruits of the Gospel, look 
 not only at churches and schools and missions; look 
 also at the fields, the granaries, the laboratories, 
 the dictionaries, the arts and sciences. Christ said, 
 " Consider," and wherever men have caught his 
 spirit they have sat down to study, and have risen 
 
The Sacrament of Spring 217 
 
 up to make new tools and manufacture new imple- 
 ments, to write new books and endow new insti- 
 tutions. 
 
 Hear also the Lord's emphasis upon Beauty 
 and Simplicity. " Consider the lilies of the field! " 
 It would have been better, says the practical man, 
 if the Master had said, " Consider the grains of 
 the fields." This is a species of higher criticism 
 which belongs to wall-eyed men, who lack in sen- 
 timent, to whom a post is better than a plant be- 
 cause a post will help to build a fence, to whom 
 a flower is a pretty ornament, to be sure, but noth- 
 ing very practical. Let us thank God that there 
 are some folks in this workaday world who are 
 unpractical enough to love beauty! 
 
 Our Lord himself was of this temper. Looking 
 out over the plain where he stood with his disci- 
 ples, he saw the flowers growing above the grain. 
 Nor was it a mere wee bit flower that blushed in 
 modest beauty in a corner of the field. It was the 
 showiest, brightest among them all that he chose — 
 it was a splendid gladiolus, all arrayed in pinkish 
 purple or violet, purple and blue — royal colors! 
 Or it was a rich iris that he saw, gorgeous flower ! 
 " Consider the lilies! " He spoke of royal beauty, 
 for he bade them remember that Solomon in all his 
 royal pomp and glory was not arrayed like one 
 
218 The Art of Sailing On 
 
 of these. Come look at one of them ! White and 
 red and yellow and purple. Solomon's royal gar- 
 ments were man-made: these are God-made. He 
 is saying to us, " God has given us beauty; let us 
 rejoice in it." All ye host of practical men, listen 
 to this. All ye workaday folk who are never happy 
 unless you are poking your heads into some musty 
 volume of figures, who have no thrills of emotion 
 except such as come from the clink of gold and 
 silver, who think that the only values in the world 
 are such as can be shut up in steel safes and reck- 
 oned in cold figures, come, all ye, and listen to this 
 Master of men as he bids them look at the gorgeous 
 beauty of a flower! 
 
 There is value here too, he seems to say, untold 
 value, unsearchable riches, that men, careless men, 
 despise, but which thoughtful, loving, reverent men 
 will make much of. Come, all busy folk, all oc- 
 cupied people, all sordid ones, all ambitious, grasp- 
 ing men and women — come, consider the lilies, look 
 at the value of this thing which God has made. 
 
 Its beauty is in its simplicity. Christ is calling 
 men back to this ancient truth, which, alas! is al- 
 ways in danger of eluding our human grasp. Our 
 modern world is rapidly losing it. We indulge mis- 
 taken notions of value. Nowadays a dress or a hat 
 must forget the ancient law of simplicity and grow 
 
The Sacrament of Spring 219 
 
 to be a nine-days' wonder. That is our mistaken sense 
 of value in dress. Nowadays a rich man builds a 
 house, and forgetting the simple lines of archi- 
 tecture, he builds a Moorish palace, or a palace on 
 the Rhine, and calls it " home." Amid all our 
 mushroom complexity, our growing taste for gaudy 
 display and social harness, the Master of men tells 
 us that the secret of beauty after all is in a certain 
 great simplicity, a certain winsomeness in the soul 
 of things, a certain delight in gentleness, a certain 
 joy in sentiment. Color? Oh, yes, the lily was 
 gorgeously arrayed. Form and carriage? Oh, 
 yes, it stood stately and majestic, waving its head 
 above the grain. Pride? Oh, yes, it was the 
 proudest of them all that grew in Gennesaret. 
 Oh, yes, but with it all a vast simplicity is here, a 
 quiet, deep contentment of soul and a pure health 
 and wealth in the inner being of it, that speaks the 
 truth about human value. " Even Solomon in all 
 his glory was not arrayed like one of these." 
 
 Let God's simple things teach us thus the true 
 value of life. Let not men count themselves rich 
 only when they have an ample store. Let them 
 rather ask about the inward adorning of the soul 
 and the growth of their hearts according to the 
 measure of the simple things of Christ and his 
 Kingdom. For our Lord's " consider " is also an 
 
220 The Art of Sailing On 
 
 appeal for growth. " Consider the lilies of the 
 field, how they grow." • 
 
 To-day men are asking a thousand questions 
 about growth. " Consider," says the Master, and 
 the gardener begins to study seeds and planting and 
 the culture of all growing things. " Consider," 
 says Christ, and the farmer begins to study seasons 
 and crops and rotations and fertilizers and soils, 
 and to plan more largely for returning harvests. 
 " Consider," says the Lord, and the botanist begins 
 to study with glass and analysis, naming pistil and 
 stamen and calyx and corolla, and arranging them 
 all, from the greatest to the least, in families, in 
 genera and species, and learning also the strange 
 story of pollen and sex and fertilization. " Con- 
 sider," says the Master, and enlightened nations 
 organize departments of agriculture, call experts to 
 the study of trees and forestry, grains and plants 
 and soils, flowers and fruits, and all things that 
 grow in God's world. 
 
 Ah ! now we can see how beauty and utility are 
 intertwined. Barbarian peoples are content to 
 see the seasons come and go and to learn in rude 
 ways the use of tree and shrub and plant. Men 
 were content once to search after the Golden Fleece, 
 and to waste precious years and oceans of blood in 
 pursuit of the vagrant Helen of Troy. To-day men 
 
The Sacrament of Spring 221 
 
 are searching into God's secrets : peering into the 
 calyx of a little flower and asking it a hundred 
 questions; dropping a plummet of inquiry into the 
 silkworm's cocoon, to know the ways thereof; build- 
 ing colleges and universities even to learn the se- 
 cret of the rings in trees and the knots on the bark. 
 Why, a little while ago an army of University men 
 East and West were studying nothing else than to 
 find out the cause of a certain disease or defect of 
 peach-trees which resulted in a split seed ! 
 
 "How they grow!" "How they grow!" 
 Nature voices it, science echoes it, life itself em- 
 phasizes it. The springtime returns and the mira- 
 cle comes again. Bulbs spring into beauty, seeds 
 burst into glory, dull plants overwhelm us with 
 wonder. " How they grow ! " " How they 
 grow ! " Do you not hear in all this the Lord's 
 appeal for growth? He is interested in lilies, but 
 a thousand-fold more in children, in men and 
 women. Are they gaining anything in beauty? 
 Have they any refined sentiment in their hearts 
 to-day? Is there any "sensitiveness of the heart 
 for God " — which is Sabatier's definition of rev- 
 erence — any quiet joy of the soul in spiritual blos- 
 som and fruitage? 
 
 Walk about in the springtime; every violet and 
 spring-beauty and wakerobin and sprig of arbutus 
 
222 The Art of Sailing On 
 
 and every gorgeous lily of the field is piping up in 
 the chorus, " How they grow ! " " How they 
 grow! " And when you enter the sanctuary there 
 are other voices speaking the same words, voices 
 of sages and prophets and kings, voices of dis- 
 ciples and apostles, of preachers and choir-masters, 
 and of all simple hearts who with Christ have con- 
 sidered the lilies, the lilies that have grown in every 
 field, everywhere, and the lilies that have grown up 
 about his cross and about his pathway wherever he 
 has walked with men. 
 
