ORTH EPING , ' . 2, ' - * S THE CONGREGATIONALISM A National Religious Journal. As a family religious journal, the Congregationalist aims to stand In the front rank. Its editorial force is as follows : EDITOR, REV. HENRY M. DEXTER, D. D. NEW YORK EDITOR, REV. ALEXANDER HUNTINGTON CLAPP, D. D. MANAGING EDITOR, CHARLES A. RICHARDSON. ASSOCIATE EDITORS. REV. MORTON DEXTER. MRS. SARAH K. BOLTON. AGRICULTURAL EDITOR. HON. J. F. C. HYDE. THE EDITORIAL DEPARTMENT is intended to be marked by special thorovigh- ness of research, freshness of thought, candor and accuracy of statement, and hon- orable fealty to the faith once delivered to the saints, "as held by our fathers," and in the language of the Boston Council of 1865 " substantially as embodied in the confessions and platforms which our Synods of 1648 and 1680 set forth or re- affirmed." Welcoming the" new so far as it is good, we cannot condemn the good because it is old. CORRESPONDENCE. Besides a weekly letter from the Jfew York editor, we have regular correspondents at Washington, Chicago, New Haven, and Atlanta, and a multitude of special correspondents in different pans of the country. NEWS OF THE CHI RCHES. In this department the paper is generally conceded to have achieved a higher measure of success than any of its contemporaries. Those who wish to keep well informed as to the progress of events in our Congre- gational churches, especially those in New England, often say to us that they can- not do without the Cungregationalist for tills reason, if for no other. This news is gathered from various sources each week, and carefully condensed so as to occupy the least practicable space. BROADSIDES. Another specialty of the Congregationalist is its plan of occa- sionally devoting an entire page to a single topic, and concentrating upon it a large variety of thought and talent. This has proved a useful as well as popular feature. THE LITERARY REVIEW occupies a weekly average of at least four columns of space, and seeks, while fairly andT with considerable fullness reviewing important volumes, to give brief indications of the quality of the lighter issues which swarm from the modern press. This department is edited in the interest of book-buyers and readers, rather than that of publishers. Special attention is also given to lit- erary news and notes. THE CHILDREN'S DEPARTMENT contains a large variety, including a puzzle department, poetry, and articles in large type for the youngest. THE AGRICULTURAL DEPARTMENT, which is under the charge of a practical man with large experience, we have had occasion to know is greatly valued by many amateur gardeners for the special good sense of its suggestions. More or less space is also given to household matters. In short, the Congregationalist is attractive, comprehensive, thoroughly edited In every inch of its space, and distinctively evangelical. tg^*"Any person renewing his own subscription, and sending the name of one new subscriber, with the money, will be entitled to a copy of Worth Keeping, as a premium, postpaid. FOR SPECIMEN COPIES. Price, S3.OO per Year. "W. I*. O- IR. IE IE 35T IE & CO., No. 1 Somerset Street, Boston, Mass. (2) WORTH KEEPING: SELECTED FROM Cjxe C0n0r^0ati0nalist mtir 1870-1879. BOSTON : W. L. GREENE & CO. CONGREGATIONAL HOUSE, CORNER BEACON AND SOMERSET STREETS, i 880. COPYRIGHT, 1880. BY W. L. GRKENB & CO, Stereotyped by Thomas Todd, Beacon Press, 1 Somerset St., Boston. PREFACE. SUCH has been the success of the two previous vol- umes made up of articles from the Congregationalist ("HOUSEHOLD READING," issued in 1866, and "Gooo THINGS," in 1870), as to show that there is a general desire to possess in a more permanent form than the newspaper page sketches, essays and poems that have attracted special attention at the time of their publi- cation. With this idea in mind " WORTH KEEPING" has been selected as the name for this volume; and, like "GooD THINGS," its contents will be found ap- propriate for the Sabbath school library. The writers are among the most valued contributors to the Con- gregationalist, and such articles have been selected as will not be likely to lie upon the library shelves unused. The book is designed for family reading, and while but few of its chapters can be classed properly as juvenile, most of them are such as may be expected (5) 6 Preface. to interest young people as well as those of a more mature age. Being fragmentary in its contents, the book has the advantage of great variety, and of articles from many different writers, thus possessing especial attractiveness as a book to lie upon the center table for use in odd minutes and for a spare half hour. A fair idea may be gathered from its pages of the general character, scope and value of the Congregation- alist, considered especially as a family religious news- paper. CONTENTS, PROSE. 9 OUTRIDING A CYCLONE AT SEA. Rev. C. L. Goodell, D. D. . . . 9 AWAKENING A COMFORTABLE SLEEPER. Mrs. Grace Webster Hinsdale. 16 DID WHAT HE COULD. Rev. H. M. Dexter, D. D 21 THE BIBLE IN THE CLOSET. Rev. W. M. Taylor, D. D 29 A CONSPICUOUS CONVERSION. Rev. J. L. Withrow, D. D. . . .34 CONCERNING CLUB HOUSES. Rev. A. H. Quint, D. D 40 AFTER MANY DAYS. Fanny J. Dyer. 46 A TALK WITH MINISTERS. Rev. A. J. F. Behrends, D. D. . .51 CASUISTRY OF THE CONFESSIONAL 58 A REMARKABLE CONVERSION. Mrs. Marie B. Williams 60 WATCH AND CARE. Rev. Morton Dexter. 66 THE FEAST OF THE ESCALADE. Rev. Leonard W. Bacon, D. D. . . 68 How TO READ HISTORY. Mrs. Annie Sawyer Downs 78 FEAR AS A MOTIVE IN RELIGION. Rev. A. J. Titsworth. ... 83 YUNG WING. Rev. J. H. Twichell 88 GONE. Edward Abbott. 99 A TALK WITH GIRLS. Mrs. Sarah K. Bolton. . . ' . . . .103 BARONESS BUNSEN. Rev. W. L. Gage. . . * .... 108 WILL SMITH'S ADVENTURE. B. P. Shillaber. -<^ 114, BE NOT A JACK AT ALL TRADES. J. B. T. Marsh 123 BAD BOOKS. Mrs. A. S. Richardson. 128 CRITICISMS OF REVIVALS. Prof. Austin Phelps, D. D 135 ZOOLOGICAL GARDENS AT NINEVEH. Rev. Selah Merrill, D. D. */ . 140 WHO WAS MRS. BBARDSLEY'S NEIGHBOR? Rose Terry Cooke. , . 144, JESUS, FIRST AND LAST. Rev. T. L. Cuyler. 155 ONLY A STEP-MOTHER. Mrs. J. D. Chaplin 160 LESSONS LEARNED BY SICKNESS. Rev. A. H. Clapp, D. D. . . 167 HIRAM LYNDE'S EXPERIMENT. Sarah P. Brigham. .... 172 MIRACLES. Rev. J. H. Seelye, D. D 180 A FUNERAL SCENE. C. A. Richardson 185 THE RULING FASHION IN DEATH. Elihu Burritt 189 SOME NEEDLESS ASPERITIES OF LIFE. Mrs. M. E. Sangster. . . .196 JOSEI-H HERON'S RESOLUTION. Mary L. Washburn .... 202 (7) 8 Contents. How THE QUESTION WAS ANSWERED. *feev. H. C. Hitchcock. . . . 208 THE SALEM SUFFERER. Rev. J. UPHAM, D. D 217 SOCIALISM IN GERMANY. Rev. Joseph P. Thompson, D. D. . . . 220 MR. THOMPSON'S SIN. Rev. J. J. Dana 226 A CHAPTER OF ACCIDENTS. Rev. E. P. Tenney 233 ONLY A JOKE. Mrs. Annie A. Preston 240 MR. FINNEY IN A MOMENT OF PERIL, Eben Wheelwright. . . . 245 ANSWERING A FOOL ACCORDING TO His FOLLY. Rev E. Pond, D. D. . 250 THE RUSSIAN NIHILISTS. George M. Towle 255 MAN PROPOSES BUT GOD DISPOSES. Mrs. Julia P. Ballard. . . . 260 THE STRANGER'S TESTIMONY. Mrs. Helen C. Barnard 264 EXPERIENCE WITH TRAMPS. Rev. F. B. Makepeace. . . . .270 RECOLLECTIONS OF DR. KIRK. H. L. Hammond 277 How A MAN OVER EIGHTY YEARS OLD FOUND CHRIST. H. L. Reade. . 281 CHRISTIAN WORK. K. A. Burnell 286 MARK, THE POOR MAN'S GOSPEL. Frederick Vinton 290 How AN ENGLISHMAN GETS BURIED. Rev. J. C. Bodwell, D. D. . . 295 THE CHINESE IN CALIFORNIA. Joseph Cook 301 START RIGHT. Rev. J. S. Ives 308 WRITING DOWN THE BIBLE. Rev. Washington Gladden. . . . 309 HINDERING INQUIRERS. Rev. A. H. Plumb 316 POETRY. ONLY ME. Mrs. C. A. Mason . 15 OUR CHRIST. Lucy Larcom. , 28 ONLY TO-DAY. Rev. W. R. Cochrane 45 THE UNHARMED ROCK. Rev. Ray Palmer, D. D 76 FIVE YEARS IN HEAVEN. Mrs. M. F. Butts. . . jf . . . 107 THE OTHER SIDE OF THE MOON. Edgar Fawcett. *^ .... 133 NEVER AND No MORE. Charlotte F. Bates 179 TOIL AND REST. Rev. I. N. Tarbox, D. D 201 " I HAVE CALLED You FRIENDS." E. Stuart Phelps 207 LOVE'S ESTIMATE. Mrs. Helen Angell Goodwin 216 AMBITION. Mrs. Mary B. Dodge. . . 232 UNDER THE LILIES. Fletcher Bates 244 WHAT PINKIE-BLUE DON'T KNOW. Ella Farman 254 IN MB, O LORD, ABIDE. Rev. J. E. Rankin, D. D. .... 259 THE TRUE HEROIC. Alfred B. Street 289 WHITE VIOLETS. Mrs. Clara Doty Bates 307 THE BABY'S DRESSES. Mrs. Rebecca Perley Reed. 313 OUTRIDING A CYCLONE AT SEA. from Europe in September, 1875, our steamship was struck in mid- ,ocean at daybreak by a cyclone. The sea had been vexed by autumn gales, and the waves contrary for some days. But this black angel spread his wings on the water without warning. A cyclone moves with the stealth and spring of a panther. The shock was sudden, tremendous, awful. The blast of the tempest, riding the gulf stream all the way from the heated tropics, was like the breath of a fiery furnace. It was the same cyclone which damaged Galveston, and tear- ing through the Gulf of Mexico, swept up the Atlantic coast and out upon the ocean, spreading wreck and death. Our iron ship was stanch and well manned, but the first swirl of the whirlwind, traveling in its might like a majestic cylinder of fire-storm, stripped a portion of the guards and boats from the deck, and carried one of the crew into the sea, breaking his leg. He caught a stray rope and was rescued. The man at the wheel lost control of the vessel for a little, and veering (q) io Worth Keeping. round, she went into the trough of the sea. The great billows instantly flooded and submerged her, and the sea-water poured down the hatch- way and through the sky-lights on the deck like falls of a mill-dam. Those in the saloon, feeling the roll of the ship, the waves going over her, and seeing the green water starred with foam at the port-holes, and in the descending cataract within, threatening to fill every room and cabin in the ship, will never forget the scene. This was repeated several times. The wind blew so fiercely that the waves were cut off completely by it, and leveled like a floor, and the foam made it look white and fleecy, like wool spread out upon a plain. The ship could not be guided into the teeth of the wind at right angles with the waves, but must be made to " quarter on," striking each wave at an angle of forty-five degrees. In this way there was a constant strain on the machinery, tending to force the ship round parallel with the waves, so she would roll helplessly in the trough of the sea, and soon go to pieces. The trial of her strength in this way, hour after hour, was fearfully great. When the stern would be down in the water, and the prow climbing a wave, the cut of the iron ship upon it sounded as if it were grating on the side of a vast granite rock, making the whole ship tremble as she labored staggeringly over it. Then, in going down on the other side, the stern of the ship would be lifted from the water, and the increased speed of Outriding a Cyclone at Sea. 1 1 the great propelling screw, freed from the resist- ance of the water and driven by the force of a thousand horse power, would shake and jar the ship as if it were coming to pieces. The passen- gers assembled in the dining-saloon and clung to tables and sofas and chairs round the room, which were chained to the floor. It was impossible to walk, or sit, or recline, without holding on to some object with great firmness. Many were thrown and tossed about like footballs, and much injured. For eighteen hours this stress of weather was on us. For eighteen hours, with few interruptions, I sat on the edge of a sofa, clinging to a table before me ; my wife lying on the sofa, and I bracing back against her so as to keep her from being thrown upon the floor. It was a severe test of physical endurance. The sun rose and found us there ; it set and left us there. It was not until near mid- night that the winds began to abate. Then for hours the sickening roll of the retiring waves was very trying in our state of exhaustion. It was a long time to endure hardness. After the danger of the first shock was passed, the ship's power to resist before it must give way was only a question of time. Strained fo the utmost in every part, the time was coming when it must weaken somewhere. Neither could the brave and faithful men who manned her long hold out. Any moment some seam might open in the ship, some part of the toiling machinery break, and all 12 Worth Keeping. be over. The sea was lashed into fury in its hights and depths. Death sat on the floods. Peril looked in at the windows. The roar and tumult was ter- rific. We were 1,500 miles from shore each way. There was but a plank between us and eternity. For the first fifteen minutes, when death seemed inevitable, my shrinking and recoil from death was very strong. It was a terror to think of being cast into such an angry, surging sea. Then came the thought, I cannot give up my work for Christ now ; His service is a joy, and in my strength I want to live and toil for Him. After this came thoughts of my children and friends, and my church in St. Louis. I said in my heart, my work is not done. I cannot part with them now. Lord, spare me from this hour. When this tide of thought and emotion had swept swiftly past, it was as if Jesus came to me walking on the sea. My heart leaped out to Him in complete assurance and rest. " Per- fect love casteth out fear." From that moment He was my refuge, and all burden went. There was a great calm in my soul. Heaven seemed near and unutterably precious. The bright way to it through the crystal waters appeared short and beautiful as a pavement of emerald. There was a feeling of resignation and readiness, then and there, in the midst of the boiling, tempestuous sea, to go home to the Heavenly Father's house. From that early point to the end, I was permitted to minister to others. Outriding a Cyclone at Sea. 13 The occasion required a soul calm and serene and confident in God. The crash of the sea and the revels of the wind, and the thunder of the far deep were mingled with the shrieks and groans of the affrighted passengers. Under the influence of fear the eyes protruded as in strangulation and drowning. All