GIFT OF 
 
IN THE SERVICE OF 
 THE KING 
 
 A PARSON'S STORY 
 
 BY 
 
 JOSEPH B. DUNN 
 
 * 
 
 G. P. PUTNAM'S SONS 
 NEW YORK AND LONDON 
 
 ttbe ftnicfterbocfter fcress 
 1915 
 
COPYRIGHT, 1915 
 
 BY 
 JOSEPH B. DUNN 
 
 Cbe fmfcfcerbocfeer press, flew ffiorft 
 
OVERTURE 
 
 IT is not infrequent in splendid book shops to 
 see people of undecided minds loitering about idly 
 turning the pages of first one volume and then 
 another, endeavouring through some chance para- 
 graph to make a happy choice. 
 
 May their eyes happen upon my brief but 
 enthusiastic appreciation of "In the Service of the 
 King. ' ' Nothing can be more thrilling or splendidly 
 optimistic than the author's own prefatory word, 
 but it is not comprehensive enough of qualities so 
 varied as to appeal to every reader Sinner, Saint, 
 or Pharisee. 
 
 Dr. Dunn has a rich, straightforward, broad 
 understanding of that divine illuminating Sermon 
 on the Mount. Those appealing words have so 
 penetrated his heart, that he loves his brother 
 even his lost and outcast brother as himself. 
 
 iii 
 
 304006 
 
IV 
 
 Overture 
 
 And his experiences are told with simplicity, tender- 
 ness, hopefulness, and most wonderful of all with 
 the salt of humour. They bring to memory a long 
 ago decorous advertisement in the London Times: 
 
 " Wanted, by an invalid lady, a housekeeper ; 
 must be a good Church woman, to take entire 
 charge of house and four servants. A cheerful 
 Christian, if possible." 
 
 Evidently, the poor lady had suffered under a 
 succession of depressing, gloomy, sour-visaged, 
 Christian housekeepers, who had made life unbear- 
 able for the four servants, and added to her own 
 weariness. Her hope was small of finding a 
 Christian with a smiling countenance. That gentle 
 " if possible " covered much tribulation of spirit. 
 We are told that God loves a cheerful giver, and 
 we are certain He loves a cheerful Christian even 
 more. Dr. Dunn strengthens this certainty 
 through his own joyous spiritual and physical life. 
 He makes poverty bearable, love far-reaching, 
 and forgiveness possible. His religion is sincere, 
 patient, convincing, and friendly, the sort of faith 
 that we all look for in our directors and pastors, 
 but rarely find. His belief in the goodness of 
 human nature is so abiding and indestructible that 
 he inspires the same feeling in his reader, whom he 
 approaches with such candour and enthusiasm as 
 
Overture v 
 
 to convert him into an ally. And to be on the 
 side of the Angels, even in the scant hours spent 
 in reading a book, is an edifying and beautiful 
 experience. 
 
 NEW YORK, 
 December i t 1914. 
 
PREFATORY WORD 
 
 THE history of the jungle is the record of a 
 never-ending tragedy. The story of the beast is 
 ever the story of surrender to environment. The 
 beast conforms to the pressure of his surroundings 
 till he reaches the limit of his power to conform, 
 then he perishes. He neither is able, nor does he 
 try to conquer conditions. The king-killer dies 
 of starvation at last. The survival of the fittest 
 is only a scene in the earlier stages of the drama. 
 The end is ever the same, failure, surrender, death. 
 The philosophers who proclaim that they have 
 discovered the law of life in the jungle, and point 
 to the tiger's tooth and claw as the evidence of 
 the survival of the fittest, are trumpeters of doom, 
 and preach a gospel of despair. 
 
 The story of man is the record of a struggle to 
 change conditions, to overcome the pressure of 
 environment. To conform is to die, to conquer 
 is to live. This volume is the story, told in fire- 
 side fashion, of one who, with his fellows, has 
 struggled to change conditions. At a certain time 
 
 vii 
 
vili Prefatory Word 
 
 in that struggle there came to him with all the 
 vividness of a personal revelation the truth that to 
 be a Christian meant not to be a certain kind of 
 man, but to be all of a man. Since then, awakened 
 interest has ever been accompanied by the dis- 
 covery of new powers of appropriation, and every 
 contact with what men call a necessary evil has 
 stirred his soul to action and given to life an added 
 zest and a new joy. He has refused to concede 
 Hell's proprietary right to set the mark of the 
 Beast on any man, and has sought to find the 
 hidden human there. What men call human is 
 the divine in man, and the perfect human is 
 the revelation of Divinity. He whom men call 
 Saviour, calls Himself Son of Man. 
 
 Some time ago the Editor of The Churchman 
 asked the writer to contribute some memories to 
 the pages of his journal. This story had its be- 
 ginning there. Somehow the story made appeal 
 to men and women so far apart in temperament 
 and outlook that the writer was tempted to con- 
 tinue it in the same vein, in the hope that the 
 intimate speech of the precious things of life 
 might find and claim as kin the imperishable 
 
 human in other lives. 
 
 J. B. DUNN. 
 
 LYNCHBURG, VA., 
 Dec. i, 1914. 
 
CONTENTS 
 
 IN COUNTRY AND VILLAGE i 
 
 THE TOWN MINISTRY . . . 47 
 
 THE CITY MINISTRY 78 
 
 FIRESIDE TALK 119 
 
In the Service of the King 
 
 IN COUNTRY AND VILLAGE 
 I 
 
 SOME critic has said that the world is over-rich 
 in the records of life's successes, that everybody 
 knows the psychology of success, but that litera- 
 ture is actually in need of candid autobiographies 
 of mediocrity. Satiated with the glare of bright 
 colours, the reading public is eager for a drab 
 literature. The tired ear longs for the droning 
 monotone of Martin Tupper. 
 
 These reminiscences will appeal to tired minds 
 alone. It is a journey through a flat country. 
 There are plenty of resting-places, and the weary 
 reader is not called upon to climb the hill of vision. 
 
 Twenty years ago a young student, who all his 
 life long had been fighting shadows under the 
 lamp, was sent as a deacon to take charge of a 
 country parish. This parish was fifty miles long 
 
tKe SeirvicSe of tKe 
 
 and thirty-five miles wide. Within its bounds 
 were five churches. The living wage of the 
 labourer was $600. He rented a cottage, pur- 
 chased a jumper that had already seen long ser- 
 vice, and bought for $28 at a street auction a 
 small nag that a defeated candidate for a minor 
 office in the country had just used in a campaigning 
 tour. The new owner of this old war horse of 
 Democracy comforted himself with the thought 
 that "the race is not to the swift/' and dubbed his 
 little sorrel, "Brer Terrapin." The weapons of 
 his warfare were stored in the cottage. A won- 
 derful arsenal, indeed, it seemed to the infrequent 
 visitor, a thousand old volumes, most of which 
 had been picked up in second-hand shops in 
 Washington and Boston, and a few rare ones from 
 the shelves of a dingy old shop in London. 
 
 The mental equipment of the young teacher 
 he soon found to be hopelessly inadequate. His 
 thousand words of Hebrew, kept together till the 
 ordeal of the chaplain's inquisition was passed 
 by a skilfully devised system of mnemonics, were 
 straying away through the broken gaps of memory, 
 till at last one word alone answered to the call of 
 the will. And that one always brought a blush 
 of shame, for it argued an unregenerate spirit. 
 It was the Hebrew word for "tent." Back in the 
 
In Country and Village 3 
 
 recesses of his mind lay the dead languages in 
 mortis rigore. Science and philosophy, on which 
 he had spent years of toil, had passed through the 
 mill of college examinations and were now but a 
 shapeless mass of pulp. Somewnere among his 
 belongings he had a beautifully engraved bit of 
 parchment certifying that he had finished all 
 these things. 
 
 The most vivid, because it was the most recent 
 mental impression (for had he not just studied 
 these things in order to answer the questions of 
 the chaplains?) was the catalogue of the early 
 Christian heresies. As the young teacher took 
 stock of knowledge ready for use, he found in the 
 forefront of his mind a large and varied assort- 
 ment of refutations. He was prepared to meet 
 higher critics, evolutionists, pantheists, and every 
 other ic and ist known to the masters of foil in 
 the Theological Seminary. He was eager for the 
 combat, but none of these antagonists were in 
 sight. The problems before him were all problems 
 of life and not of philosophy. How was he to 
 meet listless indifference, ignorant and often bitter 
 provincialism, poverty of thought, and an aspira- 
 tion that never soared above creature comforts or 
 frivolous pleasure, that was dissipation only in the 
 sense that it was waste of time and opportunity? 
 