 Oh, how eager is the Master Agriculturist of 
 hearts to find growth in the fields where human 
 lilies grow ! Yet not by worry, not by strain, not 
 by toil. For the Master's appeal is for restfulness 
 and trustfulness, and quiet waiting and working, 
 and faithful standing in one's place, and joyous 
 doing of one's duty, with the heart always uplifted 
 in eager, buoyant faith and expectancy. " They 
 toil not, neither do they spin." 
 
 There is no need of managing for God. Growth 
 — that does not come by toiling and spinning! It 
 comes by being " rooted and grounded," by catch- 
 ing the nourishing sunbeams, the quickening rain- 
 drops. Do not worry, ye children of the Heavenly 
 Father. Be his children through his Son. " Seek 
 first the Kingdom of God and his righteousness." 
 
The Sacrament of Spring 223 
 
 Wait for him; do your appointed task; leave all 
 the rest. " Shall he not much more clothe you, O 
 ye of little faith? " Work, but also wait and trust 
 and hope and pray and believe and expect. What 
 lily thinks of worrying, with the Father of Lights 
 stooping to pour his glory upon it? 
 
 These bodies — he will array them, put new and 
 brighter clothing upon them, in the Resurrection 
 Day. There is another stanza of that poem about 
 the " uncouth bulb " and the " ugly worm." It is 
 this: 
 
 " A body wearing out, 
 
 A crumbling house of clay! 
 O agony of doubt 
 
 And darkness and dismay! 
 Trust God and see 
 What I shall be— 
 His best surprise 
 Before your eyes! " 
 
 These souls of ours — " it doth not yet appear 
 what we shall be " ! " If God so clothe the grass 
 of the field which to-day is, and to-morrow is cast 
 into the oven, how much more "I " We know that 
 when he shall appear we shall be like him, for we 
 shall see him as he is " ! 
 
 Yes, there is a new feeling in the heart to-day. 
 We have come again to the Sacrament of Spring. 
 
224 The Art of Sailing On 
 
 There is a new baptism of God's presence here in 
 the world. Every lily that grows, every tree that 
 bursts into bloom, proclaims him. Nothing is old 
 now ; everything is new. The world has a strange 
 elixir of life poured out upon it. 
 
 My Master is here too amid all this life and 
 growth. I can see him walking among the lilies 
 " across the sea." I can hear his gentle words to 
 his disciples, his disciples who were children, like 
 all of us, of carking care and worry. I can hear 
 him saying to them and to us all, " Why are ye 
 anxious? Consider the lilies." Theirs is a restful, 
 trustful life. They stand in their place each day. 
 They have no fears, no bickerings, no bitter jeal- 
 ousies. They suffer no distrust ; they work and wait 
 and grow, lifting up their heads to rejoice in the 
 Father of Lights. 
 
 Oh, it was not a profound thing for the Lord 
 to say; it had the merit of great simplicity. Never- 
 theless it was a satisfying thing. And the new 
 feeling in my heart to-day in the glory of the spring- 
 time is just this — a feeling, a desire, a hope, that 
 I may be quiet and trustful in that way, that I may 
 lift up my head and rejoice before God, that I may 
 enter into the full inheritance of a child of God. 
 
 " Shall he not much more clothe you, O ye of 
 little faith?" 
 
POWER FROM ON HIGH 
 
" Tarry ye . . . until ye be clothed with power 
 from on high." 
 
 Luke 24:49. 
 
XIV 
 POWER FROM ON HIGH 
 
 The end was drawing nigh, and in those last 
 solemn hours the Master spoke many high and 
 joyous words to his disciples. He was the Prince 
 of optimists, and he constantly cast the horoscope 
 of the Gospel in terms of radiant hopefulness. 
 
 Imagine the scene : the eleven disciples and they 
 " that were with them " gathered together in an 
 upper room on the evening of the Resurrection, 
 and Jesus talking to this imperfectly organized and 
 wholly inadequate band of men about power! 
 Surely this was a contradiction of terms, even a 
 confusion of ideas ! If he had been speaking to 
 strong men about power, to men fully equipped 
 by education and training, there would have been 
 apparent reason for the words. Some of these men 
 were fishermen ! A few weeks ago they were toil- 
 ing at their boats and their nets on Galilee. Not 
 one of them was an " aristocrat " ; not one of them 
 had ever sat in the seats of the mighty. They 
 could fish, or gather taxes, or do any one of a 
 227 
 
228 The Art of Sailing On 
 
 number of common world-things. But what reason 
 was there to think that they could teach men, or 
 lay the foundations of an unearthly Kingdom, or 
 move among the world-forces with any marked 
 degree of success? 
 
 Mr. Pictou tells us in his " Religion of the Uni- 
 verse " that the most comprehensive and philo- 
 sophical question ever put to him was asked by a 
 little girl: " Sir, please tell me why there was ever 
 anything at all." Remembering the meagre human 
 materials with which Jesus Christ began his work 
 of building a Kingdom that cannot be moved, one 
 is tempted to ask the child's question : " Why was 
 there ever anything at all of the Gospel even half 
 a generation after the Ascension? " 
 
 If you seek evidences of Christianity, begin with 
 the eleven in the upper room in Jerusalem. Think 
 of them in all their unpreparedness. Recall the 
 narrow environment out of which many of them 
 came. Remind yourself that they were not many 
 of them " wise after the flesh, not many mighty, 
 not many noble," and then hear Jesus of Nazareth 
 saying to these men, " Tarry ye until ye be clothed 
 with power! " 
 
 Our Lord's philosophy was not born in the dust. 
 It came forth from between the Cherubim. There- 
 fore he did not use world-measurements. In our 
 
Power from on High 229 
 
 world of men and things power is something that 
 we identify with the powerful. With us the race 
 is apt to be to the swift. In world-thinking the 
 battle goes to the strong battalions. We are always 
 busy building up this theory of things. Give us 
 many battleships, and armor-plate more than a 
 foot thick ; then the nation will be powerful. Give 
 us business methods that are quick and sure, that 
 break down opposition and bring results; then our 
 commerce will be powerful. Give us social meas- 
 ures that magnify wealth and ornament and indi- 
 vidual indulgence; then our society will be power- 
 ful. This is the familiar form of world-thinking 
 upon these principal topics. 
 
 And yet even in our world of men and things we 
 are constantly finding out how false this theory is. 
 How often and with what glad surprise we discover 
 that the nation's strength lies not in armaments, 
 but in the diligent pursuit of the arts and indus- 
 tries of peace; that the strength of commerce lies 
 not in tricks of trade, but in honesty and strict in- 
 tegrity; that the strength of society lies not in dis- 
 play and selfishness, but in thoughtfulness, in per- 
 sonal righteousness and mutual service. 
 