classes were in prayer, asking mercy and seeking piteously to be directed. The interest in personal salvation was instant and uni- versal. A Jew sat at my feet fifteen hours, leaving only at the briefest intervals. The group around me, clinging to their holds, listened to the words of salvation as for their lives. The Bible seemed builded as an armory wherein hung a thousand promises, all mighty shields for men in the perils of the sea. The Old Volume and the New, Christ and the Apostles, all spake for " those who go down to the sea in ships and do business in great waters." Every few minutes I tore a blank leaf from my note-book, and my wife, as I steadied her, writing down some wonderful promise of God, the paper was passed round the whole circle from hand to hand, and read with intense interest and comfort, each one in turn looking up at the writer with a glance of grateful recognition. Some of the pas- sages will readily recur to the reader : When thou passest through the waters, I will be with thee ; and through the rivers, they shall not overflow thee. Is. xliii : 2. He commandeth and raiseth the stormy wind. Their *4 Worth Keeping. soul is melted because of trouble. Then they cry unto the Lord in their trouble, and he bringeth them out of their dis- tresses. Ps. cvii : 25-28, At length God lifted his frown from the sea and visited us with His smile. " He maketh the storm a calm. So that the waves thereof are still." On the Sabbath that followed, praise and gratitude to God rose in the worship like incense. There were no dry eyes or indifferent hearts. Many who had been the most reckless in their excesses and pro- fanity, said : " Our prayers and our trust in Christ, commenced in storm, shall never cease in calm." The experience was of great value. I know now how it will seem to die. It is going home in the light and peace of Christ. I know the keeping power of our Lord in the hour of mortal terror and fear. I know the might of His arm to uplift and cheer the soul in its extremities. I know the wondrous sweetness of His grace and love when human strength fails. I know that the near approaches to Him are like sunrise to the soul, and that the entrance ways to His presence cham- ber, through one of which I glanced, are filled with the brightness of the King's countenance and the gleam of angelic hosts. When the gates of light swing before us, and we enter into the joy of our Lord, it will be a moment of supreme inspiration and gladness. Since that day when God hid me in his pavilion and taught me, I have been, I trust, a better guide to souls in need, in the house of prayer, "Only Me." 15 and in the chambers of pain and suffering. I asked for the redemption of a hundred souls that year. I record it to the praise of God that He gave that number and more. There is a cleft in the rock for refuge from the frenzy of the storm, and hidden manna for the soul. We can say with Christ, " I have meat to eat that ye know not of." "ONLY ME." A LITTLE figure glided through the hall ; " Is that you, Pet? " the words came tenderly; A sob suppressed to let the answer fall "It isn't Pet, mamma; it's only me." The quivering baby lips ! they had not meant To utter any word could plant a sting, But to that mother-heart a strange pang went ; She heard, and stood like a convicted thing! One instant, and a happy little face Thrilled 'neath unwonted kisses rained above : And, from that moment, " Only Me " had place And part with " Pet " in tender mother-love. 1 6 Worth Keeping. AWAKING A COMFORTABLE SLEEPER. jjOME years ago there was a threatened dilapidation of my physical house. I attempted to avert the calamity, and obtained from my physician two excellent and very different prescriptions one was a mixture of all the tonics concerning which he had any knowledge, leaving out the ingredients which Septimius Felton added, with such fatal confidence, to the marvelous drink which poor Aunt Kezia loved to decoct! The other was a trip to Europe ! Does any one feel more secure in his second voyage than he does on the first ? in the twentieth than he did on the tenth ? I believe not, for a friend who has crossed the ocean forty times told me that his last voyage was accomplished with an increased sense of the dangers of the sea. So I am not in the least ashamed to admit my fear of disaster on my return trip, and on board one of the stanchest ships which crosses the Atlantic. It happened that I was obliged to share my state- room with a stranger. As I looked over the list of passengers, I remembered that I had known many persons in America of the same name as this lady Awaking a Comfortable Sleeper, 17 who was booked for the upper berth in our state- room, but as I did not know the particular family of s to which she belonged, I could not guess her probable characteristics, physical or otherwise- How this lady discerned me on the tug which took us from the dock at Liverpool to the ship, I never understood ; but after a few minutes she came to me in a friendly manner, and said : " I believe we are to spend these ten days together." I replied : " This, then, is Miss . I'm glad to see you ; and (my mind was convinced by the first sight of her true-hearted, generous countenance), I've no doubt that we shall agree in our small apartment, and enjoy the voyage ! " We examined each other as to our expectations in regard to sea-sickness, and I, in an undertone, expressed the hope that she would not be " timid," but that I might find my courage growing stronger in the strength of her* companionship. My anxious face and inquiries were met with joyous and inspiring smiles, and the most assuring cheery talk. How gentle and kind is the gracious providence of God toward me, I thought. This dear good soul will minister sun- shine and comfort to me, whether the days are stormy or serene ! This lady was not a duplicate of every third woman whom you may meet ; she was pleasantly and interestingly unique. There is no sign of good nature and of honest earnestness which she lacked. Half her breadth would almost have measured me 1 8 Worth Keeping. from shoulder to shoulder; her full blue eyes were clear and merry, and her entire figure had a firm, stalwart expression, which did not in the least detract from her gentle and womanly bearing. " One at a time," being the rule we had adopted, I preceded my friend the second night, and was comfortably out of the way when she came down. In the most orderly fashion my companion prepared herself for rest, and with admirable agility she climbed into her berth. I felt rather ashamed not to offer her the lower bed, and save her this exer- tion, but I expected to be thrown to the floor every night by the rolling of the ship, and selfishly dreaded the distance from the upper berth. There's something about the sea which produces a deaden- ing effect upon one's generosity. After expressing hopes for each other's comfort, we began our night's work of sleeping. I had toiled at it for about two hours, when some extra violence of the waves roused me to full consciousness, and set my heart beating with the most agitating fear. I listened to the steady, undisturbed breathing above me till I could bear it no longer, and, raising the curtain a trifle, I awoke that comfortable sleeper with this miserably weak and timid question : " Miss , are you awake ? (I knew she wasn't). Don't you think that the ship is going very fast, and isn't it pitching dreadfully ? " Not vexed at all with my disturbing her slumbers, Awaking a Comfortable Sleeper. 19 my good friend at once replied, in a tone of assur- ing confidence : " Oh, no ; why this is nothing ! You ought to have come over with us last spring ; we had a storm then that shook the ship and tossed her about like a plaything, but we rode right through it safely enough ! " " Well, don't you think the motion is singular tc-night ; it seems to me as if " she would not let me fill out the measure of possible terror by expressing all I felt, but she tried to cheer my spirits and enliven my views of ocean life. At last we ceased talking and I lay still, absorbed in dismal calculations as to the depth of the sea beneath the bottom planks of the ship ! By and by I heard a gentle stirring, and in tones which showed her fear of waking me, as she leaned over the edge of the berth, my companion put this question to my astonished ears : " Did you ever chew gum ? " " Why, yes," I replied ; " I have in my childhood chewed it ; but I don't think I want any now." "Well, if you don't want any gum, just chew on this: 'Commit thy way unto the Lord, and He shall direct thy paths' Now, dear, if you are going to the bottom, the Lord knows it, and orders it ; and He will go with you ! " "Thank you," I said; "that is a good verse to chew on ; I'll try to think of it, and sleep on it." My friend was soon rocked to rest by the very 2O Worth Keeping. billows which had troubled me, and I grew more calm as I summoned my faith to control my fear- The thought of God was sweet and comforting to my heart in that lonely hour on the sea. Commit- ting myself to my Father's will and love, I slept in peace, till the morning called us up to the sunny deck. " It is a pleasant thing for the eyes to behold the light of the sun " at sea ; and it is a blessed thing, too, to get a little sunshine from your neigh- bor's- faith when the heavens are dark, an:l the waters are round about you on every side ! Did What He Could. 21 DID WHAT HE COULD. |E wasn't much, anyway. He was getting old. He was plain in look, to the verge of ugliness. He had a great black blotch on one side of his face. He was illiterate; it was as much as he could well do with his stubby old pen to make out his few accounts with >his custom- ers. His hands were hard with blacksmithing ; and his often-bloated cheeks were seldom, even on Sundays, wholly free from the smut thereof. He was poor. Probably he shod many a horse which would sell almost any day at auction for more dollars than all he was himself worth. He had a bad habit of drinking intoxicants, and had been known to spend the night in the gutter. Moreover, as such men almost always are, he was profane. Little children have been known to be afraid to go by his small shop on the slope of the hill, lest they should overhear him swearing terribly, in a rage with some horse or ox which was skittish about being shod, and bothered him ; it was so frightful to hear him then. No, he wasn't much, anyway ! But he had an immortal soul under this rude and 22 Worth Keeping. rough outside, and he knew it. And some kind of a future stretched before him through the eterni- ties, and he knew that. His mother who had been sleeping more than half a century in the little mossy, bushes-over-grown grave-yard, in sight over the fields from his front door used to love him, and pray for him, and with her last breath conse- crated him to God, and begged him to do what he could that was good, for her sake ; and he knew that. One evening the church-bell rang. It didn't often ring then. But some strange minister was paying a visit to the aged pastor, and had consented to preach for him that evening, and so the bell was rung, just at sundown. When its first notes floated off over the hills, the people, as they heard it, thought some one was suddenly dead (for they remembered no townsman known to be lying near his end), and listened to count the strokes, if they might guess whom it might be ; but they soon per- ceived that it was ringing, and not tolling, and so they knew no one was dead, but that there was a " meeting " out of due time. So they hurried up with their evening chores, made themselves tidy, and started as quickly as they could ; and by the time the bell rang its second ringing, the " teams " were coming in sight from various directions, and, one by one, tying up for the evening in the horse- sheds, as fishing vessels moor at the wharves when their day's work is done. Did Wltat He Could. 23 The blacksmith had had a good day. He had shod four horses and six oxen, and made a good thing of it The animals had all behaved well. He himself had behaved well. He hadn't drank a drop of rum for a month wonderful for him. He didn't remember that he had said a bad word that day still more wonderful for him. It was partly due, and he confessed it to himself, as he thought it over, to the fact that a very sweet, pure young girl she might be five- and-twenty who now and then, at long intervals, rode by from the next town, had stopped that morn- ing to get him to re-set a shoe which her horse had just cast. While he was at work, she talked to him as "if he were somebody;" and she had said : " Thank you very much, Mister ," when she paid him and cantered away. This had made him feel all day more as if he were somebody than usual, and had combined with other things to make a good day for him. He was sitting on the great flat stone doorstep just outside the front door of his small cottage where he used often to smoke his pipe of an evening, and was just filling that pipe for a smoke, when he heard the first notes of the bell. And when he had heard enough to decide that it was not a mortuary announcement, but a call to worship, he said to himself : " I haven't felt so much like a man for a year; I feel like going ; I guess I'll wash up and go. Maybe some great speaker will be there ! " 24 Worth Keeping. So he washed up, and got out his faithful swallow- tail, made of blue cloth with flat brass buttons, which had done duty for ever so many years, since he married his last wife, at weddings and funerals, and when he did go to meeting on Sundays which, truth to tell, was now growing to be very seldom ; and walked leisurely up to the top of the hill on whose side he lived, and down the other side, and up another to the church-yard ; and after sitting on the fence, and chatting with one of his neighbors until the second bell had rung out, and he could hear them inside beginning to sing the first hymn, he got slowly down, thinking how much more spry he used to be in doing that thing years ago, and went in and took a seat in a shady place near the door. The service went on. The good old pastor intro- duced his guest and friend a young man who " talked very natural " to them for a half-hour ; taking for his starting-point the text about the woman of whom Jesus comfortingly said : " She hath done what she could." He made God's com- mands to, and Christ's claims upon men, seem easy and just. He said each can do something. What God wants is that. " God is very fair. He doesn't ask a blacksmith to make a gold watch, but to shoe a horse, or make a nail, or forge a great iron bolt, or do something else which he can do perfectly well if he only will." And our friend shrank further into the shadow, as he said within himself : Did What He Could. 