4 In tHe Service of tKe King 
 
 Though the young deacon found that his store 
 of knowledge, like the provisions of the first colon- 
 ists, had spoiled in the hold, still he felt that he 
 was not without resource, for he had brought 
 with him from the seminary two serviceable 
 maxims. They were written large in his note- 
 book, and accepted by him as the final expression 
 of wisdom from the lips of the Professor of Homi- 
 letics and Pastoral Theology. The maxims were: 
 "Do not attempt to preach theology; let your 
 sermons be practical/' and "Do not waste five- 
 dollar time on a five-cent job." 
 
 Some English historian refers to the American 
 Revolution as a revolt of the colonists which 
 England was not able to repress on account of the 
 extent of territory over which the revolt spread. 
 Washington is not mentioned. The victor over 
 England was extent of territory. 
 
 The deacon was not called upon to quell a 
 revolt, but he learned to know how formidable an 
 antagonist extent of territory could be. 
 
 To preach practical sermons to a people whom 
 he hardly knew for many of them he saw only on 
 one Sunday in the month and to economize time 
 when it took two days to drive across his parish, 
 he soon found to be equally impossible tasks. 
 Former deacons had been preaching practical 
 
In Country and "Village 5 
 
 sermons, and from earliest memory these people 
 had been told the things they must not do. All 
 sense of spiritual and ethical perspective had been 
 destroyed in them. They were living under the 
 Code Leviticus. The Decalogue had been elon- 
 gated till the list of forbidden things was inter- 
 minable. The life of the spirit had ceased to be 
 being; it consisted in abstaining. In the catalogue 
 of sins, card-playing and dancing were cheek by 
 jowl with murder, arson, and theft, and, like 
 Frederick's crack regiment, everyone in line was 
 a giant, A sermon was judged somewhat as the 
 old colored mammy tests medicine, "The bitterer 
 the taste the quicker the cure." The Bible was 
 a great collection of proof -texts, to be used largely 
 for argumentative purposes. Nothing gave quite 
 as much delight as the refutation of some favourite 
 tenet of another church, and the sermon was 
 deemed especially appropriate if some of the 
 people who held these tenets happened to be in 
 church that day. 
 
 The deacon never tried to summarize the lessons 
 learned in that first year, but they must have been 
 something like this: If a minister is to be of any 
 lasting benefit to his people he must first of all 
 see to their spiritual education. He must teach 
 them to use their own conscience and not be 
 
6 In tHe Service of tHe King 
 
 obliged to wait for Sunday to come in order to find 
 out what is wrong. He must teach principles 
 and not precepts. He must share with his people, 
 as the mother-bird shares her food with her brood, 
 every morsel of new knowledge of God that he 
 acquires. He must, in fact, be always preaching 
 theology, in season and out of season, in the pulpit, 
 during the friendly visit, and in the sick-room. He 
 must help his people to know God. The other 
 lesson was only partly learned that year, but the 
 passing years have made it very plain. The 
 lesson is this: there are very few five-cent jobs in 
 a village ministry. If the village parson is to be 
 identified with the life of the little community, 
 then every hour spent with the waiting crowd in 
 the post-office or in the drug store on a rainy day 
 is time put to the very best use. If he is a religious 
 prig he will scatter those crowds into the street, 
 even if it be raining outside; but if he be a man 
 with the conscious purpose in his life of trying to 
 make effective the best that is in men, then intim- 
 ate acquaintanceship with many minds and many 
 moods of men is necessary. Looking back over 
 those first days, in which he learned far more 
 from his people than he was able to teach them, 
 the village parson realizes that perhaps his best 
 work for God and man was done when he sat with 
 
In Country and Village 7 
 
 a crowd around the stove in some store, and by 
 argument and anecdote forced some listless mind 
 to grapple again with the stern problem of right 
 thinking and right living. 
 
 At night in the cottage rectory, which the 
 parson called "the smoke-house," being a friend 
 of the pipe, when he got among his books he tried 
 to make the knowledge of his people's needs the 
 criterion of his choice in reading. The volumes 
 on his shelves soon ceased to be mere symbols. 
 Many a spare hour was spent in mastering the 
 table of contents in a book not to be read for 
 months perhaps. His young brain was seething 
 with questions, and one by one he asked of the 
 books about him : " Can you answer my questions?" 
 To know God that was his quest. This was his 
 people's need and it was his too. As he turns the 
 pages of volumes read in those first years, the 
 marks of the explorer's pick are everywhere. 
 The margins are black with comment, approval, 
 disclaimer, crude questionings, and here and there 
 a boyish "Hurrah!" when some rich find showed 
 up. 
 
 And then the sermons ! How well he remembers 
 his first attempt to carry out the suggestion of 
 some friend to make them simpler and to avoid the 
 use of unfamiliar words! First every Latin and 
 
8 In tKe Service of tHe King 
 
 Greek derivative was underscored and then cut 
 out. Afterwards came the weeding out of all the 
 superlatives. Then every adjective was ques- 
 tioned, and made to show just cause why it should 
 not be expelled. He preached that sermon. It 
 was a theological sermon, and a little tot, a chum 
 of his, told him afterwards: "I understood every 
 word you said." Of course the child did not un- 
 derstand; but the language, if not the ideas, was 
 within the circle of his experience. The experi- 
 ment proved so interesting that he took a volume 
 of Caird's sermons sermons rich in thought and 
 suggestions, but clothed in technical and classic 
 language and deliberately wrote Saxon para- 
 phrases of them. The paraphrase reduced their 
 compass more than one-half; and although the 
 shading of thought and much of the linguistic 
 beauty were done away, he believed then and now 
 believes that their effectiveness was greatly 
 increased. 
 
 The Saxon in our speech represents those inti- 
 mate and elemental things which the conquering 
 Norman could not make our forefathers give up; 
 and village and country preaching deals with 
 intimate and elemental things, and Saxon speech 
 is the direct road to a people's understanding. 
 Never will the village parson forget the response 
 
In Country and "Village 9 
 
 to a question put to the infant class in the Sun- 
 day-school. He gathered the little ones about 
 him and asked: "What kin is God to you, and 
 what kin are you to God?" More than one 
 mother told him afterwards that her child had 
 come home with face all aglow to tell her the fact, 
 now for the first time really made his own: "I am 
 God's child. " That word kin had unlocked the 
 door of heaven for them. 
 
 It may be a case of arrested development, but 
 the boy's point of view still comes easy to him ; 
 and the dreams of those days of callow youth still 
 retain their vividness, though now the sun is 
 directly overhead and the noontime glare reveals 
 the fact that the grass is not quite green after 
 all, for purple and yellow, earnest of decay and 
 death, can be seen even in the growing plant. He 
 wishes some facile pencil would sketch the oft- 
 repeated tragedy of the diaconate. 
 
 The young soldier of the King, fresh from the 
 drill-room, eager for the fray, and the God within 
 him for to him at least that is what enthusiasm 
 means stirring his soul to action, is detailed for 
 his first service. He is fitted by temperament and 
 training to take his place in line and spend his 
 strength in some splendid charge. The one thing 
 he is not fitted for is to conduct a siege, and yet 
 
IO In tKe Service of tHe Ring; 
 
 this is the work for which he is often appointed. 
 He is sent to some parish in an advanced stage 
 of disintegration. He is appointed the counsellor 
 of the aged and the comforter of the disheartened. 
 He is ignorant of the very vernacular of his dis- 
 trict and there is none near at hand to teach him. 
 Small wonder that he acquires an artificial tone, 
 and learns to look not at, but beyond, his present 
 task. 
 
 If these recollections are to be of any value they 
 must be candid, and a change of pronouns clothes 
 egotism itself with the borrowed garb of modesty. 
 When the deacon looked at his first task, his heart 
 sank within him. It was not that his feelings 
 were those of Mulholland when God sent him 
 back to the cattle-ship to preach His Word : 
 
 "I didn't want to do it, for I knew what I should 
 
 get, 
 An* I wanted to preach religion, handsome an* out of 
 
 the wet, 
 But the Word of the Lord were lain on me an* I done 
 
 what I was set." 
 