 In whatsoever ways men make this discovery, 
 new definitions of power are certain to result. Un- 
 der this new light we may expect weak things tb 
 
230 The Art of Sailing On 
 
 become strong, and empty vessels to become full. 
 Under the inspiration of this changed conception 
 of power men come to value the invisible as the 
 source of the visible, and the spiritual as the back- 
 ground of the physical. By the help of this new 
 understanding of power even the form of life's 
 questioning changes. We ask, not how big a man 
 is, but how good he is. We inquire not merely as 
 to the magnitude of a man's success; we wish to 
 know whether it has been honest and fair. We 
 are not so much concerned as to a man's theory of 
 the universe; we want to know his theory of the 
 conduct of life. 
 
 These are things that make for power — real 
 power. A man who manages a thousand or ten 
 thousand other men, and does it successfully, but 
 is himself a bad man, cannot be said to possess real 
 power at all. He is the weakest of men, and his 
 weakness may suddenly come to light in some great 
 crisis of his history. A chain is never stronger than 
 its weakest link. 
 
 A man who moves with admirable poise and 
 self-possession in society, swaying others by his per- 
 sonal presence and prestige, but all the while is 
 himself living an insincere and impure life, such 
 a man has lost the secret of real power. To build 
 up a great structure of success, and not to know 
 
Power from on High 231 
 
 something greater than success — that is not power; 
 it is weakness. 
 
 The distinction is one between power from be- 
 low and power from " on high." The real power 
 that underlies the best things of a world like ours 
 is a power from " on high." Wherever there is 
 a spiritual force at work among men, we are aware 
 that it is not of this world, we cannot identify it 
 with the world's life: it comes from "on high." 
 Whensoever we see the flowers and fruits of char- 
 acter beginning to appear we are ready to confess 
 that higher forces have been at work. This is one 
 theological dogma in which all are agreed, that the 
 power from " on high " is better than the power 
 from below. If we cannot believe in such real 
 power we are much to be pitied. We have thus 
 lost the grip of the better things, the uplifting 
 things. If we can believe in the power that lifts 
 men up, that is the beginning of a Christian faith. 
 Whensoever a man confesses that something is 
 tugging at his soul, seeking to lift him up — con- 
 fesses also that he is consciously in need of such 
 uplifting — he is an embryo Christian; he is not far 
 from the Kingdom of God. 
 
 The term " power from on high " belongs es- 
 pecially to Jesus Christ. He has made it signify 
 much. It is no " glittering generality." We must 
 
232 The Art of Sailing On 
 
 all reckon with our Lord's language on the subject 
 of power. It occupies a large place in his teaching. 
 This conversation with his disciples was one of his 
 last interviews with them, and he gave them his 
 theory of power. Luke tells us in the first chapter 
 of the book of Acts that he spoke in like manner 
 to his disciples just before the Ascension : " Ye shall 
 receive power, when the Holy Spirit is come upon 
 you." I say that we must reckon with Christ's 
 theory of power if we are going to concern our- 
 selves with his teachings at all. If you want to 
 know Napoleon's theory of power you must study 
 army battalions and methods of command and the 
 deployment of troops. If you want to know 
 Christ's theory of power, you must deal with his 
 direct command: "Tarry ye until ye be clothed 
 with power from on high." 
 
 Our Lord undertook to establish his Church in 
 this distinction as to power from on high. It is 
 the key to much of his teaching. The Church of 
 Jesus Christ was to be unlike any other organiza- 
 tion. It was not to trust in numbers. It was not 
 to be enamored of mere success. It was not to be 
 caught in the shallows of worldly favor. It was 
 not to lick the hands of kings and princes. It was 
 not to bargain for the influence of men or truckle 
 in any manner for worldly power. 
 
Power from on High 233 
 
 All this was very strange. The disciples were 
 long in understanding it. Again and again they 
 asked Jesus if he would not presently restore the 
 Kingdom to Israel and give the people of God 
 earthly power. On at least one occasion the Lord 
 escaped from his own followers because he saw that 
 they wanted to take him and make him a King by 
 force. At times when he wrought miracles in the 
 presence of his followers he gave them a strange 
 command. Instead of commanding them to go 
 and tell the story of what they had witnessed, he 
 bade them not to tell about the miracles at all. 
 Was our Lord afraid to have his miracles known? 
 Did he lack confidence in his own works of power? 
 No, it was not that. But he did fear the popular 
 clamor that might come about them. He feared 
 that many would see in them a kind of power that 
 might play into the hands of earthly ambition. So 
 he bade his disciples not to noise about the story 
 of his miracles. He preferred that his followers 
 should brood over these works of power in their 
 own hearts, and recognize in them the presence of 
 a spiritual force that would create a new invisible 
 kingdom in the lives of men. 
 
 He had no thought of turning his ministry into 
 mere miracle-mongering. He would not feed men 
 with miracles. If he had done so, they would have 
 
234 The Art of Sailing On 
 
 developed an enormous appetite for miracles; they 
 would have demanded miracles always as the sign 
 of power. Feeding men with miracles has always 
 been a dubious experiment. The Catholic Church 
 has suffered incalculably from its miracles of 
 Lourdes and Saint Anne de Beaupre. When men 
 see piles of canes and crutches cast aside at these 
 shrines they are apt to say, " Behold the power of 
 the Christian religion ! " whereas Christ meant a 
 wholly different thing when he said, " Tarry ye 
 until ye be clothed with power from on high." 
 The modern cult of Christian Science is making this 
 tremendous mistake over again — feeding the people 
 with miracles of healing. The people like it; they 
 are running after it in bewildering crowds. Jesus 
 Christ could have had great crowds always if he 
 had been willing to exploit his healing powers. If 
 he had been willing to make his Gospel center in 
 the miracles, no doubt he would have fascinated 
 the people. The world always runs after a healer ! 
 Among heathen tribes the medicine-man with his 
 incantations is a king. 
 
 But if Jesus had exploited healing in this way 
 how different the story of the Gospel would have 
 been ! It would have been the story of a distorted, 
 a degenerate Gospel. Its power would have been 
 identified mainly with physical healing. The Chris- 
 
Power from on High 235 
 
 tian Society would have dwindled into a mere mira- 
 cle-sect, and its spiritual doctrines would have been 
 twisted and shrunken until they became mere 
 medical formulae, prescriptions and recipes for 
 bodily health. The Christian sanctuary too must 
 have changed its character with this failure to dis- 
 tinguish as to the real nature of Christian power. 
 It must have become, not a place of worship, of 
 spiritual feeling and resolve, a place where men 
 reckon with their sins in the sight of God, but a 
 place in which men would reckon rather with their 
 aches and pains. 
 
 One of the most dangerous things men can do 
 in the name of religion is to play with miracle 
 and to exploit healing. In early times, as well as 
 in modern times, this has been done. It has never 
 failed to attract its crowds. It has always num- 
 bered its devotees by the thousands. But it has 
 invariably left the Gospel of Christ a poor broken, 
 one-sided thing, its power frittered away in physical 
 ambitions, its glory reduced to the measure of a 
 bodily pain. One might suppose that the spectacle 
 of a modern " prophet " building his " Zion " upon 
 a foundation of healing, and playing at miracle to 
 the cost of many thousands of dollars drawn from 
 the pockets of a bewildered and fascinated multi- 
 tude, would be testimony enough to the fallacy of 
 
236 The Art of Sailing On 
 
 all such interpretations of the Gospel of our Lord, 
 who, when he gave his farewell instructions to his 
 disciples, said to them, " Tarry ye until ye be 
 clothed with power from on high." 
 