2$ " That's so ; and that's^ right. I can do it, and I will." The young man all unknowing just as he was closing, got round to this blacksmith again. He said : " Now I beg you all to do God and your Saviour this justice, to do what .you can for them, for yourselves and your fellow-men. Not what you can't do, but what you can do ; ^surely it is fair for God to ask that ! Perhaps under som^ of these silent mounds that surround us here [waving his hand toward the church-yard] mol- ders some tongue that once pleaded in dear dying accents with some one of you, to live for God ? Have you done it ? Have you done what you could?" The arrow went in between the joints. The blacksmith lingered under the shadow of a horse- shed until the retiring rattle of the last wagon was still, and then made his way under the starlight to the moss-grown grave whose rusty headstone bore his mother's name. He fell upon his knees. He knew, afterward, that he remained a long time, and that he cried "like a child " there. He scarcely knew how he went home. He could give, indeed, very little rational account of his own feelings and acts. His thoughts of God, and Christ, and of his mother, were very much mixed up together. But he seemed to himself to have had an interview with all three ; and to have confessed to all three the mean wickedness of his life ; and to have carried away the feeling that all three had forgiven him 26 Worth Keeping. provided he would now faithfully begin, and never, never stop doing " what he could." The next Sunday, clean-shaven and well-washed, he astonished the congregation by three several attendances in the house of God. And in the evening prayer-meeting he amazed everybody by getting u, and after a long pause saying : " Good friends, I can shoe horses tolerable, and oxen some, and sich ; but I aint no hand to talk. I allow I haint done what I could. And I'm awfully to blame. I want you to forgive me. I guess God has. I'm sure my good old mother has. And I'm bound to do what I can, now. I do love God. And I'm sorry I've drunk so, and swore so ; and I ain't a-going to do neither no more not if I know it. And I love everybody. And I want everybody to know that the parson here, and the deacons, and these good brethren and sisters, that have kept this meetin'us runnin' this last forty year, while I've been a-hanging on behind and they going up an awful hard hill at that I want everybody to know that they wuz right all along, and that I wuz just as w r rong as as 'twould be to try and weld cold iron ! Now you see, as I told you, I can't talk none, but I must do suthin' to let you know that I'm a changed man. It's dreadful late in the day; but I want you to pray for me, that for the rest o' my life I may be a man that did what he could ! " Two months later to a day, the good parson told his wife, as he went in to her sick chamber to Did What He Could. 27 report his Sabbath evening service : " Molly ! that old blacksmith's speech, I almost think, has been worth more to the cause of Christ in this place than all my forty years' preaching ; surely I never knew fifty-nine persons converted, all at once so, by my sermons and that's the number up to to-night that I count as the killed and mortally wounded from that single broadside." " Ah ! but, husband dear, if you hadn't been preaching the forty years, his speech could not have done such execution ! Paul plants what Apollos waters." " Yes, Molly, and God giveth increase, as pleas- eth Him ! " 28 Worth Keeping. OUR CHRIST. IN Christ I feel the heart of God Throbbing from heaven through earth: Life stirs again within the clod : Renewed in beauteous birth, The soul springs up, a flower of prayer, Breathing His breath out on the air. In Christ I touch the hand of God, From His pure hight reached down, By blessed ways before untrod, To lift us to our crown Victory that only perfect is Through loving sacrifice, like His. Holding His hand, my steadied feet May walk the air, the seas ; On life and death His smile falls sweet Lights up all mysteries : Stranger nor exile can I be In new worlds where He leadeth me. Not my Christ only ; He is ours ; Humanity's close bond ; Key to its vast, unopened powers, Dream of our dreams beyond. What yet we shall be, none can tell; Now are we His, and all is well. The Bible in the Closet. 29 THE BIBLE IN THE CLOSET. |T is good to read the Bible through ; but our own experience has given us an utter repugnance to all carefully constructed schemes for accomplishing that end in a given time. In the early days of our spiritual history, we met with such a plan in the memoirs of McCheyne, and immediately determined to adopt it ; but we soon discovered that we had bound ourselves with the most galling chains, and we had little or no enjoyment in our Scripture study until we conclu- sively abandoned the course on which we had entered. It commenced, if we remember rightly, at three separate places. Genesis, Isaiah, and Matthew, and went on at the rate of so many chap- ters daily from each, until, at the year's end, the reader who had the patience to follow it came out at the Song of Solomon, Malachi, and Revelation. But we found that there was no principle of asso- ciation between the three places selected. We dis- covered, also, that we had burdened our consciences with a fictitious responsibility, and felt that we had committed a grievous sin when we did not accom- plish in a day " the tale " of chapters. In short, we 30 Worth Keeping. were rapidly developing within us a spirit of the utmost legalism, and were beginning to feel that the great end of a religious life was the regular study of the Bible after McCheyne's plan ; instead of realizing that the perusal of the word of God was only a means for helping us to live in a right, noble and manly Christian manner. As soon as we became alive to the state of the case, we threw the whole scheme overboard, and ever since, so far as the enjoyment of the Scrip- tures is concerned, we have luxuriated in "the glorious liberty of the children of God." Some- times we have taken more, and sometimes less, always " as we were able to bear it ; " and the result has been, that we go to the word of God to be refreshed and strengthened, and not to perform a duty, or to fill out a plan. We eat because we are hungry, and so long as we are hungry ; and therefore our enjoyment is always keen. He who takes all his food by weight and measure, and is always thinking of the right number of ounces, or the proper proportion of a quart, is apt to be a weak valetudinarian, and the attention which he gives to such little things is sure to narrow his mind and heart, so that he is inevitably a small man. Now it is quite similar in this matter of Bible-reading in the closet ; and the only rule which one ought to lay down for himself is to read until his soul is satisfied. Occasionally, he will come upon a verse which will seem to him to be The Bible in the Closet. 31 like a branch heavily laden with ripe fruit, and shaking that into his lap, he will find he has enough for all the day. While, again, he may read a whole book at a sitting and feel that he has not had too much. One day a parable may be enough ; another, he will seek to have a psalm ; now he will be con- tent with one beatitude, and again, he will read at once the entire sermon on the mount, and see in it, as a connected whole, a unity and completeness which he has missed while perusing it in disjointed chapters. But while thus insisting that every one should exercise his liberty in the matter of closet study of the Scriptures, there are one or two hints which we would give, by way of intensifying the interest which such an occupation ought to produce. As far as possible, each book should be read as a whole. The chapters into which they are divided are in many cases as artificial as the scheme to which we have just referred. Think of a son in Europe dividing a letter from his father in this country into so many sections, and taking one of these every morning for his refreshment, yet never reading the whole epistle at once ! But it is in this absurd fashion that many of us are content to treat the letters of Paul and his brother apostles. To go through the Epistle to the Romans carefully at one sitting, is better for giving us a thorough comprehension of its meaning and design than many a commentary ; while with such a book as 32 Worth Keeping. that of Job, it will be quite impossible to attain to any clear understanding of its purpose and argu- ment if we take twenty-one days for its perusal at the orthodox rate of two chapters a day. For our- selves, we are free to confess that we never made much of that magnificent poem, until we read it, as one reads a book of Milton, or an idyll of Ten- nyson ; and, even after that, our ideas of its mean- ing were marvelously brightened when, while teaching in a Scottish country school, we picked out boys enough to make up the number of the dramatis persona, and went over it with them, making each adhere to the pieces spoken by the character which he represented. It is hardly a closet exercise, but we can conceive of nothing more calculated to interest a family group in the patriarch of Uz, than such a method of dealing with the book that goes by his name. We add only one other hint : that we should endeavor to get a clear idea of the circumstances out of which the writing before us grew, and to which it was directed. Every scholar knows that the books in the Old and New Testaments are not arranged in chronological order, and can tell how much new interest was added to his consideration of that under his hands when he discovered its date and primary application. It would be well, therefore, if in the closets of our intelligent church- members such books as Angus's Bible Handbook were to be found, so that they could study each The Bible in the Closet. 33 gospel, epistle, prophecy and psalm in the light of the occasion to which it belonged ; while volumes like Paley's Horas Paulinae or Blunt's Scriptural Coincidences, or Plumtre's Biblical Studies, will help them to discover what mines of wealth there are in the by-ways of the sacred books, of which the mere surface reader takes no note. Moreover, the perusal of such works along with the Bible will suggest to us new applications of the principles on which their authors proceeded, and will make our closet hours as deeply interesting to us as their hours with the microscope and the telescope are to the entomologist and the astronomer. 3 34 Worth Keeping. A CONSPICUOUS CONVERSION. JN the autumn of 1872, 1 met the subject of this sketch by introduction on a street corner. I had already heard something of his professional eminence in the law ; and of his great natural gifts. The picture of the man, as memory now recalls him, upon that morning of first introduction, is in this perspective. He stood straight as an arrow. His eye keen, but kindly; a lawyer's eye, trained to take in a twinkle all the telling points of another's person- ality. Locks, once black, were enough flecked with gray to give evidence that he was over fifty years up the hill. Gradually I learned more of this man, whom the whole city and State knew better than we often know our next-door neighbors. In one line of legal practice he had no competitor. And in all departments of jurisprudence his stores of learn- ing and ready use of authorities are subjects of constant remark among gentlemen of the bar. His eloquence is captivating. His cogency convincing. He can harangue a mixed crowd upon a political A Conspicuous Conversion. 35 issue until they are hoarse with huzzas ; and then turn into the supreme court and indulge the bench with authorities quoted from memory as much as from memoranda. He is a man of iron nerve 5 and has stood as undaunted in the thick of battle as if bullets were baby's playthings. His inner- most pulse beats against all oppressors of the poor and lowly. He was an abolitionist when it needed almost reckless courage to declare it. He despises hypocrisy as few others do whom we have met. His nature is of that composition which makes a conquest of his heart and purse the easiest possi- ble to the impostor. It is a very blundering beggar who fails to make my friend's fountains of sympathy flow. He is indeed a rare and noble man now that the gravest faults and deadliest evils have been re- moved by the grace of the Holy Ghost. For it must be added, that, with all his natural gifts, and endowments, and all his achievements in learning and influence, he had come to contemn the cross and all the truth it teaches. He despised religion and its professors with a bitter and deri- sive despite. Court practice had increased his contempt for Christians by every additional flaw that he had found in their testimony. He turned his back upon the church except upon a sort of nondescript concern called a church, and charac- terized chiefly by the conspicuous absence of any- thing honorable to Christ. 