 It was not that he wanted to do it, "handsome 
 an' out of the wet." The very difficulties of the 
 cattle-ship or the mining camp would each have 
 suggested hardship enough to make the young colt 
 lift his head to take the hill in a gallop. It was 
 
In Co-untry and Village II 
 
 the absence of the heroic that sapped the young 
 deacon's energy. The qualities that fitted him 
 for some other task he found here an actual hin- 
 drance. The blessed privilege of youth was a 
 constant handicap. Patient wisdom that had 
 winnowed the chaff of youthful haste was what 
 was needed. The parish needed the wise coun- 
 sellor whose faith was trained by long experience 
 to count even honest failure a large success. The 
 parish had an enthusiastic boy whose spirit fretted 
 under the utter hopelessness of the task set him. 
 How could he minister to spiritless old age, whose 
 life had been broken at the wheel and who was 
 forced to live in the shadow of defeat, when his 
 youth was vibrant with hope of masteries to be 
 attained? 
 
 That he did not utterly fail, and saved the 
 Irish in him for service elsewhere, he ascribes to 
 two facts. His small stipend forced him to be a 
 stay-at-home in body, but when the day's task 
 was done he wandered far afield in thought and 
 in the best of company. 
 
 On one of these mental excursions, with dear 
 old Gulliver for guide, he visited the Island of 
 Laputa, and in the laboratory of the famous 
 Academy of Lagoda he saw a great inventor at 
 his work. The man was "of meagre aspect, 
 
12 In tKe Service of tKe King 
 
 with sooty hands and face, his hair and beard long, 
 ragged, and singed in several places." But if his 
 outer form was mean, his gift to men.was radiant. 
 He had hit upon a device for extracting sunshine 
 from cucumbers. This sunshine was then stored 
 away in bottles to be used in the home on dark 
 days to light the house. 
 
 In that hour, as he watched the old man at his 
 work, the deacon began to find himself. Dimly 
 outlined at first, but gradually defining itself, his 
 mission became clear. He would be the agent of 
 the great inventor, a dispenser of bottled sunshine. 
 
 The young deacon pondered the step well, till 
 the whimsical fancy born under the lamp became 
 a fixed purpose. He could not take the place by 
 siege. He could not bridge the moat of separating 
 years. He could not scale the barriers built of 
 broken hopes and cemented with tears. Age and 
 poverty and despair were weapons too strong for 
 him to contend with. An old proverb, never 
 before put to such use, perhaps, came to his mind : 
 "He who laughs disarms himself." The deacon 
 set out to make his people laugh. Counting the 
 cost, he deliberately donned the motley. From 
 house to house through the wide extent of his 
 country parish the deacon, in his jumper drawn 
 by "Brer Terrapin," went hawking his curious 
 
In Country and Village 13 
 
 wares. Old college jests, the rude humour of the 
 campus, the homely commonplace of daily life, 
 decked in strange trappings of verse and doggerel; 
 solemn accusation of coquetry brought against 
 silent and lachrymose old ladies of seventy ; frivol- 
 ity laid to the score of embittered and critical old 
 gentlemen; the terrible tragedy of the absent- 
 minded fat lady, Miss Mollie Muggins, who, 
 instead of a pill, swallowed a lighted candle, and 
 the dire consequences of her mistake. Such and 
 such like were the topics of his pastoral minis- 
 trations. 
 
 With a persistency that even now he feels a 
 pride in, he determined never to desert till he 
 could say that he had heard a laugh from every 
 one of his people. He found out then that the 
 logic in a jest is more insistent in its convincing 
 power than even the rhetorician's suppressed 
 conclusion. Whatever else he may have left 
 undone, the deacon knows that in those first days 
 he taught to many a sad heart the long-forgotten 
 trick of laughter. The laugh unlocked the brighter 
 memories of their far-off youth and they paid him 
 for their laugh in love. Love levels the barriers 
 of age, and though the passing years have swept 
 them far apart, the deacon counts the friends of 
 those days as among the great prizes of life. He 
 
14 In tKe Service of tHe Ring 
 
 dare not gainsay the wise man's words that the 
 " heart of fools is in the house of mirth"; but ex- 
 perience gives him courage to insist that when the 
 sunshine is unbottled in the house of desolation it 
 discovers many a heart of gold that was near to 
 perishing in the shadow. 
 
 The deacon has never known the delectable 
 tinkle of titularity, nor been tempted to watch for 
 the glint of tinsel compliment which is the tribute 
 that eloquence exacts, but he wears upon his heart 
 the message sent from a friend whose struggles 
 upward he watched in that fledgling time: "We 
 have had and lost many ministers since you went 
 away, but you at least, no matter where you are, 
 still belong to us." But above all the rewards of 
 his early ministry he holds the experience of that 
 Sunday, when, for the encouragement of the truest- 
 hearted gentleman he ever knew, he preached a 
 sermon. This was a man who, in the midst of a 
 losing fight with fortune, fought on with quivering 
 lip from which no plaint ever came ; whose gracious 
 courtesies in the home, whose simple services of 
 neighbourly helpfulness, and whose hatred of a 
 lie marked him as a man after God's own heart. 
 The sermon was on Isaac, the commonplace man; 
 the man without executive ability, the unprogres- 
 sive son of a masterful father, but withal a good 
 
In Country and Village 15 
 
 neighbour, a good husband, and one who found 
 his place in the eleventh chapter of Hebrews, 
 God's own Westminster. When the service was 
 over, and the deacon had just retired to the 
 robing-room, the living Isaac of the parable opened 
 the door, and, gowned as he was, the deacon found 
 himself lifted from his feet and held tight in the 
 bear-like hug of his friend, who, after he had set 
 him down, left without a word. 
 
 But all was not plain sailing. The ministry of 
 merriment took him ever into the shadow, just 
 as the healing art keeps the physician ever with 
 the sick. With many of his people he found the 
 case to be that the iron had entered into the soul, 
 and that to attempt to draw it out meant that the 
 life-blood would come too. Better they should 
 brood in sadness than open-eyed and with all the 
 senses awake to face the void of the coming years. 
 
 With aching heart he wrought the spell that 
 made the laughter come. It dulled the pain, but 
 the soul's resiliency was gone, and the hands long 
 relaxed could never get their grip on life again. 
 And so it came about that after one of his parish 
 rounds, the deacon reached his home, spent and 
 disheartened. He flung himself into a chair, and 
 too weary even to set going the fires that brought 
 the solace of the pipe, he dropped the reins of the 
 
16 In tKe Service of tHe King 
 
 directing will and let the tired mind pluck the 
 sere grass of old memories. How dull and dead 
 the once keen zest of study, and how withered on 
 the stalk the bright flower of his youthful hopes! 
 One by one he counted the years of preparation 
 for his task. He saw again the boy haranguing his 
 playmates from the cellar-cap. He smiled as he 
 remembered how his volubility had won their 
 praise. The steady grind of the course, the eager 
 passion of his study at the seminary how mean- 
 ingless they seemed! The fragment of a line of 
 Browning came to him: "Down dark lanes that 
 lead no whither." He had found his way into 
 one of life's blind-alleys, and was doomed to perish 
 there. His bitterness was just as poignant as if 
 he had been large enough of soul to have made a 
 large failure, for he had measured the possibilities 
 of service not by his ability to achieve, but by 
 his hope. 
 
II 
 
 YOUTH has no philosophy with which to combat 
 the aching sense of failure. It has not yet learned 
 to borrow from time's banker, the future, the 
 means to tide it over its present distress. It has 
 failed, and there's an end of all things. Of course 
 it lays the blame on its environment, and cries 
 out against the power that beats it down. At 
 least such was this young deacon's state of mind 
 as in mockery of self he hummed Kipling's ditty: 
 
 " A great and glorious thing it is 
 
 To learn for seven years or so 
 The Lord knows what of that or this 
 
 Ere reckoned fit to face the foe 
 The flying bullet down the Pass 
 That whistles clear, 'All flesh is grass.'" 
 
 As the deacon moved restlessly in his chair, his 
 eye rested a moment upon a pipe-rack on the wall. 
 One pipe dyed black at the joints of its root-stem 
 and with half its bowl hammered away, especially 
 seemed to beckon him. With a laugh the deacon 
 got up from his chair. "The sunshine may be 
 
 a 17 
 
1 8 In the Service of tHe King 
 
 bottled in the pipe," he said, "and the doctor 
 must take his own medicine." 
 