 Our Lord desires his Church to know the real 
 secret of power: it is power from on high. Such 
 power is worth waiting for. Tarry ye until ye be 
 clothed with such power. How little haste there 
 is about our Lord! He would not thrust his 
 Church out into the world without equipment. 
 Power and patience are closely akin. Tarry ye! 
 Tarry ye ! 
 
 What a word of caution this is, and it is much 
 needed! One temptation is always with us — the 
 temptation to haste away to other things. Christ's 
 word is always calling us back to the real things 
 of the Christian life. Wait for these, he is saying 
 to his disciples. Tarry ye! Tarry ye! 
 
 The Church's real power is the power of a 
 spiritual life. I have spoken of the seeming incon- 
 gruity of talking to that little company of eleven 
 men about having power. But they were a " trans- 
 figured " band. They were " a band of men whose 
 hearts God had touched," and when the Day of 
 Pentecost came they would be still more a com- 
 pany of Spirit-filled men. It is an interesting thing 
 to watch the manufacture of power. It begins back 
 
Power from on High 237 
 
 there with the waterfall, even back of that with the 
 hills and watersheds and mountain-lakes, and back 
 of that with clouds and rainfall and such forces as 
 gravitation. Then there is machinery, too : there 
 are lines and pipes and engines and turbine-wheels, 
 and you can stand by and watch the revolution of 
 wheels and hear the whirr of machinery, and pres- 
 ently you are told that power has been manufac- 
 tured. But there is so much that you have not seen 
 in the process, so much that you cannot see. The 
 making of power is ever a mysterious thing — all 
 the more if it be spiritual power. You remember 
 how impressively the Lord spoke to his disciples 
 about the Holy Spirit. He even said that it was 
 expedient for him to go away, for he said, " If I 
 go not away the Spirit will not come." And he 
 said that that Spirit was a mysterious Power. You 
 recall in what terms he described the Spirit: " The 
 wind bloweth where it will, and thou hearest the 
 voice thereof, but knowest not whence it cometh 
 and whither it goeth; so is every one that is born 
 of the Spirit." 
 
 This is altogether the surest and clearest thing 
 that we know about the Spirit of God. The com- 
 ing of the Spirit is the mysterious making of power 
 — power from on high, spiritual power — in the 
 hearts of believers; and our Lord said, It is ex- 
 
238 The Art of Sailing On 
 
 pedient that I go away, that ye may realize this 
 accession of power, this quiet growth within you 
 of spiritual grace and wisdom, this nourishing deep 
 within the breast of the life and energy of God. 
 " Ye shall receive power when the Holy Spirit is 
 come upon you." For his early Church the Lord 
 appointed a great day for this accession of power, 
 because the early Church needed a special demon- 
 stration of divine energy, needed in a very evident 
 way the coming of a Comforter. The story in the 
 Acts of the Apostles says : " When the Day of 
 Pentecost was now come," it was like a sound from 
 heaven as of a rushing mighty wind, " and it filled 
 all the house where they were sitting." For the 
 moment the power became even a visible thing; 
 " tongues parting asunder like as of fire " appeared 
 unto them, " and it sat upon each one of them." 
 Our Lord's great miracle thus was a spiritual some- 
 thing: it was power from on high. If you will 
 have miracle look at this! If you must be com- 
 forted by healings, then see how God sent forth 
 his Spirit to comfort men in the Gospel of his Son, 
 to heal the breach of the soul, and to give them 
 power from on high. 
 
 The same mysterious making of power in men 
 goes on always under the Gospel. Pentecost was 
 not self-exhausting. It was not the last or final 
 
Power from on High 239 
 
 word of power from on high. It was rather the 
 visible setting up of a standard. " Speaking with 
 tongues " does not repeat itself. " Tongues part- 
 ing asunder, like as of fire," are not perpetuated. 
 These were accessories to the fact. Nevertheless 
 fire will still burn in the heart of the believer, and 
 power will still encamp in the upper room of an 
 open soul. And ever with that touch of mystery 
 which must invariably accompany the creation of 
 power, " thou hearest the voice thereof, but know- 
 est not." Who can define spiritual power? Who 
 can mark out the working of the Spirit of God in 
 the souls of men ? 
 
 " Tarry ye until ye be clothed with power from 
 on high." This was the Lord's final message to 
 his Church. As if he would tell us that this was 
 to be valued above all else. As if he would cau- 
 tion us not to emphasize other things above this 
 priceless thing. 
 
 The promise is perpetual. It is the promise of 
 the Father. Pentecost is not a date, a day; it is 
 an experience. The Church lives on in this way, 
 by the renewal of the inward man, by the power 
 from on high. Let us confess to that great mys- 
 terious working of the Spirit of God. Without it 
 the Church is stripped bare like a tree in winter. 
 Without it the Church is a machine, an organiza- 
 
240 The Art of Sailing On 
 
 tion, a system. The great thing about the Church 
 is its spiritual power. Oh, let us listen to our Lord 
 when he says this : " Tarry ye until ye be clothed 
 with power from on high." Without it the Church 
 is like a windmill, flapping bare hands against the 
 empty sky; an angel it may be, but an angel beating 
 its wings in vain against the resisting void. 
 
 The spiritual life that is always growing in the 
 world, how quiet yet how tremendous it is ! Power 
 is as still as it is mysterious. God's deepest work- 
 ings are quiet. You are conscious of this. The 
 power of the Spirit to you and to me is a profound 
 personal experience. It is a conscious need of our 
 souls, the deepest need that we know anything 
 about. That miracle is always going on, the mira- 
 cle of divine renewal. " I will not leave you deso- 
 late; I will come unto you." Wait for him! He 
 will not tarry, but will come. 
 
 How often it transpires that souls are thus en- 
 dued with power because they have been tarrying 
 for it. One said to me at close of morning service 
 a week ago, " I have been asking God to give me 
 something special to do." That is tarrying for 
 God, and he will speak to all such. If there are 
 a few souls even tarrying for God's power, the 
 Church will grow richer in spiritual life and power. 
 I recall a revival that came into the college. It 
 
Power from on High 241 
 
 was so mysterious that no one knew how it had 
 come. A few students had been tarrying in one of 
 the rooms at midnight to pray. 
 
 How often we have felt a new pressure of the 
 hand, or have seen a new light in the eye, or have 
 heard a new tenderness in the voice ! Men do not 
 go to the housetops and shout out the news when 
 the Spirit of God comes with power, it is such a 
 profound personal experience, so quiet and per- 
 vasive, so deep down in the soul. One will scarcely 
 speak about it willingly, because it is so deep and 
 precious, like the love that a man has for his own 
 wife and children. A man does not boast of these 
 things; no more does a man boast when he feels that 
 God is closer to his soul than before. But he knows 
 how real and true a thing it is. It is down there 
 in his deepest consciousness; it is touching and re- 
 fining everything that is worth while within him; 
 it is illuminating all his darkness and sweetening 
 everything that is bitter. 
 