36 Worth Keeping. Two years ago, subsequent to my first introduc- tion, and to our utmost surprise, this distinguished lawyer and determined enemy of the Master, crossed the threshold of our church. Following his figure and fixing my eye on the man as he sat down, I had this impression of him. Stern, unsym- pathetic, seemingly disgusted before the sermon began, and growingly disgusted as it went on. I thought an angel's ear might hear his teeth whet- ting across each other, sharpening to cut sermon and preacher to pieces as soon as the stupid ser- vices should close. Meantime, there was to me but one man in all the crowded church. In a way all new to me, I was led to let my whole soul out in desire for his conversion. Not a farthing cared I for his cold and critical attitude. My soul went out for his soul. All the remaining duties of the day were mere variations on the theme of this man's salvation. I worked thinking of him ; I slept dreaming of him. Two days of desire and prayer ended in nothing more than dropping a line into the mail, recognizing his presence the past Sabbath, and expressing my pleasure. He replied, respectfully, in a note whose edges were as keen as its touch was icy. I replied in a brief epistle, which, so far as was in me, I perfumed with love and wrapped in velvet. He responded in what seemed to me like pussy's foot, soft on the outside, claws underneath ! " He was too busy to be dis. turbed." It ought not to disturb the busiest man A Conspicuous Conversion. 37 to have a bouquet laid on his table. So I resolved to gather bouquet truths and tie them round with some texts on the atonement, and send them. Now my friend was aroused. He wanted to argue. He would show the joints of our doctrine and the deceptions of our professors. Gently but firmly I declined; confessed that he could defeat me in doctrinal difficulties ; allowed the church to be below the best standards. But two things I would not do ; argue, nor see him. " But," said my next note to him, " you will now and hereafter be the subject of my earnest prayer, at a certain specified hour of each day, until you repent or perish, or I pass away." What unwritten events followed for a few weeks are only known in part to me ; and these are too sacred to be given out. Suffice it, that the great opposer grounded every weapon ; gave up every hope ; made clear and comprehensive confession before God; and, accepting Christ for righteous- ness and redemption, presented himself as a new man. With the converted Saul's humility, he made known his previous state of sin, and his mad opposition to the truth. He had been friend, fellow and correspondent with the eminent infidels of two hemispheres. He had " cast away the entire Chris- tian system." He believed professors to be arrant hypocrites. All this he retracted ; took the hum- blest place. "Only let me sit down on the sill of the door; it is all I deserve," said he at his 38 Worth Keeping. admission into the church. " Come to my house, and erect a family altar for me ; and if God helps I will never permit it to be without the daily offer- ing." It was a joyous hour when, as the pastor of that new-born family (husband and wife both start- ing together), I set up the altar for offering. And most faithfully has my friend fed it with daily fuel. And now what have we ? A man of more than middle life; of eminence in a profession whose members are not generally believers ; a man who had led the van of those most at variance with God ; a man who had at his tongue's end the keen- est and completest arguments against Christianity; a man whose change would cause him the only conspicuity which a proud heart opposes ; this man down as flat as Saul on the highway, and as meekly asking : " Lord, what wilt thou have me to do ? " Since that day, his life has been so modestly, so definitely, so decidedly, so undeviatingly loyal, that I venture he would search in vain, who would find one to deny the mighty change in this, now, man of God. " Ah, he was suffering some misfortune, and so was easily affected." Far from it ; he was on the top of the flood-wave. " Perhaps his mental powers are failing." Is he failing who can contend in courts from morning till night ; then, eating a light supper, sit down to his table and work until the breakfast bell ; rise to eat, and off to court until evening, and sit down to yet a second night of A Conspicuous Conversion. 39 work which does not have a doze in it until day- light ? Two days and two nights of steady work ! Only Frederic the Great, of those of whom I have read, ever had such endurance. Space is too short for detailed proof. But this statement we boldly make. There is not another who more bitterly disbelieved, and with better abil- ity to give the strongest answer for his infidelity. And to-day there is not one of whom we have knowledge who is more meekly and lovingly sitting at Jesus' feet, "clothed, and in his right mind." And if any assuming and shallow scholar attempts to show that education raises men out of the reach of that repentance and regeneration which humbles the head and radically changes the heart, I shall tell him the story of this most conspicuous of the many conspicuous cases which it has been God's good will to give me in my ministry and pas- toral care. 4O Worth Keeping. CONCERNING CLUB-HOUSES. ANY people are prejudiced against clubs and club-houses. The name is enough to condemn either. Is this reasonable ? Not entirely so. Every case must be judged on its own merits. Certainly, an association of a limited number of persons, who unite their moneys to pro- vide a suitable place for personal enjoyment, often with libraries and other facilities for improvement, is not necessarily evil. Nor is it any injustice to the public, that the club restricts its privileges to members of its own body, except by inviting at its own pleasure, persons not members. I suppose, however, that the apparent exclusive- ness is a source of prejudice. Why should it be? Only a moderate number can be accommodated in any one club-house. Moreover, the members have themselves paid the cost of it. Others can insti- tute a new club, and build a new club-house. I have, however, lately had experience as to the exclusiveness of a club, which made it quite troublesome. In the town where my family has been tempora- Concerning Club-Houses. 41 rily placed, there is a club whose superior privi- leges I wish to enjoy. I can enjoy them by invita- tions from time to time, but I greatly prefer to do it as a right, and to meet my share of the expenses. One does not like to be beholden, even to friends, all the time. This club, unlike many, admits favored women and children to its advantages ; and my desire to get admission has been mainly for my family's sake. For a whole year have I tried in vain. This particular club was formed some years ago. It erected a brick building capacious and hand- some. It has literary and other exercises of a very superior order, and often has music. In fact, it is high-toned and first class. Its personal rights of property are somewhat peculiar. Instead of owning all in common, it had the builder draw lines on the entire broad lower floor ; erect private boxes according to these lines, and put doors to the boxes, and fastenings on the doors. And each member of the club is an owner of a private box in fee, which also descends to his heirs. When the club-house is to be occupied, into his own box goes the owner, with his family and any other he chooses to invite; and he shuts the door and fastens it. In this particular club the owner, as such, pays no part of the expenses attending the occupancy of the club-house, except for keeping the shingles tight, mending any broken glass, and for an 42 Worth Keeping. occasional coat of paint. Nothing can be required of him even for coal or the pay of the janitor ; and of course nothing for the cost of any music, speakers, and the like. All such expenses are met by con- tributions of the generous. A member of the club, that is, a proprietor; that is, a box-holder, may enjoy all the advantages of the club-house for all his life, and never pay one cent for its superior privileges. He can, if he chooses, lease his box, and pocket the rent. But a great difficulty here is, that some box- owners who rarely occupy any portion, will not lease any part to those who would occupy. Hence there are some empty boxes, while other persons (for instance, myself and family) earnestly desire the privileges. Nor have I, nor has anybody else, on the theory and practice of this club-house, any right to com- plain. The owners paid their money honestly; their boxes are their own private property, and it is nobody's business. If any people do not like it, they can build another club-house. Only, that is beyond my power, or my desire. Of course everybody knows that this particular club-house is a meeting-house. I have sometimes heard it called a House of God. I want to know what to do. For more than a year have I tried to get reasonable accommodation for my family. I have tried to hire sittings enough. Our number is not very large ; yet have they been Concerning Club-PIouses. 43 divided around into three parts of the house, and some of them, even then, dependent on the cour- tesy of friends. Two of them had regular sittings awhile in a spot where every opening of the door sent a deluge of cold air on their necks ; and only two sittings at that. Courtesy continually says to me : " Bring them into my pew any time." Yes, but, first, I want my children to sit together, and two parents, if both are there, cannot sit in three places ; secondly, I want to pay for the sittings. I take this as a sample case. What are the diffi- culties ? Is the church crowded ? No. There is a good congregation, but it would be greatly in- creased if sittings could be furnished. Is the house small ? No. Six tiers of pews of liberal dimensions. This club-house system is here a weight around the neck of a remarkably able and successful minister. The trouble is, pews have been inherited. Owners will not part with them. Many owners decline to rent any sittings to any- body, even if they have one or five at liberty. Persons have told me how long and patiently they waited, before they could get any accommodations, while there were plenty of vacant sittings every Sunday and successive months. You know there are four systems as to pews, (i.) Where pews are owned in fee, not subject to any taxation for current expenses. (2.) Where pews are owned by individuals, but subject to tax- ation for current expenses, according to a fixed 44 Worth Keeping. original valuation. (3.) Where pews are owned by the society, and rented either annually or continu- ously. (4.) Where all sittings are absolutely free. There are objections, of course, to each method. But incomparably the worst, and in the present state of society, inexcusable, is the first. We know how it originated, and that then its evils were not experienced. Now it is a barbarism. It enables an owner to enjoy all the advantages of the church, and never pay a cent therefor, as does the fourth above ; but, unlike the fourth, it enables him to prevent the growth of a congregation. It makes what is called a house of God simply a club- house, whose owners have contrived to have com- forts for themselves and families and invited guests ; or, what a theater would be if it was all private boxes owned by individuals without taxa- tion or rental. Anything more different can hardly be imagined this system from one where a build- ing is supposed to be erected, in which one is to preach the gospel to all who will listen. Not a meeting-house ; a club-house. The club being, not the church, but the pew-owners. What can one do ? Go elsewhere ? But here is the form of worship and the kind of doctrine my family prefer. Here is a minister, whom I esteem for his intellectual power, and love for his great, generous heart. Here is the house where I was led when I was a mere child, every inch of whose walls is familiar to me. Here are the men I knew Only To-Day. 45 and honored as I grew in years. And in this house, and in the seat where he had been for forty years, my dear and honored father, an officer of its church, sat only the day before God suddenly called him up higher. Can I take my children elsewhere, while his grave is under only its first snow ? ONLY TO-DAY. ONLY to-day for sorrow ! If God has bidden me weep, I'll think the brightest to-morrow Soon over the night will creep ; And so I will only pray That he give me grace to-day! Only to-day for labor ! Each day by itself alone ; With its helping for my neighbor, And its watching for my own ; And so I do with my might And so I walk in the light ! Only to-day for living ! Fresh, plain to understand, With its loving and doing and giving Brought close to my heart and hand, Since to-day, for aught I know, Is all I shall have below ! 