 Never shipwrecked sailor, strapped to a broken 
 spar and drifting on unknown seas, felt farther 
 away from help and inspiration than did the 
 deacon when he reached out for his pipe. The 
 pipe-rack was above his desk, and lying open on 
 his desk was a life of the Master. The book had 
 been lying there since he put it down days before 
 to start on his rounds. Wholly by accident, if 
 you will, his eye caught the caption of the chapter 
 yet unread. It was "The Galilean Ministry." 
 He stared at the words printed there till their 
 meaning seemed to burn itself into his brain. 
 Then, speaking aloud and calling himself by name, 
 he said: "You contemptible little puppy!" The 
 pipe was left untouched, and with vision cleared 
 by the flashlight of those words he had read, the 
 deacon sat down to think. 
 
 The Galilean Ministry! The King spending 
 His life and doing His work in Galilee among the 
 rude peasants whose quaint rusticisms made the 
 dwellers in the capital city smile! The King 
 making His home in Nazareth, and for all but a 
 few months of His matchless life left to hold a little 
 post up in the hills away from the high-road ! The 
 King in Galilee, and a green young subaltern 
 
In Country and Village 19 
 
 whining because he had been sent for a little while 
 to guard the outer line of the city itself! The 
 King in Galilee, separated by days of weary foot 
 travel from the city of His love, and the young 
 subaltern whimpering like a lost child because 
 two hours of comfortable travel on train stood 
 between him and the centre of the cleanest and 
 sweetest resultant of that civilization He gave to 
 the world! 
 
 It was as if the King Himself had spoken to him. 
 Utterly ashamed, and humbled, as if he had read 
 in the King's face sad rebuke of his disloyalty, the 
 deacon set his teeth to face the facts. He had 
 volunteered to serve and he had failed, not because 
 the task was too hard, but because of his own 
 foolish conceit and desire to do his work before 
 the eyes of men. 
 
 It was a sad house-cleaning, but it was thoroughly 
 done, and when the last hiding-place had been 
 made to give up its dirt, and the sunlight was 
 pouring in at every window, the man himself 
 knew that somehow the sunlight had got into his 
 own soul. 
 
 This much he knows, that from that illuminating 
 hour the restless fretting has gone out of his life. 
 When the prizes of life are given and none comes 
 his way; when the names of those honoured in 
 
2O In tHe Service of tHe King 
 
 action are printed in the gazette and his name 
 does not appear; though the momentary sense of 
 emptiness may come as aforetime, it does not 
 linger; and with head erect he goes back to his 
 task, whispering, "I have seen the King." Some- 
 times he is afraid that the blessing may itself 
 bring a blight, for the memory of that radiant 
 hour when the King met him in the quiet by-path 
 of life tempts him to think lightly of the service 
 of those who seek Him amidst the hurrying 
 crowds of the great city. 
 
 The time had come for the deacon to be or- 
 dained presbyter. The period of his novitiate 
 had been spent far from the eyes of his superior 
 officers in the Church. He knew few of the clergy. 
 A large district, almost a whole county, had been 
 turned over to him when he was a mere fledgling; 
 and for a year he had fluttered about, passing 
 through every stage of awkwardness ere he found 
 the use of his wings. He had learned in books a 
 theory of the Church. He cherished in his imagi- 
 nation the ideal of the nurturing mother, never 
 forgetful of her children, no matter how distant 
 or how scattered; but he found it difficult to 
 reconcile his ideal with the facts. But for the 
 episcopal visitation and the quarterly remittance 
 from the Diocesan Missionary Society, he might 
 
 \ 
 
In Country and Village 21 
 
 have been tempted to think that he and his people 
 were unknown or forgotten members of the great 
 family of God. 
 
 If the deacon in the missionary districts of the 
 diocese could have brought home to him that his 
 task is one committed to him by the Church; 
 that loyalty is due to the Church as well as to 
 his people; that the Church is watching every 
 struggle of her young lieutenant as the general 
 government watches the affairs of a provincial 
 district which it has committed to a commissioned 
 officer; and if his office were fully recognized as 
 conferring only a delegated power, and it were an 
 accepted fact that the Church held herself respon- 
 sible for him and for his people, then, and then 
 only, would the sense of loyalty to the Church be 
 born in the deacon. How can loyalty to the 
 Church, which he knows only as a book theory, 
 be a motive to an untried youth in the time of his 
 inexperience? An episcopal sermon once a year 
 and a quarterly remittance are not sufficient for 
 these things. 
 
 Never will the parson, as we shall have to call 
 him now, forget the first time that he was called 
 upon to give some account of the field in which he 
 had been at work for over two years. He was 
 attending a missionary gathering held in a city 
 
22 In tKe Service of tKe King 
 
 remote from his home. When asked what was the 
 greatest need in his mission field, he startled his 
 women questioners by replying: "A missionary 
 cook." They thought him a jester and frowned 
 disapproval. Their astonishment was not les- 
 sened when he produced a biscuit, which he asked 
 them to examine. It was almost green in colour. 
 "This/* he said, "is the food of my people, and it 
 is not Christian food. Over half the women in 
 the insane asylum in a neighbouring State are 
 farmers' wives, suffering from melancholia; and 
 the superintendent assures me that their infirmity 
 is due to eating bad bread. The woman who 
 could teach my people how to make decent bread 
 on an open fire, and eradicate a pernicious culinary 
 heresy known as 'fry/ would win sainthood, and 
 her grave would become a shrine. But that wo- 
 man would have to be endowed with apostolic 
 common-sense, and must have received the unction 
 of tact; for the saddest feature of the condition 
 I have depicted is that my people think their way 
 the best way in the world. The poor woman who 
 made that biscuit told me herself that she was a 
 born cook. Her husband beats her, but alas! 
 finds no fault with her cooking. He has never 
 known any better." 
 
 Of course the parson was not understood. One 
 
In Country and Village 23 
 
 lady, whose paper was crowded out, declared with 
 scarcely concealed scorn that the missionary society 
 had better change itself into a cooking school, 
 and another suggested that they should get some- 
 one to go up to the parson's parish and deliver a 
 series of lectures on cooking. 
 
 His friends joked the parson about his biscuit 
 speech, and he replied good-naturedly: "Oh, I 
 can wait fifty years. I have no administrative 
 capacity, or I'd get the thing done myself. I have 
 spent two years studying conditions and I have 
 mastered the facts. All I can do is to present 
 those facts. When enough people have accumu- 
 lated like facts, then the argument will be unan- 
 swerable and the change will come." 
 
 The little town had not wholly outgrown the 
 habits of village days, and men still met on winter 
 afternoons around the stove in some of the stores 
 to smoke and gossip. One of the favourite haunts 
 was the hardware shop of one of the vestrymen. 
 Here the philosophers of the village store held high 
 debate, and the parson was a frequent visitor. 
 His contribution to the argument was generally 
 an anecdote, but when the laugh had subsided, 
 the conviction he wished to carry was often thrust 
 home. 
 
 One rainy afternoon the crowd around the stove 
 
24 In tHe Service of tKe King 
 
 was rather larger than usual, though the presence 
 of one man frequently introduced a discordant 
 note. He was a big, rough, boisterous man, who 
 had no gift of listening and would tolerate no 
 conversation in which he had no part. He was 
 notoriously irreverent and had the air of a bully. 
 Everybody knew that there were some dark 
 chapters in his life. He had done deeds of ruthless 
 daring, prompted more, perhaps, by an utter dis- 
 regard of consequence than from any deep-seated 
 viciousness. He was tolerated only because he 
 could not be suppressed without an actual conflict 
 and so he enjoyed that measure of immunity 
 which comes to every man who in the public mind 
 is labelled dangerous. He tried to draw the 
 parson into a theological discussion in order, as 
 was evident, to parade his own reckless disregard 
 of sacred things. The parson skilfully avoided 
 being enticed into such a discussion till the man 
 said, with a sneer: "You know you are in the 
 preaching business for what you can get out of 
 it, and would sell out if you could get your price. 
 It's my creed that every man has his price. " 
 
 It was an insult, and every man present was 
 watching the parson eagerly. He was perfectly 
 calm, though his left hand clutched his pipe a little 
 tighter and his "talking finger, " as the fellows 
 
In Country and Village 25 
 
 used to call it at college, was extended and rigid. 
 His words cut the air like a whip lash: "Your 
 creed, sir, proves nothing but that you are per- 
 sonally dishonest. If, in your opinion, every 
 man has his price, you must be the single excep- 
 tion in the whole world, or you are a self-confessed 
 thief; and unless you can prove that you are the 
 one exception, your word, much less your opinion, 
 would not be received even in a police court." 
 