 Do not indulge any mistake about this matter of 
 spiritual power. It is not at all to be confused with 
 mere shoutings or blowing of trumpets. Any one 
 can shout, but a man must tarry with his God to 
 be clothed with power from on high. But when 
 power comes it will be felt — ah ! yes, it will be felt 
 in deep, mysterious, joyous ways. Worship will be 
 
242 The Art of Sailing On 
 
 sweeter; the highways to Zion will lead through 
 your heart, and your feet will hasten upon the way. 
 You will pass through the Valley of Weeping, and 
 it will turn out to be a Place of Springs. God will 
 make Baca a well ! The early rain will drop upon 
 the dusty way; you will go from strength to 
 strength. 
 
 There are signs of the Spirit that are quite un- 
 mistakable; men learn to mark them and rejoice. 
 One of them is testimony. Power is ever so quiet, 
 nevertheless it is tremendous. It must make itself 
 felt: that is testimony: it is power making itself 
 felt. Often it is an utterance in words; often it 
 is an utterance without words, like Mendelssohn's 
 11 Songs Without Words." Where there are new 
 accessions of power there will be new forms of 
 testimony. A man will have felt that some Chris- 
 tian task was too much for him; now his testimony 
 is that it grows easier for him. This is how power 
 works out in testimony. 
 
 Another sign of power in the Church is con- 
 version. " It is the greatest word the Christian 
 Church can boast " — this word conversion. The 
 Church needs to tarry until it is clothed with power 
 such as this. It seems often very hard to find the 
 way into human hearts. Many messengers have 
 come back, always with the same report: "The 
 
Power from on High 243 
 
 door is closed." The old indifference, the old 
 neglect, the old unbelief! One day a messenger 
 comes back to say, " The door is open ! " It seems 
 very hard to find the way into human hearts. 
 When there is spiritual power in the Church it 
 becomes very easy. 
 
 Another token of power is in the stress which 
 men give to prayer. If you dislike or despise a 
 person, you have probably never dared to pray 
 for him. Prayer is a healing power. There is a 
 melting of hearts when men pray for one another. 
 It builds bridges, not alone between God and us, 
 but between one soul and another. When you 
 tarry for power prayer grows more precious. It 
 will seem like a band of steel holding Heaven in 
 your grip. Better than that, it will seem like a 
 whispering wind wafting God's comfort and 
 strength to your soul. Do you know how to pray 
 like that? " Tarry ye, tarry ye, until ye be clothed 
 with power from on high." A critic said of John 
 Milton one day, " He does not pray." But his 
 friend, who knew him better, replied, " His whole 
 life is a prayer." 
 
 Another sign is eagerness in doing God's work. 
 Oh, for an eager Church of God everywhere ! I 
 doubt not it is the cry of Jesus Christ above. 
 Tarry ye for this power, the power of willing, 
 
244 The Art of Sailing On 
 
 eager spirits. " My people shall be willing in the 
 day of my power." 
 
 When the Church is willing and eager it will 
 not hesitate to dare. " First ponder and then dare " 
 — that was Von Moltke's motto, the man of whom 
 it was said that he could be silent in seven lan- 
 guages. When the Church is in this mood there 
 are few difficulties. Mountains become molehills; 
 stone fences become wisps of hay. God wants a 
 conquering Church, a daring Church, a Church that 
 does not pause at ant-hills. The Apostle Paul was 
 in this mood of power; it was down deep in the 
 consciousness of his soul; and he said, " I can do all 
 things in Him that strengtheneth me." Savona- 
 rola, that flaming prophetic spirit of Italy's fifteenth 
 century, was in this mood of power, when he cried 
 aloud, " No enemy, no fight; no fight, no victory! " 
 
 When the Church of Jesus Christ is without 
 power it is afraid of everything! When it has 
 power it dares everything! When men are with- 
 out power from on high they attempt little for God. 
 Their initiative grows dull, their enterprise grows 
 feeble. They are like puppets in the presence of 
 difficulty: the wind drives them about. When men 
 have power their minds grow active for God and 
 they are full of spiritual alertness. Their re- 
 sources increase, their enterprise broadens, their 
 
Power from on High 245 
 
 spirits grow eager, they become masterful. Oh, 
 it is wonderful how the Spirit of God works in 
 the souls of men ! Dry bones even are made to live 
 and are clothed with living flesh. We can see, can 
 we not, the meaning of the Holy Spirit, the mean- 
 ing of the dispensation of the Spirit? Christ would 
 have a living Church, a Church clothed with power. 
 Therefore he said, " Tarry ye until ye be clothed 
 with power from on high." 
 
 A man loves to clothe his dear ones with gar- 
 ments of beauty. Now and then a man will go to 
 a place where preciouG things are kept and select 
 some jewel or ornament to adorn the person of one 
 whom he loves. Christ loved his Church and gave 
 himself for it. When he would clothe his Church 
 he bethought himself of a clothing of power; there- 
 fore he sent forth the Spirit of Power. When he 
 would ornament his Church he considered that no 
 ornaments are so fine as those that shine with an 
 inward light. Therefore he coveted for his Church 
 such beautiful things as testimony and conversion, 
 such precious ornaments as praise and prayer, such 
 adornment as the adornment of a spiritual life, and 
 such sparkling joy as the joy of eager spirits. 
 
 When a man has won the maiden of his choice, 
 and she stands by his side arrayed in the garments 
 of love, there is a joy in his heart that is as high 
 
246 The Art of Sailing On 
 
 as the mountain-tops and as deep as the valleys. 
 Such is Christ's joy in his redeemed Church clothed 
 in the garments of love and power, for the Church 
 is his bride. Let us turn once more to the Epistle, 
 and read : " Husbands, love your wives, even as 
 Christ also loved the Church and gave himself up 
 for it: that he might sanctify it, having cleansed it 
 by the washing of water with the word, that he 
 might present the Church to himself a glorious 
 Church, not having spot or wrinkle or any such 
 thing." Glorious ambition of the Son of Man! 
 He desires to clothe his Bride in power 1 
 
THE PASSING OF SIMPLICITY 
 
" A maris life consisteth not in the abundance of 
 the things which he possesseth." 
 
 Luke 12: 15. 
 
XV 
 
 THE PASSING OF SIMPLICITY * 
 
 On the fourteenth of August, 1851, at the cel- 
 ebration of the Centennial of Litchfield County, 
 Mass., Horace Bushnell delivered his now famous 
 sermon on " The Age of Homespun." He re- 
 minded his hearers that the greatness of the past 
 was not the greatness of its great men alone, but 
 rather the fidelity of the multitude of common 
 men : and he drew a most engaging picture of the 
 simple Age of Homespun, when men were as yet 
 unencumbered by the burden of things, and lived 
 a life of such simplicity as seems to us in our time 
 impossible if not ludicrous. 
 
 The change from the days of spinning and weav- 
 ing is so wonderful as almost to stagger the most 
 active imagination. Yet the Age of Homespun is 
 not very far removed. A span of two or three 
 generations at most is all that separates us from 
 the days when men lived close to nature, and drew 
 their supplies from her abundant lap by hand, with- 
 out the intervention of machinery; when domestic 
 
 *A sermon for Thanksgiving Day. 
 249 
 
250 The Art of Sailing On 
 
 life and social life as well were exceedingly simple, 
 and men found time to meditate upon the riches 
 that are other than worldly, the abundance that is 
 better than the " abundance of things." So close 
 indeed does that age of simplicity seem that many 
 of us who call ourselves young have fresh mem- 
 ories of fathers and mothers, and still more of 
 grandfathers and grandmothers, who were prod- 
 ucts of the Age of Homespun. There are indeed 
 not a few of us who could say, " My father went 
 to school in the little red schoolhouse on the hill "; 
 or, " My grandfather wore homespun clothing, 
 made out of home-grown wool, that was spun on 
 the old spinning-wheel and woven in the great 
 loom in the old farmhouse"; or, "My grand- 
 mother, whose well-preserved daguerreotype shows 
 the simple beauty of long ago, wore linsey-woolsey 
 dresses made by her own hand, which deftly fol- 
 lowed the process of manufacture all the way from 
 field and pasture until the finished product adorned 
 her dear old person." 
 