46 Worth Keeping. AFTER MANY DAYS. WAS keeping house for a friend who was suddenly called from home by the illness of a relative. One day a caller was an- nounced, and descending to the drawing-room, an old man rose to greet me whose mantle of seventy years could not conceal a presence of rare dignity and grace. His genuine regret at my friend's absence awakened my curiosity. " Will you leave a message for her ? " I inquired. " I think not," he replied ; " only this card." As he turned to leave the room his attention was arrested by a portrait on the wall. " Who is this ? " he eagerly asked, but immedi- ately added, half to himself, " I see, I see the same Clover of by-gone days." With graceful courtesy he begged my pardon for the momentary abstraction, and said : " Will you please tell Mrs. Brayton that I hope to see her in the other house the one not made with hands?" This was not the language of conventional callers, and long after his departure I pondered over his half-mysterious, but strangely attractive bearing. I had been intimately acquainted witl After Many Days. 47 my friend from early girlhood, and it seemed im- possible for her to have met this man and made such an evident impression, and I be ignorant of the circumstances. I concluded that I had enter- tained a very agreeable lunatic. The next day Mrs. Brayton came home, and I gave her the stranger's card. On one side was the name and address : ROBERT RALSTON, STUTTGART, GERMANY. beneath which was written in pencil : " I came here to answer yes to the questions of thirty years ago." " O how sorry I am ! " she exclaimed. " It is like one risen from the dead. What did he say ? " I repeated the verbal message, told her of his rapt look before the portrait, and then claimed an explanation of such strange proceedings. My curiosity was rewarded with the following story : "Years ago," said my friend, "when a mere child of seven, I was sent away from home to escape a contagious disease which had broken out among the children in our town. I was shut up in a lonely house with a maiden lady, a friend of mother's, and I well remember the terrible home- sickness of the first few days. Separated from a large circle of brothers and sisters, and from the free, loving ways of our household, the gloom and 48 Worth Keeping. grandeur of this other place nearly crushed me. Only a lack of courage kept me from running away. One day this lady's brother came home. He was a bronzed, bearded man of forty, who had spent years in traveling, and he delighted my hun- gry heart with wonderful stories of what he had seen in other lands. Day after day he gave him- self up to the task of amusing me. Never did lady have a more devoted knight. It was the win- ter season, and every pleasant day he coasted down hill with me, or took me out for brisk walks in the quiet town, teaching me to observe and enjoy a thousand things which my childish eyes would not have seen but for his kindly instructions. He taught me to sing, and led me into the most enchanting realms in the world of books, training my mind, even then, to discriminate between the true and false. We played checkers a great deal, and so delicate was the tact which allowed me to beat that I never dreamed it was not the result of my own skill. " I had a little trick of humming to myself as ^1 poised my ringer over the men, deliberating a move. One day he exclaimed with an air of having made a rare discovery : ' Why, it must be the humming which makes you so successful ! I think I'll try it.' Then he, too, would hum so musically that I would wait the game to listen, but it seemed to avail him nothing. Then he would declare that there must be some witchery in my tones. After Many Days. 49 " ' Why do you call me Clover ? ' I once asked him. ' My name is Alice.' " ' Because clover blossoms are bright and bon- nie, and so are you,' was the reply. " I cannot understand, even now, how this cul- tured man of the world was content to give him- self up so fully to the task of pleasing a little child. I was sorry when the summons came to return home, and the night before my departure I was permitted to sit up beyond the usual time. I can recall just how the room looked. The candles were not lighted, and the glow from the blazing logs on the hearth made fantastic shadows on the wall. The furniture was of massive oak, curiously carved, and in that weird light each article seemed to take the form of a horrible monster, that ,made me nestle in the strong arms of my friend with a delightful sense of safety. Although I could not understand much of the conversation, I felt that he and his sister were talking wisely and well of men and affairs. Finally they drifted on to the subject of religion, and something in the man's cold belief or unbelief chilled my young heart. The life of Jesus Christ was analyzed in the same critical way as that of Lord Burleigh and Napoleon Bonaparte. " Suddenly I lifted my head from his shoulder and asked, with astonishment, 'Don't you love Jesus, Mr. Ralston ? ' The only reply was a hand gently forcing my head back to its resting-place, 4 50 Worth Keeping: and the conversation continued with his sister. I could endure it no longer and again lifted my head to inquire, with childish persistence, ' Well, don't you believe Jesus loves you ? ' This time not only was a hand laid tenderly upon my curls, but some- thing like a tear dropped on my upturned face, as he said softly, ' I believe in you, Clover, with all my heart.' The next morning he kissed me good-bye as he put me in the old stage-coach, and from that day to this I have never heard of him." The bit of pasteboard in my friend's ringers grew -luminous with a life's imagined history. Time had brought her the ordinary experiences of girl, and wife, and motherhood, but who could guess where and how his days had been spent ? In what lands had he wandered, seeking but find- ing no rest for the uneasy soul, until he found it in Him who is the Peace of a weary world. "A little child shall lead them," even after many days. A Talk With Ministers. 51 A TALK WITH MINISTERS. JHERE are only seven days, of twenty-four hours each, in every week ; during which a working pastor must prepare two sermons, conduct from one to three prayer-meetings, make such pastoral calls and discharge such duties as the requirements of the parish may demand. To say nothing of needless invasions on his time by people who have no claim on him, and the hours con- sumed by attention to correspondence more or less extended, how can the average pastor find time for such courses of study as to fit him for growing use- fulness ? That the problem is not insoluble is plain from the fact that scores and hundreds of men have been able, for many successive years, to meet the demands of their parishes to growing accept- ance, with energy sufficient to write for the papers, contribute to the magazines and quarterlies, and join the fraternity of authors. And inquiry proves that all this has been done, not by the aid of miracle, but by a wise husbanding of time and force, and by downright hard work. It may be said, in a general way, that in such matters every man must be a law unto himself. 52 Worth Keeping. Men differ widely in their native capacity for intense and continuous work, in their powers of endurance, in rapidity of mental activity, in retent- iveness of memory, in literary tastes, in their dis- position to confine themselves to definite methods. Samuel Hopkins speaks of studying fourteen hours each day. Calvin found time to preach every day, lecture three times a week, conduct a vast correspondence, and prepare for the press his volu- minous commentaries. Such examples are profita- ble for inspiration, but hardly for imitation. The average working pastor will be fortunate if he can succeed in following the illustrious Thomas Chal- mers, and devote, on an average, five hours each day to his studies. In the most active years of his ministry he may not be able to command even such an amount of time for uninterrupted and close study. But there must be something seriously at fault, if he fail, during the first ten years of his professional life, to spend at least five hours a day in his library. During these years he has most leisure. The calls for outside labor are compara- tively few. And if these years have been diligently improved, the capacity for work will have doubled and trebled, so that one hour may be made to do the work of three. Dr. Alexander is right in say- ing that the first ten years of any minister's work are the period in which he makes his greatest attainments. These are years of foundation build- ing. They determine his practical aims, his literary A Talk With Ministers. 53 or theological tastes, his methods. And where these ten golden years have bee.n allowed to run to waste, or have been indifferently improved, it may be seriously doubted whether the loss can ever be made good. There must be also, from the very beginning, a very definite purpose of solid improvement, a deter- mination conscientiously made and firmly adhered to, not to sacrifice the student to the preacher. Every pastor very soon is confronted by the ques- tion : " How much time ought I to give to pulpit preparation, and how much to general study ? " These two lines of work cannot be separated ; they are like the right and left lobes of the lungs ; an injury to one is hurtful to the other. He who neglects general study will soon exhaust his material, and fail in the power of public religious teaching. It would seem to be fair to divide the six days of the week equally between these two great classes of work. One half of each working day might be given to the sermon, and the other half to study ; or the first three days might be devoted to study, and the work of pulpit prepara- tion might be begun on Thursday. In some respects, the latter plan has its peculiar advantages. It supplies time for creating mental momentum, a quality invaluable for broad and effective work. Nor will the sermon necessarily suffer. He who cultivates what has been called the " homiletical mood" will frequently find the richest and most 54 Worth Keeping. practical themes in the course of his most general studies. Besides, where the afternoons are devoted, as they always should be, to parish work, the mind will often so combine the studies of the morning with the living wants of men, as to provoke the most profitable trains of reflection. It may be said that he finds the most numerous and the fresh- est themes for the pulpit, who most eagerly and gladly loses hinlself in surveying the broad fields of divine truth. It will be found, too, that where such a policy is early adopted, the time for general study may be gradually extended, without detriment, to careful preparation for the services of preaching. As material accumulates, as the knowledge of the Bible, and of doctrinal history, becomes more accurate and extended, as the mental powers become more vigorous, and practical sympathy with men gathers fiber and force, an hour or two may suffice for what once required an entire morn- ing; and so, as duties and calls multiply, the acquired ease may still leave a generous margin for general study. Equally important is it that the lines of study be carefully chosen, and firmly adhered to. A minis- ter ought to be a man of liberal culture. But he is not summoned to be an expert in every depart- ment of human knowledge. In science, in polite literature, in political economy, in philosophy, even, he need not blush to confess his inferiority to many a man in the press ; but in Christian theology and A Talk With Ministers. 55 ethics he ought to be a leader of his people, in reality as well as in name. As a preacher of right- eousness he ought to understand his subject, both in its ideal and practical aspects. So that it would seem only reasonable that a working pastor's time for study should be mainly given to such depart- ments as are immediately related to ethics and theology. If his means are limited, he should all the more jealously economize his dimes and dollars, that he may possess himself as rapidly as possible of such books as represent the very best Chris- tian thinking in interpretation, systematic theology, church history and the history of doctrines. . Only too many libraries of ministers give evi- dence that they have been collected without any definite plan ; and many a man who displays a couple of hundred of indifferently good books, with the complaint that he cannot afford the luxury of a working library, might have possessed himself, without a dollar's additional expense, of a small, but permanently valuable, collection of first-class books. It requires some courage not to buy a new book, fresh from the press, and loudly heralded; but it is generally safe for a working pastor to wait until criticism has been passed on the venture by some competent authority. Many a dollar may be saved by having the study-table regularly visited by some standard Review, whose book notices are scholarly and reliable. In the meantime it is best to master that which is positive and reasonably 56 Worth Keeping. well established. It is infinitely better to be master of the history of truth, than to be familiar with all the shades of error. Some ministers study here- sies too much, and truth too little ; and the conse- quence is not only injurious to their hearers, but also to themselves. The firmness of their intellec- tual fiber gradually relaxes, until positiveness of personal conviction almost disappears. There should also be mental vigilance, as related to such subjects as from time to time are thrust into public prominence. Not long since the nature and duration of future punishment excited partic- ular attention. More recently the Prophetic Con- ference gave a temporary publicity to pre-millenial views. A wide-awake pastor will be likely, for a time, to abandon his particular line of study, and enter upon a more thorough exegetical, historical, and theological mastery of the questions in debate. It argues ill for a minister, if at such times he can be satisfied with what he reads in newspapers and pamphlets and magazines ; especially if the ques- tion in hand has never been thoroughly considered by him. And even where the ground has been traversed there will be great profit in passing over it again, under the stimulus of a wide-spread popu- lar interest. After all, every man must hew his own way through the forest. He cannot walk in another's track. He must plunge boldly into the mazes before him, undiscouraged by early failures and A Talk With Ministers. 57 repeated crossings of his path, determined to force his way through to where compass and chart direct him. Many, if not most men, have never found time to think out a definite method ; and where such a method has been adopted, it has been of short duration. They simply do the work ; they have had a general and fixed aim, and have advanced towards it, sometimes painfully, slowly and laboriously, sometimes easily, rapidly, and with great delight ; always under the sense of imperfec- tion and incompetence. This question of minis- terial work recurs to every pastor in some form ; and none ask it more eagerly and earnestly than they who seem in their lives to have answered it. Let every man do what he can ; and let Christ be the Master under whose eye we study and preach. 