 The parson thought he knew his man, and even 
 while he was speaking, he was wondering what his 
 face was going to look like when the bully's big 
 fist had smashed it. But the man merely gazed 
 at him open-mouthed. He had wished to test 
 the parson's mettle, but he had not expected such 
 a broadside. When he did speak it was in a very 
 earnest tone: "Man, do you talk to your people 
 like that? If you do, 111 come to hear you." 
 
 "I have never before," said the parson, "been 
 forced to tell the truth so harshly, but my aim is 
 to tell my people what I hold to be true at any 
 cost. I am sorry, gentlemen," he went on, "to 
 break in on our talk with a sermon, but the very 
 name of manhood has been blasphemed." And 
 then he began to talk. Sitting there on a nail 
 keg, pipe in hand still, he pleaded with them never 
 to lose faith in man, "the lowest depth of infidel- 
 
26 In tHe Service of tKe King 
 
 ity," he called it. "When a man," he continued, 
 "flings away his trust in man, it is a sign that he 
 has already flung away his faith in God. This 
 place, men, is sacred. We are surrounded by 
 carpenters' tools. Every hammer and saw here 
 cries out against the blasphemy of an utterly 
 corrupt humanity. The Carpenter of Nazareth 
 was no bungler, and He built His Kingdom on His 
 trust in redeemed manhood." 
 
 The parson talked a long time. It was a strange 
 place for a sermon; and some of his listeners heard 
 one for the first time in many years. Every pipe 
 was out when he finished, and an old fellow sitting 
 on the counter drew a deep breath and said to the 
 parson: "I'd give a horse if my son could have 
 heard you." 
 
 The crowd broke up then, but ever after that 
 the bully was the parson's sworn defender. His 
 delight was to tell how the parson had called him 
 a thief, and proved it. The parson's talk had 
 cut deep into more than one life, and the bully 
 rather plumed himself on being the occasion of it. 
 
 The parson was a hard student, and his working 
 desk looked more like a college professor's than 
 like that of a village minister. He read in a curi- 
 ous fashion, arguing with every author, writing 
 all over the margins, and sometimes he wrote a 
 
In Country and Village 27 
 
 treatise while reading one. The village doctor 
 was his chum, and once, after midnight, the 
 doctor, returning from the bedside of a sick man, 
 saw the light burning in the study, and walked in. 
 He found the parson deep in an old volume and 
 asked what he was up to. "Robbing a grave/' 
 was the answer. " Here is a book great enough to 
 mark an epoch, and I'll wager it hasn't been read 
 twice in twenty years. It is one of the best ways 
 to teach truth, but the old prophet prophesied to 
 his generation in an unknown tongue. He called 
 his book, Methodological Propczdeutic. He was 
 buried under the weight of that awful title, and 
 here am I, as happy as a whole tribe of Esquimaux 
 when they come across the frozen carcass of a 
 primeval mammoth. There is enough meat in 
 this old volume to run a theological mess-room 
 for a year." 
 
 "See here," said the doctor, "you have got 
 to explain to me how it is that you are buried here 
 in this little hollow of the world. Why don't you 
 go to a larger field of labour?" 
 
 " I have had no temptation to leave, for no other 
 church has ever asked for me. The fact is, ' Doc, ' 
 I am not considered safe," replied the parson. 
 
 "What do you mean by safe?" asked the doctor. 
 
 "Oh I suppose," answered the parson, "the use 
 
28 In tHe Service of tHe Ring 
 
 of the word 'safe' is the same when applied to a 
 parson as when applied to a horse. A safe horse 
 is a horse any lady can drive. 
 
 "It seems to worry you, old chap, that I am 
 not a successful preacher. Fill up your pipe, and 
 if you can keep your eyes open long enough, per- 
 haps I may be able to give you at least a partial 
 explanation of it. I am, I fear, a most uncomfort- 
 able person to have about. For the life of me, 
 I can't help disturbing the spirit of worship, that 
 sweet calm when people are supposed to drink in 
 truth by atmospheric inhalation. 
 
 "On last Sunday I preached in a city church, 
 and the congregation, accustomed to the deliber- 
 ate movements of their old rector's mind, were 
 evidently very restless under, what seemed to 
 them, the dangerous novelty of my teaching. I 
 have, I am told, an unfortunate habit of changing 
 the application of accepted terms. I commenced 
 my sermon by stating that my subject was ' Vest- 
 ments and Ritual.' Instantly the people were 
 alert with interest, an interest that passed into 
 dazed wonderment when I added : ' I do not mean 
 by that, that I am going to talk about clothes and 
 posture and forms of words, for I know no author- 
 ity on such subjects, but about character and 
 actions, which are the divinely ordained vestments 
 
In Country and Village 29 
 
 and ritual of the Christian Church.' If it hadn't 
 been for the fact that I saw in the congregation 
 a keen-eyed old lady, whose face, hid away under 
 a poke bonnet, showed that she understood what 
 I was talking about, I do not think I could have 
 kept on. 
 
 "The average church-goer looks at time and 
 eternity from a certain fixed angle of mental vision. 
 To accept the suggestion to change his point of 
 view would disturb him as much as to make him 
 give up his particular nook in the corner of the 
 family pew. To demand that the truth be left 
 untrammelled by maxims that fetter or watch- 
 words that blind, is as revolutionary to many 
 minds as to suggest to a pew-holding congregation 
 that the church be made free. In each case, the 
 pleasant sense of the blessed fixedness of things 
 would be destroyed. * If truth be left free, ' says 
 one, 'she might wander far ahead of me, and 
 I should either have to be content to be left behind 
 or gird up my loins and follow after. I am too old 
 to change. Fetter the truth and she stays by 
 you. ' ' If the church be made free, ' says another, 
 'why, any stranger has as much right to my pew 
 in God's house as I have ; and for me to sit where 
 my father sat would necessitate my being always 
 on time, and this is not always convenient. Family 
 
3O In tKe Service of tKe 
 
 pews give a tone to a church that nothing else 
 can give/ When you tell him that the family 
 pew did as much as any single cause to alienate 
 the masses and to destroy the Colonial Church, 
 he sniffs and turns away, and ever afterwards 
 thinks you a dangerous young man." 
 
 "What surprises me," said the doctor, "is that 
 obnoxious optimism of yours. When you get 
 hold of what you call a truth, you would button- 
 hole anybody to tell him the good news. You 
 are a veritable gossip in the matter. A rebuff like 
 that you have just described would cure me of the 
 belief that truth would win out at last. If men 
 reject with scorn what is to you a patent truth, 
 what makes you think it worth while to keep on 
 offering them the thing they don't want? Where 
 did you learn this trick of optimism anyhow?" 
 
 "I came across it years ago," replied the parson, 
 "in a life of Keppler. When the scientists of 
 Keppler's day ridiculed his discovery of the law of 
 the heavenly bodies, Keppler smiled and said: 
 'If God has waited six thousand years to let 
 Keppler know, then surely Keppler can wait a 
 generation. ' 
 
 The parson's mother used to say that she had 
 sent five sons to college in search of knowledge, 
 but if they found it they never shared it with the 
 
In Country and Village 31 
 
 women folk at home; that the single item of 
 knowledge she had been able to abstract from 
 any one of them was, that if a spoon be placed in 
 a cup you could pour in boiling water without 
 running the risk of cracking the china. The par- 
 son furnished that item, it being the single fact 
 that remained over and above the amount of 
 information he had given back to the university 
 when he had handed in his graduation paper on 
 chemistry. 
 
 The only way in which he can account for the 
 fact that this bit of knowledge remained with 
 him, was that it was given as a kindly word of 
 caution and not "in the course." It is a strange 
 fact that everything in the course, being held in 
 memory by the fixed effort of the will, till returned 
 to the professor and receipted for on a sheep-skin, 
 promptly disappeared from his mind never to 
 come back. The things he once knew best, he 
 knows now not at all; and he is conscious that in 
 his brain there are spots, now permanently barren, 
 where the highest-priced knowledge obtainable 
 once flourished for a season. The parson had 
 been a student for thirty odd years. Half that 
 period was spent not in tutelage, but in serfdom. 
 Even now, when he has been out of school almost 
 as long as he was in it, the form which the night- 
 
32 In tKe Service of tHe King 
 
 mare most frequently takes is the inquisitorial 
 agony of the examination room. 
 