 Imagine if you can the change from the time 
 when your grandmother or mine made her own 
 dresses of flax and wool, to the present day when 
 Parisian models and bewildering fancies in ma- 
 terial and form make the Age of Homespun seem 
 centuries distant. 
 
The Passing of Simplicity 251 
 
 The change has been complete, although here 
 and there in isolated communities one may still 
 find survivals of the Age of Homespun. Even in 
 the great city, if one were to search for it, would 
 doubtless still be found grandsires or grandmothers 
 of other generations who cling in spirit to the sim- 
 plicities of their childhood. And it is well that 
 we should feel the attractiveness of the Age of 
 Simplicity that has passed and is rapidly passing 
 before our eyes. 
 
 At Thanksgiving-time especially it were well 
 for the hearts of older men and women to turn 
 back with a very tender affection to the memories 
 of early days, and to the men and women, some 
 of them our own kindred, who peopled the stage 
 of action in the hours when the mind was as wax 
 to receive and as marble to retain the first impres- 
 sions of life. The value of a Day of Thanksgiv- 
 ing in part is found in the spirit of reminiscence, 
 in the quickening of memory. For a people can- 
 not be intelligently thankful to God by observing 
 the present alone. We have come out of a great 
 background, out of a large past, that is richly 
 stored, like old cellars, with the fine wine of 
 memory and experience. It were well, too, for 
 the younger members of our communities to try 
 to understand something of the elder days of 
 
252 The Art of Sailing On 
 
 our nation, and to realize our indebtedness as a 
 people to those sturdy men and strong women 
 whose portraits now often look down upon us 
 from the walls of stuffy libraries, but whose lives 
 were lived in the hand-to-hand struggle with na- 
 ture which belongs of necessity to pioneer life. 
 For it is very true that our nation was not built 
 alone by the great men who sat in legislative halls, 
 ruled in chairs of state, and framed our now his- 
 toric documents, whose monuments are to be seen 
 in our parks, driveways, and Halls of Fame. In 
 a sense far deeper and truer our nation was built 
 by the common people, by shopkeepers, and builders 
 of houses, and road-builders, and farmers, and 
 other toilers in the simple tasks of life. 
 
 To know the history of a nation such as ours 
 one must know more than the history of its great 
 origins, its great events, its crises, its growth, its 
 wars. One must also know that silent literature 
 which is, as it were, the background of the litera- 
 ture which is written. In this silent literature 
 are recorded the deeds of the domestic hearth 
 unheralded before men. Here also are written 
 the silent processes of rude schools in the forests, 
 the far-away beginnings of colleges and universi- 
 ties. And here also are recorded those stories 
 of pioneer heroism wherein are heard the echoes 
 
The Passing of Simplicity 253 
 
 of falling trees and of cracking rifles, as men not 
 " cast in gentle mould " carved their way into the 
 heart of the continent. 
 
 How interesting as we look back are the sim- 
 plicities of that elder day ! Communities were 
 small, and neighbors were truly neighbors in those 
 simple hospitalities which as yet had not been 
 driven to the wall by a busy age. There was time 
 then for the interchange of the small but ever 
 valuable currency of courtesy and human interest, 
 for the great blight of indifference had not as yet 
 fallen upon the minds of men and the barrier of 
 distance had not yet been raised. To the elaborate 
 tastes of our day, which must have ever a greater 
 variety of diversion, how bare and unattractive 
 seem those scenes of social interest of long ago ! 
 If one would measure the distance we have trav- 
 eled away from the Age of Simplicity, let him 
 contrast a modern social function, a reception for 
 example, with the apple-paring or quilting-bee of 
 our grandmothers' day! With all the sternness 
 of the contrast we are bound to feel how en- 
 gaging those early pictures are ! And if one have 
 even a little bit of imagination he will see that in 
 such bare and economic scenes were growing those 
 domestic virtues, those ideals of friendship, com- 
 radeship, industry, and homely worth, which, 
 
254 The Art of Sailing On 
 
 please God, shall never pass away from our na- 
 tion's life, come whatsoever there may of change 
 in our ways of living! 
 
 Other like scenes crowd into the vista of that 
 vanished age which is still not so far removed, 
 days of military training for example, when rustic 
 shoulders bent from following the plough were 
 straightened by patriotic impulse; days of corn- 
 huskings too, and of house-raisings, when men bor- 
 rowed the willing strength of brother men for 
 the common toils of life. 
 
 Most interesting of all, especially when poets 
 touch the scenes, are the pictures of family groups 
 and social groups seated about the open fire in 
 the home, for the center of all in that Age of 
 Simplicity was ever the home. That blazing fire 
 on the open hearth — how far out into the night 
 of Time its light shines ! Perchance it reaches 
 even into Eternity. Let us quote Dr. Bushnell's 
 picturesque description of the home circle at the 
 open fireplace: 
 
 " In the early dusk the home circle is drawn more 
 closely and quietly round it; but a good neighbor and his 
 wife drop in shortly from over the way and the circle 
 begins to spread. Next a few young folk from the other 
 end of the village, entering in brisker mood, find as many 
 
The Passing of Simplicity 255 
 
 more chairs set in as wedges into the periphery to receive 
 them also. And then a friendly sleighful of old and 
 young that have come down from the hill to spend an 
 hour or two spread the circle again, moving it still farther 
 back from the fire: and the fire blazes just as much higher 
 and more brightly, having a new stick added for every 
 guest. There is no restraint, certainly no affectation of 
 style. They tell stories, they laugh, they sing. They are 
 serious and gay by turns, or the young folks go on with 
 some play, while the fathers and mothers are discussing 
 some hard point of theology in the minister's last sermon, 
 or perhaps the greater danger coming to sound morals from 
 the multiplication of turnpikes and newspapers! Mean- 
 time the good housewife brings out her choice stock of 
 home-grown exotics gathered from three realms, doughnuts 
 from the pantry, hickory nuts from the chamber, and the 
 nicest, smoothest apples from the cellar. And then as the 
 tall clock in the corner of the room ticks on majestically 
 toward nine the conversation, it may be, takes a little more 
 serious turn, and it is suggested that a very happy even- 
 ing may fitly be ended with a prayer. Whereupon the 
 circle breaks up with a reverent, congratulative look on 
 every face which is itself the truest language of a social 
 nature blessed in human fellowship." 
 