58 Worth Keeping. CASUISTRY OF THE CONFESSIONAL. i'HE mistress and the Irish cook are in colloquy. " Indade, missus, and what for should I stale from ye ? I must go and tell it all to the priest. I kneel down to confess me sins ; and he asks me so many questions ; there's nothing in me that he doesn't find out. I daren't tell him a lie. I must tell him just what I took from ye, and all about it : the tay, the sugar, the coffee, and all unbeknownst to ye. He asks me jist what it was all worth, and I must tell him to a penny ; for I mustn't tell a lie to him, ye know. ' Is that all ? ' he says, says he. ' Ye stop and think, and tell me ivery thing ; ' and his eyes look into me very sowl, and I takes care to put it high enough to be sure of me sowl. Then he says to me, says he : ' Have ye got the money wid ye ? ' I says, ' Yes, Father B.' Ye know ye must have the money about ye whin ye go to con- fess. And thin he points up to the poor-box, hanging there before me eyes ; and he says, says he: 'See that ye don't lave this house till ye've put ivry penny of that ye stole into the Casuistry of the Confessional. 59 box yonder, foment the post.' And I must do it, missus, jist as he tells me, wid his eyes looking at me so ; or I go home wid a lie to the priest ; and thin what's the good of confessing, and what becomes of me sowl ? So what's the good to me, if I stales your sugar ? " The above was a veritable occurrence in the city of Boston, not long ago. It carries internal evi- dence of truth, so far as this that an Irish servant would not be likely to originate the adroit casuistry of giving to the poor the proceeds of her pilfering. Some shrewder mind than hers started that idea. But is that the casuistry of the confessional ? A certain old book declares of the Almighty : " I hate robbery for burnt offering." 6o Worth Keeping. A REMARKABLE CONVERSION. ILL sudden conversions have in them some- thing phenomenal, something antagonistic to the usual habits of thought or action of the person converted. Yet upon minute examina- tion, a slender thread, perhaps almost invisible, ^connects the change of heart with some faint im- pression made before. It may have been words heard in childhood, imperfectly understood then, and forgotten as soon as heard, a sermon, a prayer, an admonition, a chance text of Scripture, utterly disregarded at the time, but which by some subtle power springs into active life and clamors at the closed gates of the soul. Whatever we may have heard or seen through life, may return to us with- out calling it a miracle. Remorse for great sins works its own special conversions also. The recoil of the human soul from crime propels it in the opposite direction, where forgiveness for that crime can alone be sought and found. Strange and unexpected as these conversions may be where a man is born suddenly into a new life, as I before remarked, a slender link usually binds it to the past. A Remarkable Conversion. 6 1 But the instance I am about to relate is utterly devoid of all these explicable circumstances. In the parish of St. Landry, in Louisiana, the Stagg family have lived for several generations. They are French Creoles, and Roman Catholics, though from the name their ancestors were probably Ger- mans, and perhaps Protestants. The family are noted in this community for moral lives, and strict integrity in all their dealings with their neighbors. Adolph Stagg, about thirty years of age, like the rest of his family, was very industrious, a godd husband, father, and neighbor ; a quiet, deliberate man, perfectly satisfied with himself, his work, his manner of life, and without a thought that any- thing more was needed. He had no more relig- ious convictions than the stones in his path, and felt no more need of them. As a boy he had prob- ably gone to mass sometimes, but like most Catho- lic Creole men, he seldom or never entered a church. As for Protestantism, he knew nothing about it but the name, and had never read a page in the Bible in his life. Some years ago, he started on horseback one Sunday for his hog range, intending to kill some for himself and a neighbor. Like the rest of his Creole neighbors, Sunday was his usual day for attending to his stock, and doing any work outside of the crop in fact it was with him always the busiest day in the week. The idea of anything wrong connected with this desecration of the 62 Worth Keeping. Sabbath never entered his mind. He had done it from a boy; his father before him, and the com- munity in which he lived, had made it an habitual thing. He had never read, heard, or seen any- thing to impugn its perfect propriety. He stopped for a neighbor to assist in the hunt, and they rode together to the range. The first singular and inexplicable circumstance to Mr. Stagg, in this day of marvels, was that not a single hog could be found, though he knew the range was full of them. His dogs were well trained, and the difficulty usually lay in selecting from large droves ; but this day the dogs did not once follow the trail, and all the stock had van- ished utterly. Until noon he hunted, growing more and more perplexed, when a rain coming up, he and his companion turned their faces home- ward. He is a taciturn man, and with his mind full of the disappearance of his stock and the pos- sible causes of it, he rode on in silence. He says : " Suddenly, as if by a lightning's flash, all thoughts were swept away, and a terrible pressure, almost physical in its pain, seemed to crush down my very soul. Somehow I, who had never thought of sin before, realized that it was weighing me down, and that it would destroy me if I could find no relief." Like Saul on his journey to Damascus, smitten through and through, quivering in every nerve, his soul cried out : " Lord, what wilt thou have me to A Remarkable Conversion. 63 do ? " for he became conscious that the Lord was dealing with him. He does not know how long the struggle lasted, probably not more than an hour or so, but before Mr. Stagg dismounted at his own door, the work was done, and the dark, igno- rant soul, irradiated by divine light, understood where and how to seek salvation. There was no thought of going to a Catholic priest for help. Mr. Stagg says the flash which showed him the necessity of regeneration also seemed to point to the Bible alone as his succor. He had made only one remark to his companion during their silent ride : " You've seen me always hunting on Sun- day ; you will never see it again." Like a man in a dream, he went into his house and hunted up a Bible, which strangely enough happened to be there. In Roman Catholic house- holds the Bible is the last book you may expect to find. He knew nothing of the contents of the volume, or what he was to find in it, nor where to look for the pages which would bring him aid. He only knew that the Book would enlighten him, and he gave himself up to the guidance which had led him into this strange path. He called his wife, and together they read and studied; he eagerly, hungrily, like a starving man clutching for the bread which is to sustain life. In that first read- ing he found it. After a few weeks of study and prayer, he and his wife connected themselves with the church. 64 Worth Keeping. Some years afterwards he entered the ministry, and has preached ever since with power and suc- cess. You will doubtless ask why this humble individ- ual, without special gifts of mind or fortune, should have been thus favored by this manifestation of God's grace. In many cases God's purposes remain shrouded in mystery, but in this one the answer is clear enough for all men to understand. The French Creole race in the country parishes of Louisiana, particularly those of Acadian descent, is a peculiar one. There is no general culture, and a kind of light-hearted avoidance of all grave topics. The women are all superstitious and big- oted Roman Catholics. The men have a kind of hereditary belief that there is only one true church, and that the Catholic ; but they are rarely seen at its services, and they only call in its aid three times in their lives, to be christened, married, and receive extreme unction On a death-bed. That they consider sufficient to wash away all sins, and ensure an easy place in purgatory. It is the busi- ness of those they leave behind them by prayers and masses to relieve them from that very unpleas- ant region ; so they do not concern themselves much about it. The most eloquent and gifted American clergy- man could never reach these people. Both igno-, ranee and prejudice would arm them against him. But when one of themselves, brought up amongst A Remarkable Conversion. 65 them, and under the same influences, living their lives, thinking their thoughts, speaking their lan- guage, comes before them with an evangel myste- riously learned, they listen and are taught. The circumstance, too, that instead of being like them- selves of a mercurial, impulsive temperament, this new teacher has always been grave and unexcit- able, gives his words added force. His calm, deliberate judgment and punctilious truthfulness had always made him an authority among his people, and they can never suspect him of spir- itual delusion. They see him, once so calm, now full of a fervid zeal for their conversion and en- lightenment, and they are awed and impressed. He has made many converts and is now in the full tide of successful labor. He is sowing the seed for a great harvest he may not live to gather ; but there will always be reapers in the field. An humble, zealous Christian, he finds his joy in doing the work of the Master who has called him to it, and leaving the fruits for other laborers in the Lord's vineyard. 66 Worth Keeping. WATCH AND CARE. E was a young man, who had abandoned his interest in religion. He had become used to neglecting all its observances, had resumed many former habits of recklessness, and was going rapidly in the wrong direction, a great stumbling-block to some who were querying as to the reality of Christianity. She was his neighbor, a member of the same church, a very busy woman, with a family to be cared for, and not acquainted intimately with him. She saw how he was living, and she was troubled. She felt that her pledge to watch over her fellow church-members in love, was full of solemn mean- ing and included him. She believed, as she had reason to believe, in prayer. She began to pray for him. She was in earnest, too. It cut her to the heart that a professed Christian should be dis- loyal. She was as truly distressed at the peril of his soul as though he had been her own son ; more than she ever had been at bodily danger, and she had faced death more than once. She believed, also, that God loved and longed for that straying soul more than she could. She prayed mightily. Watch and Care, 67 She prayed often, at times incessantly. While she , worked she was pleading with God for the wanderer. One day she met him accidentally. Tremblingly she mustered courage to ask him to return to his Saviour, and to tell him that she was interceding for him. He did not repel her, nor did he give the least evidence of heeding her words. Weeks passed. She prayed on and on, convinced, as if it depended upon her earnestness alone, that the salvation of a soul was at stake. And after weary months of patient pleading with God her reward came. She saw the young man in his seat at church. Then he appeared again in the prayer- meeting. At last she saw him at the Lord's table once more, humble, penitent, earnestly longing, if perchance so great a sinner might be forgiven, to begin again as one of Christ's own. He told her afterwards that the knowledge of her prayers in his behalf was the influence which, under God, had saved him. In every neighborhood there are just such erring professors of religion. In every case such prayers as hers will be honored and answered of God. Do you know any such needy soul ? Is there none whom you have covenanted to watch over as a fellow disciple ? Are you praying thus for that soul ? If not, why not ? 68 Worth Keeping. THE FEAST OF THE ESCALADE. j|N the twelfth of December, no true Geneva family fails to have its turkey on the spit ; and even those dispersed in the ends of the earth hold festival, and tell each other of the tradi- tions of the brave days of old, and especially of the heroic story of the Escalade. This story, as it has been told every year now (in 1876) for two hundred and seventy-two years, runs on this wise : For nearly seventy years the little heretic city of Geneva had sat within its walls on its hill-top at the outlet of Lake Leman, in the enjoyment of its liberty and its religion. Violence, stratagem, treachery, all had been resorted to in vain by its old tyrants, the dukes of Savoy, to recover the foothold they once had within it. All the craft and power of the Papacy had been applied to break down this rampart of liberty for all Europe, to extinguish this radiant focus of light for all the world. It had become the asylum of the exiled martyrs of Italy and France. Said a Pope to the Duke of Alva, just starting for his ferocious cam- paign in the Low Countries : " Can't you go a hundred miles out of your way and stamp out that The Feast of the Escalade. 