 The parson is persuaded that the ordinary 
 diploma is nothing more or less than an honourable 
 discharge from the ranks of learning on account 
 of permanent disabilities. 
 
 College culture is something like South Ameri- 
 can patriotism. Everybody has heard the story of 
 Castro's recruiting sergeant who wrote back to 
 the commander from the field of his operations: 
 "I send you one hundred volunteers. Please 
 return the handcuffs." 
 
 But 'tis a far cry from teacups to Venezuela, 
 and the parson must leave the contemplation of the 
 sheepskin and return to his mutton. What he 
 wanted to say was, that two occasions in his college 
 and seminary days stand out in memory. They 
 are the fixed stars by which he still steers his craft. 
 One day, in the physical laboratory, dear old 
 Frank Smith, having placed a number of appara- 
 tus, told the class the nature of the experiment he 
 was about to make. He explained the law of 
 physics to be exemplified, and then proceeded. 
 
 To the infinite delight of the class, the result 
 prophesied did not actualize. They expected to 
 see in the professor the evidence of chagrin at the 
 failure ; and were puzzled when he, after repeating 
 
In Country and Village 33 
 
 the experiment with the same result, looked up, 
 and with a face all aglow with excitement, said 
 exultantly: "Men, the accepted law does not work 
 in this case. We are confronted by a difficulty, 
 and in science, as in life, every difficulty is a door. 
 We are standing at a locked door in the great 
 house of knowledge. No man has ever entered it, 
 and no man can tell what a wealth of good things 
 lies behind this closed door. I want every man 
 here to join me in the search for the key that will 
 unlock this difficulty.'* 
 
 Forgotten forever is the great mass of facts 
 gathered with burning eyes and aching brain in 
 that class, but fresh as if it all happened yesterday 
 is the memory of the eager face of the teacher as 
 he stood there in the presence of a new difficulty. 
 
 The other incident belongs to a later date. The 
 parson had gone to the seminary with one equip- 
 ment at least. The training of sixteen years in 
 the schoolroom had taught him how to study. 
 The habit of sticking to a task till the problem was 
 solved was fixed. He soon found that the old 
 struggles in the college curriculum were but as a 
 mimic contest compared with the forces at work 
 in the field of theology. Here he must fight with 
 all his might for the very warrant of the calling 
 he had chosen. Needless to say that he was soon 
 
 3 
 
34 I** tKe Service of tKe Ring 
 
 entangled in the mesh of conflicting creeds. Like 
 many another, he found that the harder he strug- 
 gled the tighter the cords were drawn. 
 
 Convinced that he could never unravel the 
 tangled skein of thought without help, he sought 
 the counsel of an aged professor. The memory 
 of that interview is painful still. For the first 
 time, he came in conflict with the pious agnosti- 
 cism of the old evangelical school of thought, 
 which made mystery the sanction of religion. 
 He was told that the question he wanted answered 
 was a dangerous one, and that the only thing to 
 do was to stop thinking about it. He persisted 
 in his request for literature on the subject, and 
 was met by the reply that the professor knew no 
 safe books on that theme, and again was told to 
 stop thinking and the doubt would die. With a 
 burst of youthful pride, the boy replied: "I don't 
 intend to think about anything else until I find 
 an answer to my question." 
 
 The months that followed were trying ones. 
 The doubt was there. The professor had told 
 him that it was a third -century heresy. To har- 
 bour that doubt seemed a grievous disloyalty to 
 the Church of his birth and of his love ; but to stop 
 thinking, to run away from the first difficulty, 
 this he knew to be disloyal to the King Himself. 
 
In Country and Village 35 
 
 One day he sat in the class-room, listening to 
 a new teacher. One of the class, startled by the 
 bold utterance of the teacher, asked: "Is not that 
 position dangerous?" Instantly a change came 
 over the teacher. Several times during the hour 
 the irrepressible humour of the professor had 
 shown itself, but there was prophetic earnestness 
 in the hushed tones of the voice that answered: 
 " Dangerous! Suppose it is dangerous, what of 
 it? Men, you must understand that man was 
 made for the truth, and becomes truly a man only 
 in the seeking of the truth. Seek for it, men. 
 Follow it, no matter where it leads. Seek it 
 earnestly, honestly, reverently; and you may know 
 that the voice that calls you onward is the voice 
 of God. The way to it may be difficult; keep on. 
 You may grope for years in the fog of doubt, but 
 don't give up the search. You may go down, at 
 last, in the bog of despair, but my word for it, if 
 your search has been earnest, honest, and reverent, 
 God Himself will have sunk you in that bog; 
 sunk you there, that some man more fitted for 
 the God-appointed task, but helpless without the 
 marks of your footprints in the way, may in that 
 bog find a foothold on your sunken body. He will 
 carry the line over what will mark the opening of 
 a new highway to the city of the living God, but 
 
36 In tHe Service of tKe 
 
 you, no less than he, will be honoured of Him 
 Who doeth all things well." 
 
 To one of the class, at least, these words meant 
 the gift of life itself. Somewhere in his brain or 
 heart the last fetter that bound him to the dead 
 letter snapped, and he knew that he was free. He 
 could hardly keep back the cheer that surged up 
 to his lips. Here was one to whom he could go 
 for counsel. He did go, and step by step the 
 heights of vision were climbed. 'Tis true that at 
 the end the truth grasped was but an elementary 
 tenet of the faith; but the hold of that truth upon 
 him drew from him not the mere homage to the 
 form of sound words, but the love that a man 
 bears to his living child, for whom he would die 
 in the exultant joy of willing sacrifice. 
 
Ill 
 
 IN those first years the parson was conscious 
 all along of an intellectual loneliness. In the 
 thrifty little village there were plenty of men of 
 shrewd business sense, and more than one with a 
 keen native sense of humour, but not a student 
 among them. The parson had been at school 
 since his sixth year. Every friendship of life was 
 associated with the class-room. Every thought 
 of his life he had shared with these friends as 
 naturally as he shared his lunch at school or his 
 purse at college. Here in the village this sweet 
 commerce of the mind was stayed, and he felt its 
 loss keenly. He smiles now, as he thinks of the 
 first convocation he attended. He must have 
 impressed his brethren of the cloth as a young 
 madman. He button-holed every one of them and 
 poured into their ears the pent-up thoughts of 
 many lonely months. He bombarded them with 
 questions as rapidly as the child at the fair pelts 
 the tired parent with inquiries. For the most part 
 they listened patiently enough, but answered: 
 
 37 
 
38 In tHe Service of tHe Hang' 
 
 "I have not thought of such questions for years. 
 I have not time for the study of such things." 
 One dear old minister whose convocation sermon 
 was written in the language of a bygone age, but 
 whose heart was big with love and whose Christian 
 life found a fit vehicle in a robust manhood, looked 
 at his eager young brother in a dazed sort of way 
 and said: "What is the use of going over all that 
 ground again? I accepted all that before I entered 
 the ministry. To investigate it now would mean 
 that I had begun to doubt it, and I never had a 
 doubt in my life." 
 
 The parson went back to his home puzzled and 
 troubled. Had he somehow missed the way, and 
 was he wandering in forbidden fields? Men whose 
 Christian life was eloquent of the Spirit's power 
 within had smiled at his enthusiasm and talked 
 of the study of the deep things of God as something 
 for which they found no time. The Atonement, 
 on the meaning of which he had pondered many 
 a night till the clock registered the beginning of 
 another day, these men had defined in the fixed 
 phraseology of an old text-book long out of print. 
 They had talked of it as a single isolated fact in 
 time, whereas to the parson's mind it was inter- 
 woven with the texture of human life in such a 
 way that he caught a glimpse of it in the flush of 
 
In Country and Village 39 
 
 shame that mantled a boy's face when he pleaded 
 with him to make his life a cleaner thing ; and he 
 saw it flash in the dulled eye of age when he re- 
 minded them that they were but little children in 
 the nursery of God, and that He could redeem 
 their wasted lives in that eternal life begun here 
 in which death is only an incident. 
 