 Such was the polite society of two generations 
 or more ago, although there should be added other 
 pictures done sometimes in colors gray, but more 
 
256 The Art of Sailing On 
 
 often in colors gay, of the village school, and of 
 the singing-school held in the evening, wherein 
 young men and maidens learned not only to mingle 
 their voices but often to join their hands and hearts. 
 There should be added also some steel-engravings 
 representative of the religious life and worship of 
 the day; the bare but stately meeting-houses, with- 
 out heat in winter, and the straight pews without 
 the luxury of cushions. In the early history of 
 this church in which we are worshipping to-day, 
 in one of its early locations in the lower part of 
 Manhattan Island, there is a rare story of a 
 doughty Scotch worshipper who, coming in one 
 Sabbath to find a cushion in his pew, lifted it none 
 too piously from its place and threw it upon the 
 floor. I say that pictures such as these should be 
 done in steel-engravings, because religion and wor- 
 ship in that Age of Simplicity had a certain straight- 
 ness and rigor about them, but withal they had also 
 a certain majestic strength. To the men and 
 women of that time religion had great, even stern, 
 meanings, and if their attitude toward life seems 
 to us unbending and even artificial, it may reflect 
 more upon the laxity of our modern thinking than 
 upon the stiffness of that earlier time. 
 
 Surround these pictures with a very insistent 
 industry which dignified toil and discounted idle- 
 
The Passing of Simplicity 257 
 
 ness, together with a severe plainness in the man- 
 ner of living and a very great economy of ma- 
 terial, and out of all these common details see 
 the State emerging, and the Church as well, with 
 the American home always in the background as 
 the constant of life and happiness, and the college 
 also, with the university still in the shadow — and 
 you have in brief something of the rare stuff 
 out of which our nation was made. Nor is it 
 necessary to urge that in the memory of such early 
 simplicities as these we should find abundant 
 reasons for thanksgiving. 
 
 The background of our nation's life is seen in 
 such an Age of Simplicity, wherein men lived and 
 toiled without riches and luxury, and fought their 
 way through hard conditions into well-earned ease. 
 Let us thank God that the foundations of our 
 nation were not laid in ease, nor were the begin- 
 nings of its superstructure raised in the midst of 
 plenty. 
 
 It is true that the continent contained vast abun- 
 dance of nature's wealth, but it had to be wrung 
 from the soil, from the forests, from the rivers, 
 from the mines. The nation was not built by 
 aristocrats, but by toilers, men of the soil, men of 
 the wilderness trail. The first chapters in our 
 national history are chapters of pioneer struggle. 
 
258 The Art of Sailing On 
 
 Those who were " broad-backed and brown- 
 handed, with empires in their brains," wrought 
 with axe and plough and rifle, and most of all 
 with the vision of their own hearts, to win a 
 continent and to make it blossom like the rose. 
 Simplicity was the order of the day. Nature's 
 material was intractable and yielded only to the 
 persevering toil of strong men. Manhood and 
 womanhood grew in the midst of that severe dis- 
 cipline which nature loves to give her children, 
 and which wealth and art too frequently take 
 away. We have reason to thank God that our 
 fathers and mothers for the most part were men 
 and women of common life, 
 
 " The common growth of mother earth, 
 Her simplest mirth and tears." 
 
 Let us thank God for the rude plough and the 
 woodman's axe and the flatboat on the river, and 
 the spinning-wheel and the loom, and the log cabin 
 in the clearing, and the plain schoolhouse at the 
 cross-roads, and the white church with the green 
 blinds on the hillside — for such as these were the 
 simple tools with which our forefathers did their 
 enduring work! 
 
 The Age of Simplicity has gone, gone forever, 
 and its remnants are rapidly passing. The spin- 
 
The Passing of Simplicity 259 
 
 ning-wheel and the loom rest quietly in the dim 
 attic. Perchance the grandmother's spinning- 
 wheel may now and again creep shyly into the 
 library or even into the drawing room, but only 
 as a curious relic of days gone by. That draw- 
 ing room! — think of the contrast with the "best 
 room " in your grandmother's home ! If we think 
 farther back to the days of hewn-log cabins, we 
 must rub our eyes and look for Aladdin's Lamp ! 
 How great are the changes and how far-reach- 
 ing! The Age of Simplicity has gone and the 
 Age of Complexity has come. Albeit there is 
 biting poverty in the land, still it is an Age of 
 Plenty. The materials of life have vastly in- 
 creased; it is an age of the abundance of things. 
 Simplicity has gone out of our thinking and Com- 
 plexity has come in. Our fathers thought in terms 
 of twos and threes, we think in terms of the hun- 
 dreds and thousands. The process begins in child- 
 hood. Little boys and girls only a generation ago 
 were content with simple games. When they 
 played at jumping rope, it was sufficient to jump 
 one rope at a time; nowadays the game is more 
 complex — they must jump two ropes at once. Be- 
 sides five jackstones to be thrown up and caught 
 in the hand, the modern child must manage to 
 catch a little rubber ball also. The simple old 
 
260 The Art of Sailing On 
 
 ball games, " one-old-cat " and " two-old-cat," 
 have lapsed into disuse, and your little six-year-old 
 talks enthusiastically of " basc-on-balls," " home- 
 runs," and " three-strikes-and-out." The broom- 
 stick horse is rarely seen nowadays, unless it be 
 in smaller communities, and instead of this simple 
 delight of our childhood the boy of to-day plays 
 with iron engines, often flying about a track by the 
 power of steam or electricity. 
 
 A modern cartoonist has amusingly shown the 
 departure of simplicity from the small boy's Christ- 
 mas expectations. On one side of the picture is 
 the boy of a previous generation, content to have 
 a solitary stocking filled with nuts, candies, and 
 perchance one simple toy. On the other side of 
 the picture is the present-day boy, having placed 
 a bucket and a barrel, besides both stockings, in 
 anticipation of the multitude of his gifts. It is a 
 matter of no small moment that childhood has 
 become so elaborate in its thinking. 
 
 In almost every direction life takes on greater 
 intricacy, and therefore greater difficulty and dan- 
 ger. Simplicity has its drawbacks, but it is fraught 
 with less peril. 
 
 The progress of invention has multiplied facili- 
 ties in such marvellous ways as to amaze even the 
 most sluggish intellect. A few years ago a thought- 
 
The Passing of Simplicity 261 
 
 ful person in a Thanksgiving Prayer-meeting said 
 that she was thankful for sulphur-matches ! What 
 would she say to-day if she could walk up and 
 down our great Broadway shining to the top of 
 heaven with the brilliancy of electric light! From 
 the tallow-dip of our forefathers to the illumi- 
 nated street of to-day — that is a contrast to make 
 one pause. Yes, the Age of Simplicity has gone, 
 and the Age of wonderful yet nerve-racking In- 
 vention has come. Our fathers suffered, no doubt, 
 because their candlelight was dim. We suffer in 
 our turn because our light is so brilliant. 
 
 In the matter of travel what a wonderful 
 change ! A hundred years ago it was a tedious 
 journey of nearly a week by stage-coach from Bos- 
 ton to Philadelphia ; to-day rapid express trains tell 
 off this distance in hours and minutes. The cor- 
 ners of the earth are drawn up together by the 
 marvels of human invention, like the corners of 
 the sheet let down from heaven which the Apostle 
 Peter saw in his vision; and like that sheet the 
 world-wide vision of men to-day contains every 
 manner of beast, both clean and unclean. There 
 is no longer any distance in the world. China is 
 our next-door neighbor, and the movements of her 
 armies are read in our headlines morning and even- 
 ing. " Far Cathay," which a generation ago was 
 
262 The Art of Sailing On 
 
 the poet's acme of earthly distance, is brought to 
 our doorstep; the heart of Africa is only a little 
 removed. 
 