69 nest of heretics at Geneva ? " The documents of the time teem with indications of the malignity of feeling toward Geneva throughout Catholic Christendom. At last, however, the designs against the town seemed to be given up. Pressed by mili- tary reverses, the duke had signed a treaty with Henry IV of France, at Vervins, in 1598, by which the peace of Geneva was guaranteed. And the harrassed and war-worn town had rest for a time. Rumors of plots for its destruction kept coming from various quarters to the ears of the watchful magistracy, and a " gunpowder treason " within its walls was detected and foiled ; but the natural anxiety resulting from these things was assiduously soothed by fair and friendly words from the duke and his officers. But in November, 1602, a letter was received by the magistrates from a secret friend at Turin, describing certain portentous preparations which he himself had witnessed, and the destination of which was freely hinted. " I have witnessed exper- iments," he wrote, "with terrible engines of war destined against Geneva. There are hurdles for crossing a moat, and scaling-ladders on a new plan, trimmed with black cloth, and with grappling irons at the end ; they shut up with a slide into small compass, and can be lengthened out without noise, so as in a twinkling to reach to the hight of your ramparts. The duke seems delighted with the preparations, and says that he has men in Geneva /o Worth Keeping. who will set fire in different places at the moment of the attack. Be on your guard day and night." The alarm of the Genevese was soothed by renewed and solemn protestations of friendship on the part of Savoy, and the plot went on ripening in the dark. The general direction of it was in the hands of a renegade Frenchman, D'Albigny, Lieu- tenant-General of Savoy, and the execution of it was committed to Bernoliere, commandant at Bonne. The troops began to assemble quietly at different points of rendezvous. At La Roche were 1,000 Spaniards, trained in the arts of massacre in American campaigns ; there were 400 Neapolitans with 500 horsemen at Bonneville; these were the contribution of the king of Spain. Four thousand of the " bloody Piedmontese," under the command of 100 Savoyard nobles, took post in the neighbor- hood. And at Bonne Bernoliere drew out his picked force of 800 Savoyards, and explained to them the nature of the enterprise. " All I ask," he said, " is one hour of courage and fidelity." As he moved with his troops down the valley of the Arve, one company after another fell punctually into the line of march. It was night already when they rounded the shoulder of the little Saleve, and the lights of Geneva, a two-hours' march distant, twinkled through the darkness. At this point a figure muffled and disguised, emerged from a cot- tage, attended by a retinue, and received the humble salutations of the commanding officers. The Feast of the Escalade. 71 The courage of the troops rose to a high pitch when the fact was whispered that it was Duke Charles Emmanuel, who had crossed the Alps to witness the victory that was to give him the title of king, and open to him a magnificent career of con- quest and empire, ending in the extinction of the Protestant powers of Europe. The whole force, several thousand strong, moved down the course of the Arve, screened by the thickets on its banks, towards the devoted city. For a password they were to imitate the croaking of the frogs. At midnight they were posted within earshot of the city wall, and Bernoliere, with his forlorn hope of 300 men in complete armor, bearing the apparatus that had been elabo- rated in the armories of Turin, crept up to the town, descended into the moat, and stood with bated breath against the rampart. All was still in the town. Noiselessly the muffled scaling-ladders slid in their grooves and stretched themselves up to the hight of the parapet. A Scotch Jesuit, Alexander Young, moved from man to man, whis- pering words of encouragement, and distributing amulets that were to keep the wearer safe from sword, water and fire. This done, the three hun- dred went swiftly up the wall, and stowed them- selves behind the parapet. A solitary watchman, drowsing in a neighboring sentry-box, was throt- tled and murdered before he could utter a cry. The first and most perilous step was successful. 72 Worth Keeping. Bernoliere despatches a messenger to D'Albigny, at the head of the reserve, and he, elated with the news, sends couriers at once to the monarch wait- ing anxiously on the brow of the Saleve. Success seems sure ; and without further waiting, the couriers of Charles Emmanuel ride forth towards Turin, Rome, Paris and Madrid, announcing that " the Protestant Babylon " is fallen. Much, however, remains to be done. As in most old towns, there was to be traced within the rampart the line of an earlier wall, marked by unbroken blocks of building, with here and there a gateway, now unfortified, and only negligently guarded. The whole matter had been completely studied. There were to be five companies, each under the command of an officer familiar with the place. One was to rush down to the river gate by the Rhone bridge ; one was to burst a passage through the block of houses next them, and so get into the principal street ; a third should attempt the little gate and steep, narrow, crooked street of the Tertasse ; a fourth should climb the Treille, and enter by the great gate near the City Hall and Arsenal ; and the fifth party, equipped with axes and petards, were to hasten to the inside of the great gate of the outer fortifications, surprise and overpower the guard, and, planting the petard, were to blow open the gate, sally forth and let down the drawbridge, and give free ingress to D'Albigny and his army, who waited for the explosion as their signal to approach. The Feast of the Escalade. 73 But Bernoliere has resolved to await the first gleam of dawn before beginning this complex oper- ation. Meanwhile the men in armor are lying hid behind the parapet. But about two o'clock, a light is seen approaching along the rampart. It is a patrol making its round. With desperate and instant resolution the invaders spring from their ambush upon the watchmen, and pitch five of them down into the moat ; but in the struggle a gun goes off, and one of the number, the drummer, escapes, running for his life toward the river-gate, drum- ming furiously as he goes. All is discovered. The attack is ordered instantly. But the big bell of St. Peter's begins to boom out its alarm, and the startled citizens, half-dressed and half-armed, swarm into the dark streets to defend their homes. The first fight was at the river-gate. The Spaniards had forced the first barrier, and came screaming through the vaulted passage with shouts of triumph and cries of " Kill ! kill ! " but were met by the crowd of citizens, and driven back. Elsewhere in the streets the fight was fierce and bloody. But for all their armor, the Spaniards were forced back- wards toward their place of entrance, leaving their dead behind them. The hope of success now lay in the admission of the reserves. The petard party soon overcame and dispersed the guard posted within the gate, but not till one of these had let fall the portcullis, interposing thus a fatal delay between the petardier and his work. One of the 74 Worth Keeping. escaped guard hurried to a neighboring bastion and touched off a cannon loaded to the muzzle with nails and old iron, and trained along the line of the rampart. Down came the scaling-ladders, broken and shattered ; and the retreating invaders, arriving at the parapet, had no choice but to make the leap, with all their crushing weight of armor on, or to give themselves up as prisoners, to be hung as burglars and assassins. The sound of the cannon was understood by D'Albigny as his signal to advance, and he hurried to the gate to discover that the enterprise was a failure. There is no course left him but the back track. On his way, he meets Charles Emmanuel with his retinue, coming down with martial music to make his triumphal entry into Geneva. " Turn back, my lord ! all's lost," was the general's salutation. "You wretched blockhead ! a pretty mess you have made of it," was the royal reply. And without further words the monarch took his way toward Turin. The first good news had gone before him, and every village through which he had to pass was decorated to greet the conquerer. But the strangest encounter of that humiliating march was when the duke came, at Annecy, upon a train of mules laden with church furniture and decorations, to be used when Francis de Sales, who was deeper in this scoundrelly plot than his biographers admit, should say his Christ- mas mass in the Geneva Cathedral. When at last the tardy morning dawned, after The Feast of the Escalade. 75 the longest night in all the year (the morning of December I2th, the 22d, new style just eighteen years before the landing at Plymouth), and the crowds stood gazing at the pools of blood, the broken ladders, the battered armor, and the corpses of friend and foe strewing the street, some one bethought him to go to the house where old Theo- dore de Beza, last survivor of the Reformers, infirm and very deaf, had slept the night through uncon- scious of the storm that had been roaring all about him. They led the old man to the scene of the fight, and when he had been made to understand the strange story, he pointed up to the great church and said : " Come, let us go up to the house of the Lord." And there, standing in the pulpit, he gave out, in Beza's version, the I24th Psalm : "If it had not been the Lord was on our side ; " and that is the Psalm which, every year, as the anniversary comes round, they sing in memory of the great deliverance. When you come to Geneva, go to the Arsenal, and look at the ingenious scaling-ladders, the dark lanterns, the petard, still loaded, that was to have blown up the gate, and at the suits of Spanish armor, still holding arquebus and halberd in their gloves of steel, and gazing grimly through their visors at the relics of their atrocious and unsuc- cessful crime, and call to mind the story of The Escalade, 76 Worth Keeping. THE UNHARMED ROCK. MY home in boyhood was beside the sea ; And evermore, far as the eye could sweep, Old Ocean lay outstretched There was a grand old Rock that, from the main Off a few furlongs, lifted its huge form Up from the deep, o'erspreading many a rood, And rearing high in air its craggy head. All gray with time, and scarred with fissures rude, It seemed, where stood its ponderous masses piled, Compact together, as if giant hands, At some forgotten date, had heaped them there To stand amidst the sea a monument Of giant might, in mockery of weak man : Or as some wandering star, its orbit lost, Had into earth been hurled, and plunging down Sheer through the startled waters, had itself Fast planted in its bed to move no more. O hoary Rock ! 'tis many and many a year Since, in my boyhood's sports, I climbed thy sides, Hid in thy clefts, or from some angle cast The tempting bait, or on thy summit stood Well pleased and yet half-awed, beneath my feet To feel thee motionless 'mid tumbling floods. E'en then came deeper thoughts, that stirred by thee Chastened my lighter moods ; thoughts of the years, The ages, through which thou hadst changeless lain, The Unharmed Rock. 77 Thy rough stern features to the sky upturned ; Thy cliffs unyielding, which ten thousand times Huge billows had assailed that thundering came With mighty onset and o'ervvhelming seemed. The memory of thee, grand Rock, instructs My riper thought. For me to-day thou stand'st Of Truth the symbol ; Truth by God unveiled In majesty divine ; the Word from heaven ; The Truth itself, whose name is CHRIST; a name Sounded through ages by prophetic lyres ; Foundation sure of man's immortal hope. Builded on this, Church of the living God, Securely hast thou through the centuries stood, And standest still, amid time's surging seas, And shalt, till time itself shall be no more ! Dark Unbelief, dim wisdom born of earth, Still, if thou wilt, thy venturous charge renew ! A thousand times repulsed, go yet again And try the bootless onset. Learn once more, To thine own shame, how impotent thou art, When from God's Truth, unharmed, thy blows recoil, And shivered at thy feet thy weapons lie ; As backward from the surge-repelling Rock Itself unmoved are flung the headlong waves ! 78 Worth Keeping. HOW TO READ HISTORY. HE idea often entertained in regard to read- ing history would be amusing if it were not pitiable. People say, as if announcing inevitable trial : " I really must read some history ; I am mortified that I have read so little. Would you begin with Rollin ? " " Why Rollin ? " " I supposed one had to begin with him." The tone becoming still more tragical. Then I arouse myself. " Do you really want to read history ? " " Yes," sadly but firmly. "Why?" " Because everybody ought to know something of the past." " Why ? " I persist. " Well, look at yourself, for instance ; your knowl- edge of history adds so much to your pleasure when you travel, and seems to help you so much in your criticisms of the life and literature of to-day." " But why do you sigh as if you were a martyr? " " Because I hate history ; it is dull, it is con- fused ; I cannot remember it." How to Read History. 79 " Do you forget the novels you read last summer, or the people you met at the seashore ? " " Certainly not ; but they are different. Why, the novels were interesting, and the people were either so charming or so disagreeable, so brilliant or so stupid, that I must be a dunce to forget them." " Is there no one among all historical people that you care about ? " " Yes ; I should like to know about Richard the Lion Hearted." " Then, in the name of all that is -sensible, why, if you want to find out about Richard of the Lion Heart, do you begin with Rollin's Ancient History ? " " I supposed you had to take a course." And again appears the tone of heroic melan- choly, as if " taking a course " was only a little less to be deplored than scaling the enemy's works with the forlorn hope. Now what should I do if I was oppressed with a sense of responsibility towards history, and the only person I cared about within her ranks was he of the Lion Heart ? Go to Lin- gard's endless volumes ; to Hallam's Middle Ages ; Milman's Latin Christianity, or any of the ponder- ous histories of the Crusades ? No, I should put my magic lantern in order, hang up my screen and throw upon it again and again those marvelous pictures of my hero from Ivanhoe, The Talisman and the Betrothed. Through these pictures I 8o Worth Keeping. should sit beside Richard in palace and chamber ; should kneel with him at the high altar, and strike with him on the tented field. I should look into his bright blue eyes ; should see his yellow hair waving in the soft southern air ; and dare say for a time should not care where or in what century he lived his mortal life. But after I knew Richard as I know my own brothers, I should surely ask, who is the lovely woman he alternately caresses and despises ? His Queen Berengaria ? How came she his Queen ? Why lingers she here on these blood-stained sands instead of living at ease in the stately palaces of distant England ? Ah, you see I am driven to Agnes Strickland's Lives of the Queens of Eng- land, without dreaming of them as history at all. Fancy how I should devour every word of her record! Those with whom she spent her days, whom she loved, whom hated, would be to me more than the companions of my own bed and board. And as I note how after some act of weak- ness or folly she crouches terror-stricken before her enraged husband, and read that with all the vio- lence of his race he roughly thrust her from him, shall I not inquire, what was this man's race that he excuses his savage excesses by saying : " As of old the Plantagenet is the offspring of a fiend ? " And the brothers with whom he was always striv- ing, and that Philip, who sent like wildfire through Europe the warning cry : " Look out for yourselves, How to Read History. 