 When the parson attended his first meeting of 
 the council, he was greeted affectionately by his 
 friend who had never had a doubt. He put his 
 arms about the parson and said: "I have been 
 praying for you, boy." The parson thanked him, 
 but the anxious look in his friend's eye prompted 
 the parson to ask the meaning of his anxiety. 
 The reply gave him food for thought : " I am afraid 
 for you, boy. You study too much. You ask 
 too many questions; and questions are dangerous 
 things for the minister." It was in vain that the 
 parson sought to extract from the other any 
 reason for supposing that any moral obliquity 
 lurked in the desire to know. It was in vain that 
 he protested that fear was to him a form of infi- 
 delity. It was in vain that he declared he saw 
 little difference in the attitude of mind of one who 
 said, "You must not ask," and of one who said, 
 "You cannot know." His friend only answered: 
 "It is dangerous and I am afraid for you." 
 
40 In the Service of the King' 
 
 It was only when the parson added, "I never 
 open a new book or start in search of fuller know- 
 ledge of God, without asking the King for the 
 teaching light of the Holy Spirit on the way/ 1 
 that the anxious look grew less, and even then his 
 friend went away saddened that a minister of the 
 Church should cherish the restless desire to know 
 more than the unexplored facts that he had ac- 
 cepted when he took his ordination vows. 
 
 Browsing in strange pastures, the parson had 
 stumbled on a phrase of George Fox's that summed 
 up his unformulated philosophy: "A minister 
 must preach to the condition of his people." The 
 application of this principle forced him one Sunday 
 morning to choose a strange theme for a sermon. 
 It was in one of his country churches, and the 
 time was one of great agricultural depression. 
 The congregation were all country folk, and 
 tobacco was the one money crop of them all. 
 The sale of the tobacco was the crowning event 
 of the year. New dresses, the children's clothes, 
 the much-needed mule, the sewing-machine, and 
 the new plough, were all to be got " after the 
 tobacco was sold." 
 
 It was Sunday, October 3d. On the Friday 
 before, he had driven twenty miles across his parish 
 through fields of growing tobacco. Fortune had 
 
In Country and Village 41 
 
 smiled upon the farmer, and the discouragement 
 of a late spring had been forgotten in the promise 
 of the summer. It was the best crop for years. 
 Friday night the wind shifted and died away. A 
 heavy frost fell, and when the farmer awoke on 
 Saturday he looked out upon waste fields. In a 
 single night the toil of all the year had been made 
 futile. Not a stalk reared its head. The frost, 
 like some awful curse, had smitten all; and as 
 every man looked out across his desolated fields, 
 the spectres of the mortgage on the old home, and 
 the unpaid bill for fertilizer, walked down the 
 tobacco rows and mocked him in his grief. The 
 parson had never before, and has never since, 
 looked into faces like those in the pews that morn- 
 ing. The women, whose labours in the dairy 
 and with the fowls had earned the money to pay 
 the help, felt the blight as much as the men; and 
 in their eyes was the look of patient helplessness 
 that we sometimes see in the eyes of a desperately 
 wounded animal. The men sat there cowed. For 
 the time they had ceased to struggle. On the face 
 of most of them was the stubble of a week's 
 growth of beard. To-day for the first time since 
 a boy the Sunday shave had been omitted. The 
 listless hands would not do their work. 
 
 The parson was still a fledgling, and the care- 
 
42 In tHe Service of tKe Ring 
 
 fully prepared sermon was being carried in his 
 brain as the child balances a full pail upon its 
 head. He read his text and got through a few 
 sentences. Then the awful mockery of it all 
 mastered him. Here were these poor, desolate 
 children of the Father, come to His house as the 
 one refuge from despair, and the steward of His 
 mysteries was offering them stones for bread. 
 As one who frees himself from fetters, the parson 
 flung his text away, and blurted out: "I can't do 
 it; there is but one theme for to-day. I am going 
 to preach to you about frost-bitten tobacco," and 
 he did. God gave him power to lift the veil, and 
 they saw His face. 
 
 Before he finished the sermon, the parson and 
 his people were weeping together, and one poor 
 fellow, the title to whose home the frost had taken 
 from him, was sobbing like a child. Is it any 
 wonder that every year, when the first frost is on 
 the fields, the memory of that hour, when like 
 little children we brought our hurts to God and 
 sobbed out our pain at His knees, comes back to 
 us all? Is it any wonder that when the parson 
 went back to his books, and studied the works 
 of the great masters, wherein is written much on 
 the Problem of Pain, he found the way a little 
 less dark, and saw a gleam that beckoned to the 
 
In Country and Village 43 
 
 edg of the waste? It was during these days that 
 the parson became conscious of a hidden disloyalty 
 in his soul. In spite of many discouragements, his 
 life was a happy one. He was the son in many 
 homes, and his people made him rich with the 
 gift of love; but at one season of the year he was 
 wretched. The time of the bishop's visitation 
 was a yearly agony. The Sunday-schools were 
 small, the congregations a fixed quantity, and 
 former ministers had gleaned the homes for the 
 confirmation class. A year's preaching, and when 
 the bishop came, one shy girl, perhaps, of whose 
 spiritual life the parson could know but little, 
 would, through her mother, give in her name. 
 In vain he preached in frenzied zeal. The power 
 of the initiative was gone in the few old men whose 
 names were not on the church list, and his appeals 
 were unintelligible. Again and again he was 
 tempted to urge some untutored ones to take a 
 step whose meaning they did not grasp, but some- 
 thing stayed him. He who often said to himself 
 that he was not afraid of any man, found himself 
 ashamed to face the kindly inquiry of the old 
 bishop at his coming; but bad as this was, it did 
 not compare with the dread of that moment when 
 the bishop would read his report in council, and 
 the parson would hear him say: "Visited the five 
 
44 In tHe Service of tHe King 
 
 churches in county, and confirmed three." 
 
 He would be put to shame before his brethren 
 and branded as an incompetent. 
 
 Every year after the bishop's visit he felt 
 degraded, not at his failure, but at the way he 
 took his failure. So one day he made up his 
 mind to have it out with the King; to pray for the 
 purging of the soul that would make him a man 
 again. It was then that he found he was harbour- 
 ing a pernicious heresy, not that he minded being 
 a heretic, for he had found out before this that 
 every man who does his work in solitary places is, 
 perforce, a heretic; for loneliness breeds strange 
 fancies; but here was a heresy that the King Him- 
 self had condemned. It was the heresy of num- 
 bers. Again and again He had winnowed the 
 crowd in search of the true ones. In the end He 
 had gathered but a handful; but they were the 
 good seed, like Himself, the living Word. 
 
 Little by little the truth came to the parson; 
 the truth that is now so apparent that he wonders 
 it was not always his. The truth is this, that the 
 Church, and not the preacher, is the converting 
 power. The preacher's word can help only to 
 interpret his own life and hope, and it is his life 
 that counts. If he fails to quicken the souls of 
 the members of the Church, he has failed utterly, 
 
In Country and Village 45 
 
 for the Church is to do the work, not he. The 
 parson's friends still smile when they recall to him 
 the fervour with which he preached to them what 
 was to him a new truth. They called him a 
 dreamer, because he learned to be content with 
 the few faithful ones. A learned judge gave him 
 fatherly counsel, telling him that he was over- 
 reaching the mark, and setting the standard too 
 high for the man outside the Church. The judge 
 has never yet understood the parson's answer: 
 "I am not preaching to the man outside, for I 
 have no desire to start an argument with such a 
 one. I am preaching to the faithful forty, for if 
 they and I together can interpret Christ in our 
 lives, there will be no room for argument. The 
 man outside must believe." 
 