 Great changes have come as well into the social 
 organization: it is vastly more intricate and more 
 difficult. The people who live far away have 
 been brought nearer; but the people who live near 
 have been taken farther away. World-neighbor- 
 liness has increased; neighborliness on the street 
 has decreased. Time was when neighbors dropped 
 in. The women took their sewing and spent an 
 afternoon. All this has departed with the Age 
 of Simplicity. A social function once a year must 
 take the place of the old-time visiting. Men and 
 women are too busy. Everybody is driven. 
 Nerves are at high tension. " Things are in the 
 saddle; they ride men." The Palace of Life is 
 not even a Palace of Art: it is a Palace of Wealth. 
 The old discipline of meagre material has passed 
 away. The world's trouble now is that it has so 
 much to live upon, not so little. Quiet living has 
 gone; life must be passed now in the midst of 
 swift-moving instruments of life of every kind. 
 
 With all this intricacy, the worries and burdens 
 of life increase. As well say to the water on the 
 stove, " Do not boil," or to the wood in the fire, 
 11 Do not burn," as to say to the modern business 
 
The Passing of Simplicity 263 
 
 man, " Do not worry." Now and then we hear 
 that some modern Croesus has felt that he would 
 gladly exchange all the glory, with the worry, of 
 wealth for the simplicity, with the quiet, of his 
 fathers. The truth is that many persons to-day 
 are wearing themselves out in the effort to live. It 
 is a day of increasing burdens. 
 
 The temptation that men feel to-day is the temp- 
 tation to live by their possessions. It is an age of 
 many possessions. Men own the earth; they are 
 just now claiming the air. The abundance of 
 things increases. Things, possessions, properties, 
 tangibilities — this is what it means when we say 
 that the Age of Simplicity has passed and is pass- 
 ing. The reign of plainness is well-nigh past in 
 America. When Abraham Lincoln was alive the 
 phrase " plain people " was still an epithet of 
 honor: now it is a half-way reproach. We have 
 grown " rich and increased with goods." Plain- 
 ness went out of the window when wealth came 
 in at the door. 
 
 Everything of value suffers by the change. The 
 home suffers. We do not quite say it, but we are 
 apt to think it, that happiness depends on furni- 
 ture. Religion suffers also. When men clutter 
 up their lives with things, clutching them to their 
 hearts as if they were imperishable, the spirit within 
 
264 The Art of Sailing Gist 
 
 loses its desire for spiritual things. There is a 
 certain permanent simplicity of soul that is the 
 constant friend of religion. 
 
 The Age of Simplicity will never return. It 
 is useless to bemoan the fact. We cannot push 
 back the hands on the dial. It is a new age, and 
 it is a great age. It does not follow that the new 
 age is not wonderful because it is so unlike the Age 
 of Simplicity. We have no desire to say that the 
 former days were better than these. On the con- 
 trary, the former days were not so good as these 
 days. The later days ought always to be the bet- 
 ter days. What a wonderful thing it should be 
 to us to live in this wonderful world! It ought 
 to be more wonderful every day. 
 
 Yet we must add that, because the Age of Sim- 
 plicity has gone, there are new dangers in the 
 world, dangers that are difficult to meet; and for 
 this we need the Master of Simplicity to help us. 
 The Master of Simplicity is Jesus Christ. He 
 knew our life here in the world, and it was he who 
 said, " A man's life consisteth not in the abundance 
 of the things which he possesseth." It is the 
 Master of Simplicity who speaks, and his counsel 
 is good for every age. 
 
 Is it possible to live a simple life even in the 
 midst of a great and complex age such as this? 
 
The Passing of Simplicity 265 
 
 Yes, it is possible, if we follow the teaching of the 
 Master of Simplicity. For simplicity after all is a 
 state of mind, an attitude toward things and the 
 world in general, and especially an attitude toward 
 God and the eternal world. " A man is simple 
 when his highest desire consists in wishing to be that 
 which he should be : that is to say, a true and honest 
 man." So Pastor Wagner has taught us. A 
 man's life is simple when his mind is free and 
 untrammelled by things and goes out gladly to the 
 best things in life. A man who lives in that way 
 will break up a great number of complexities. 
 He will begin to live in the spirit, which is the 
 best way to live. He will not live alone in his 
 occupation, in his business, in his successes, neither 
 in his worries, defeats, and sorrows.* 
 
 This means that things must be subordinated to 
 life itself: a man's life does not consist in things. 
 Man does not live by bread alone. He has a 
 soul to keep for eternity. If you are going to 
 California, do not load yourself down with hand- 
 baggage. You will need time to look at the 
 flowers. But listen! if you are travelling to the 
 land of unfading beauty, do not encumber your- 
 self with baggage. Things weigh us down: feet 
 grow heavy: shoulders become weary. It is un- 
 
 * See " The Simple Life, " by Charles Wagner. 
 
266 The Art of Sailing On 
 
 wise " to spend more on the frame than on the 
 picture." Often a noble picture shows best in a 
 plain frame. A man's life consisteth not in the 
 abundance of things. Do not cloy your eyes and 
 ears with possessions. Give your soul opportun- 
 ity to live, your mind time to meditate, your spirit 
 time to pray. Beware of too much baggage in the 
 journey of life; at least beware of thinking more 
 about the baggage than about the journey and the 
 journey's end. It is the Master of Simplicity who 
 tells us all this. Let us keep the old simplicity 
 in the midst of complexity. 
 
 Let us keep the simplicity of the home, magni- 
 fying the homely, domestic virtues of love and 
 trust and kindly disposition. Let us keep the sim- 
 plicity of friendship, refusing to permit it to be 
 clouded by sophistication and artificiality, or to be 
 debased by mere pleasantry or compliment, or to 
 be easily overturned by adverse winds of criticism 
 or rumor. Let us keep the simplicities of life 
 among our fellow men — such as rugged honor and 
 honesty, and the old-fashioned virtues of industry, 
 economy, and personal purity, and a rigid sense 
 of righteousness in public and private affairs. 
 
 Let us keep the simplicity of religion: that 
 nothing may dwarf the fact of God over us and 
 in us, that reverence such as unspoiled children 
 
The Passing of Simplicity 267 
 
 have for their parents may fill our hearts, that 
 prayer may go out naturally and freely to the 
 Heavenly Father, and the love and discipleship of 
 Jesus may be the free and loyal attachment of 
 twice-born men and women. Let us prize the 
 severe virtues and the homely piety of spiritual 
 men and women. 
 
 It has been said of Jesus that he had very little 
 baggage in life. " The Son of Man had not 
 where to lay his head." He was not burdened by 
 things. He had time to think of God and time 
 to look at the lilies and the birds. He taught 
 men not to despise the world, but to live spiritually 
 in the world. He magnified the child-spirit. He 
 deprecated the assurance that comes with worldly 
 wealth and wisdom. He taught men the value 
 of a gentle spirit, of simple speech, of sincere feel- 
 ings. He bade them understand that life does 
 not consist in the abundance of things which they 
 possess, but rather in the fulness of their mental 
 and spiritual life. 
 
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