81 the devil is loose again," when he escaped from one of his innumerable captivities, can I rest until I know all that any one knows of them ? And as I find myself in the presence of his parents, that Henry and that Eleanor of bitter memory, and see the latter hunting, like a sleuth hound, the husband for whom she had sinned so grievously to the hidden bower of Rosamond, and ever after, in burning revenge, stirring up the fiery hearts of their wretched brood of sons against him ; or hear the shrill cries of Becket's murderers disturbing the midnight dreams of shuddering Europe, and, last of all, shrink with horror from the blasphemous curse that Henry flings back upon his God as he writhes on his frenzied death-bed, must I not find out what age of this unhappy world could harbor so much of human misery ? And as Plan- tagenet, Angevin Norman and Saxon, cross and recross the confused pages, shall I not be driven to Freeman's Norman Conquest lest my brain should reel in its frenzy of ignorance ? No fear of any stopping now. I shall trace the stream to its source, and even reach Roll in in time. I shall not be contented with rapid strides in that direction alone. I shall insist on under- standing each particular in the lives of those who sat in Richard's seat, and won his crown after he had laid it by. So you see I should find myself possessed of all historical knowledge through my interest in this daring crusader, whose 6 82 Worth Keeping. sword and shield have hung rusted and dull for so many centuries. I am convinced, for almost all readers, this is the only way to read history with profit. As well eat when you are not hungry, as read when you are not interested; and, unfortunately, the older histories are dull through their formalism and pedantry, and will only be sought by those born with a passion to know how time has been filled up since the flood. So the way is to take anybody you care for, and plunge in ; the wave that bore him on will sweep you into the current of universal knowledge. Fear as a Motive in Religion. 83 FEAR AS A MOTIVE IN RELIGION. WON'T be frightened into being a Chris- tian any way, he said, and put an end to the conversation. I had heard young people say the same thing before, and had always thought it a piece of foolish bravado suggested by the devil, as the sinner's short cut across convictions crowding the soul a little too "closely; but one does not like to say uncomplimentary things always, even when they leap to his tongue for utterance, and so I had been often at a loss how to meet the objection, or rather the mood which let such an objection turn the soul away from Christ. Now I went home and thought about it. " Won't be frightened into being a Christian ! " Is fear dis- honorable to a man, or a boy trying to be a man ? Coward that is a bad word ; it cannot be freed from its disreputable associations but is fear cowardice ? the man who is afraid a coward ? There are certainly two things one may fear and still keep his self-respect : danger and wrong. I ride under some towering top of an Alpine mountain, and just as I am passing I see a huge 84 Worth Keeping. mass of snow and ice breaking off its frowning front, and I shout to my companions : " Backward, for your lives!" and the avalanche does not bury us, nor carry our crushed bodies down the moun- tain side. Was the fear that blanched niy cheek, forced out that warning cry and made me run for my life, a thing to be ashamed of ? No, for the danger was real, and fear natural. If one congratulates himself on so promptly obeying the instinct of fear in avoiding great per- sonal danger, ought he to be ashamed if he dis- covers, among the things prompting him to be a Christian, the dangers which threaten his soul if he is not a Christian ? Why is one peril to be avoided and the other to be braved? Self-respect does not forbid, but commands, that we shun both. Then there's the fear of wrong; that is certainly not cowardice. A group of little fellows on the street are planning for coasting on Sunday. Two of them are in doubt about it ; have not been used to that sort of thing ; they are afraid it is wrong. But boy argument and a little expressive contempt soon silence one, and he says : " I'll go ; " but the other holds out, and says finally : " I can't go." Which is the coward ? The boy who dares to do wrong, or the one who is afraid to do wrong ? A young man stands looking inquiringly "at the Christian life. Its self-denials, its duties, its effect upon his companionship, all these things make him afraid of it. And yet he knows and feels the Fear as a Motive in Religion, 85 danger of neglecting God's call to him. While balancing the two courses, the two sets of motives* somebody says to him with a solemnity that irri- tates him : " It is dangerous to delay," or, " This may be your last chance," and the devil shows him at once his short cut out of his hesitation, and he says : " I won't be frightened into religion." But in turning with a brave air from the fear which drew him to Christ, and an honorable, manly, safe Christian life, he is received into the embrace of another class of fears, which more and more involve him in self-indulgence, in weakness, in a downward course of life. Which set of fears stamp the mark of cowardice upon him ? Fear of wrong is not cowardice. It is only the devil's sophistry which makes it appear so to ill-taught men. Fear of wrong is the revolt of our moral nature against immorality ; it is the echo of God's voice in our soul, making us know his will ; but the devil takes this noble fear, and dis- guises it till it appears, in the consciousness made murky by selfish purposes already having their way, as a fear of pain or suffering against which it seems an honorable thing in man to rise in resist- ance. But the man who is not deceived knows that fear of wrong is God's sentinel put on guard at the door of his conscience, to keep him from surrendering his conscience into traitorous hands and to manacles and chains. But that fear of danger and fear of wrong are 86 Worth Keeping. thus not dishonorable in men, is not all there is to be said in favor of fear as a motive in religion. A close examination of what fear is, shows that it is often love, reverence, faith in crude form ; is to the finer, more exalted emotions of the Christian what pig-iron is to polished steel. Fear is the ore that the thought of God digs out of the untutored human spirit, which knowledge of God shapes into the brighter forms of faith and love. The same things about God that inspire fear, on a better acquaintance, inspire love, faith, trust. At my examination for entrance to college, I stood in such awe of one of the professors, that when he turned his sharp eyes upon me suddenly and put a simple question to me, I shook with fear, and my tongue absolutely refused to do its office. I came to know him well afterward, in the recita- tion room, in long walks over the hills, at his table, in his family, and I can see plainly that the same qualites in him which made me fear him once, are precisely what call out the strong respect and affec- tion I now feel for him. Fear is the tribute weakness pays to strength, littleness to greatness, humility to majesty but when strength is seen to stoop to help weakness, greatness to condescend to littleness, majesty to woo humility, the first impulse of fear does not so much give way before, as change into, trust and love. So the strength of God, which to the untaught Fear as a Motive in Religion. 87 soul suggests -fear, to the same soul admitted to acquaintance with Him supports confidence; the justice of God, which to the untaught soul suggests terror, to the same soul admitted to acquaintance with Him supports respect; the majesty of God, which to the untaught soul suggests dread, to the same soul admitted to acquaintance with Him sup- ports reverence. In neglecting the motives to religion which lie in men's fears, there is danger of teaching men want of respect for God. And we can no more love and honor God than a man, without respecting him tirst. A wholesome fear of God, awakened by right conceptions of His holiness and justice, is the surest introduction to appreciation of His love in Christ. " The secret of the Lord is with them that fear Him " 88 Worth Keeping. YUNG WING. |HE first Chinese known to have been in the United States for education were three boys, who were in the short-lived Foreign Mission School at Cornwall, Conn., about the year 1825, and little more can now be learned of them than that they were there. The next were also a company of three boys, who were brought to this country in 1847 by their teacher, the Rev. S. R. Brown, Principal of the Morrison School at Hong Kong. Their names were Wong Fun, Wong Shing and Yung Wing. They were sent to Monson Academy, and were received into the family of Mr. Brown's mother, who lived in Monson and who is memorable in the church as the author of the hymn : " I love, to steal awhile away." It was probably due to their asso- ciation with this saintly woman, more than to any other means of grace, that there at Monson they all became Christians. Wong Fun, after three years went, in 1850, to Edinburgh, Scotland, where he graduated in medi- cine with honor, and whence he returned to China in 1856 to establish himself as a physician in the Yung Wing. 89 city of Canton. His professional career was an extraordinary success. He soon became famous, alike for his ability and for his character ; he was highly esteemed by all who knew him, and he died in October, 1878, widely regretted Wong Shing was compelled by ill health to go back to China the year following his arrival in America. Having learned the art of printing in the office of The China Mail, he became, in 1852 or 1853, connected with the press of the London Mission at Hong Kong, under Dr. Legge, now of Oxford University, and continued in that employment till quite recently. He is now an official interpreter of the Chinese Embassy to the United States, but for the present on duty with the Chinese Educational Mission at Hartford. He was received a few weeks since into the Asylum Hill Congregational Church in Hartford, on the evidence of credentials which showed that he had been for thirty years a consistent member, and for fifteen years a faithful deacon, of the native church of Christ in Hong Kong. If Brother Elaine of Maine should chance to be in Hartford, and in the Asylum Hill Congrega- tional Church on a communion Sunday, when Brother Wong Shing chanced to be serving as sub- stitute in the deacon's office at the Lord's Table an incident not unlikely to occur he might rec- ognize an occasion for revising and perhaps some- what qualifying his late verdict respecting the QO Worth Keeping. possibility of Chinese evangelization. It was one of Wong Shing's remarks, while Congress was voting that the Chinese must go, that he was very glad that no one would be shut out of Heaven who believed in Christ. The youngest of the three, Yung Wing, for whom, as events have proved, Divine Providence had marked out so great a work in the future, was the only one who completed his education in this country. He entered Yale College in 1850, the first Chinese student the institution had ever seen. His life in college was full of interest, but cannot here be described. One circumstance that at the time attracted a good deal of attention to him was his twice gaining a prize for English composition. He graduated, with credit, in 1854, and at once sailed for China. It was like going to a strange land. He had been in this country so long that it was home to him. He had nearly forgotten his native tongue. He had become American in his thoughts, tastes, sympathies. He had many friends here, and here he would have dearly loved to spend his life. But he did not consider himself at liberty to do so. His sense of gratitude and of justice forbade it. He felt that his duty was to his own race. He had already formed the plan of the edu- cational mission. It had early become his convic- tion that the best thing he could do for his country was to procure for other Chinese youths the ben- efit of the same advantages that he himself had Yttng Wing. 91 enjoyed. And though he knew not how it was to be brought about, he set his face toward China to wait on what God might there have in store for him. Sixteen years passed before he accomplished his object. They were years of delay, patient en- deavor, frustration, disappointment of uncon- querable perseverance, crowned at last with success. During the seven years from 1855 to 1862, Yung Wing was, successively, private secretary to the United States Commissioner, law student at Hong Kong, translator in the Customs service at Shanghai, traveling inland agent of a great silk and tea house, and finally for a brief period mer- chant on his own account. But that which in all these changes he was constantly contriving how to compass, was such an access to persons of public consideration and influence, as would enable him to unfold and advocate his scheme for the educa- tion of native youth abroad, to some purpose. It is not easy to appreciate how difficult a matter this was. He had to begin with no/