 One of the sweetest memories of those days is 
 of the presence of two old negroes, a man and his 
 wife, at every service of the church. Old Ben 
 had been the body-servant of one of the vestry. 
 When his former master's health gave way and it 
 was plain to all that the end was near, Ben came 
 to him and said: "Master, I'se been a Baptist all 
 my life, but you and me ain't got long to live now, 
 and I'd like to jine your church before I die. 
 Somehow I feel it would keep me near you always." , 
 So much in earnest was the old man that when 
 
46 In. tKe Service of tKe King 
 
 the bishop came he was confirmed, and the church 
 knew no more devout soul than the old servant. 
 His master died, but Ben was faithful to his 
 master's church. On Communion Sunday he 
 and his wife waited till all the rest of the congre- 
 gation had been to the Holy Table, and then they 
 would come up together and kneel on the floor 
 several feet away from the chancel rail. No per- 
 suasion could bring them nearer. The picture 
 of those two kneeling figures is burnt into the 
 parson's brain. Types of a suppliant race, re- 
 cognizing the gulf between the races, and yet 
 wanting to be near the more favoured ones always. 
 Old Betsy had followed her husband into the 
 church, and she was very proud of her member- 
 ship, but the habits of her earlier training still 
 clung to her, and from the back pew where she 
 sat she would give audible approbation of the 
 parson's preaching. Her earnestness deepened 
 with the earnestness of the appeal, and there was 
 a crescendo of "Dat's so," "Yes, Lord," that 
 never failed to be heard. The people grew accus- 
 tomed to it, and it provoked no smile. Old 
 Betsy's contribution to the maintenance of the 
 church consisted in "washing the preacher's 
 
 circus." 
 
THE TOWN MINISTRY 
 
 ONE Sunday morning the parson was sitting at 
 his desk reading over the notes of his sermon, 
 when he saw two men coming down the street 
 toward the church. It needed no second glance 
 to tell him that they were strangers; for even if 
 he had not known the whole male population of 
 the village, their air of curiosity in unfamiliar 
 surroundings would have told the story. They 
 paused for a moment just before they reached the 
 church, and then one of them went into the build- 
 ing, while the other remained outside. When the 
 parson entered, he saw the two men sitting on 
 opposite sides of the church, and he knew that he 
 was being investigated by a committee. Such 
 things have to be, perhaps; but if other parsons 
 feel the humiliation of such an ordeal as did the 
 parson of this story, then this method can be 
 quoted to justify the cruder methods of the Inqui- 
 sition. Many times since then the parson has 
 
 47 
 
48 In tHe Service of tHe King 
 
 noticed the vestry committee in the congregation. 
 They always sit apart, and they always time the 
 sermon. Time and the oft-repeated experience 
 ought to have taught him patience, but even to 
 this day he finds it hard to ignore the presence of 
 these sermon tasters. Only a short time since he 
 found them lying in wait. Their air was critical, 
 and as the parson's colloquial speech touched upon 
 the commonplace things of daily life, the tired 
 look of disappointed seekers settled upon them. 
 It was then that the parson came near to making 
 history. He was trying to minister to his people, 
 to quicken the feeble interest of some spent life, 
 to hearten the patient burden-bearer whose 
 strength was almost gone, to force the bitter 
 medicine of unwelcome truth through the set 
 lips of the wilful one whose soul was sick unto 
 death, to pour the balm on the bruised one who 
 shrank even from the healing touch, to awaken 
 the sluggish young soldier to a living loyalty; 
 and here were these two critics, counting the 
 minutes and measuring the pitch and volume of his 
 tones. He paused and flung up his head, and was 
 silent for a little while. It was an awkward 
 moment for the congregation, for the parson 
 seemed to have forgotten his theme. He was 
 searching through his quiver for some straight 
 
The Town Ministry 49 
 
 Saxon words that would carry true. He was going 
 to ask that committee to leave, and leave at once. 
 He had found the words, and his lips were framed 
 to speak them. But even as the taut string was 
 being set free, the grip of the old guest law of his 
 people, who for three centuries had lived along 
 the James, held him. After all, they were guests, 
 and besides, it was the Father's house, not his. 
 He never heard from the committee, nor does the 
 stately warden of a great church know how near 
 he was to being kicked by a restless young colt. 
 
 But this is recent history, and we left the parson 
 being investigated for the first time. Those two 
 must have been tired with the journey, and have 
 slept peacefully through the sermon, for the parson 
 was called to their church. It was at this time 
 that the parson first came in contact with that 
 popular fallacy known as the "larger field." 
 He was told and he told himself that here was 
 a summons to a larger field. The appeal of the 
 crowd is like the appeal of the abyss. The man 
 looks down and finds immensity beneath him 
 instead of above him; and he can make this im- 
 mensity his own by just letting go. It is a sort 
 of inverted and degenerate aspiration. 
 
 Well, the parson, like many a better man, let 
 go, and chose the larger field. Whatever blessings 
 
50 In tKe Service of tKe King 
 
 have come to him and they have been many 
 he knows he has missed the joy of conquest that 
 might have been his, had he not given up that 
 first work. The field he left is still unconquered 
 territory, and awaits the coming of one whose 
 loyalty to the cause no heresy of numbers can 
 shake; who knows that promotion in the King's 
 service is ever to the harder task and not to the 
 larger field ; who welcomes the command to attempt 
 the impossible, for he knows that the King Him- 
 self keeps near to those who are commissioned to 
 find a way. 
 
 The incidents of the move to town bring a smile 
 as he recalls them now, but they were almost 
 tragic in their enactment the long journey in a 
 day coach, the aching sense of being a deserter, 
 the anxiety for the wife who had done the work 
 of three men in gathering the few but cumbersome 
 belongings of the household, and in the last hours 
 before leaving been hostess to a crowd of country 
 friends, and presided at an impromptu but exten- 
 sive repast spread upon trunks and packing boxes. 
 The stove had never a chance to cool, so they 
 left it. The quaint old negro cook, who had 
 elected to follow the fortunes of her mistress, and 
 who was already desperately homesick and look- 
 ing very woe-begone in her nurse's cap, which set 
 
The Town Ministry 51 
 
 awry upon the bushy wig the cook's chief treas- 
 ure carefully combed out and up for the journey. 
 It was a dishevelled band of adventurers that got 
 off the train at ten o'clock at night. The poisoned 
 air of a close and overheated car had dulled the 
 brain. Clothes and hands and face were marked 
 with the dust of travel, The baby, wakened in 
 the effort to put on its wraps, was voicing its 
 treble protest. As they blinked in the light of 
 the station lamps, they found themselves thrust 
 into a waiting carriage, and were driven to the 
 rectory. Every window was ablaze with light, 
 and, as the carriage stopped, the door opened and 
 showed the crowd within. The whole congrega- 
 tion, men and women, had gathered to welcome 
 the parson and his family. If this narrative should 
 come under a woman's eye, she may be able to 
 understand the wife's state of mind, as she clutched 
 the parson's hand and gasped: "I don't believe 
 it. This is too horrible to be true." The par- 
 son, who, long hours before, had lost any power 
 to feel, could only reply: "It is unbelievable; but 
 unless they have put us out at the wrong house 
 we have got to face it." With a grim tighten- 
 ing of the muscles, the wife's head went up, and 
 the parson knew she meant to die game. For 
 one hour she faced the ordeal of many eyes. 
 
52 In tHe Service of tKe King 
 
 Travel-stained and spent, in the midst of those in 
 evening dress, she fought the unequal fight, and 
 won. None but the parson's ear could detect, 
 beneath the laughter and the play of words, the 
 note that told him every nerve was raw and the 
 tension stretched to snapping. It was over, at 
 last, and the house that was to be their home for 
 thirteen years was left to them. 
 
 As the parson looks back upon those years, he 
 feels as if, from a point outside of life, he were look- 
 ing at himself. He believes more firmly now than 
 when he uttered it, the paradox of his farewell to 
 his people: "You are going away and I shall stay 
 here. All that is best in me has been given to 
 you; and what I am, you have helped to make. 
 The lessons you have taught me I shall try to 
 teach those in the city; and my life and all its 
 meaning is the trust I leave with you." 
 
 This town must ever be, in the truest sense, his 
 home; for here his children were born; here sorrow 
 led him into the undiscovered country and taught 
 him a new language, stripping life of every tinsel 
 trapping and, in the presence of his dead, showing 
 him the true values. It was here he learned the 
 phrase, which his friends say he has used so often 
 that it is peculiarly his own: "The worth-whiles 
 of life." 
 
The Town Ministry 53 
 
 The parson soon found the larger field to which 
 he had come was an illusion. The church building 
 was larger; the choir a real joy; but the congrega- 
 tion a fixed quantity from the beginning. The 
 town had been visited again and again by the 
 travelling evangelist, and every man, woman, and 
 child drawn at some time into the religious vortex. 
 There were few unattached people in the town, 
 and the tribal spirit was strong. A man must do 
 his work within the tribe of his birth or choice. 
 The parson faced the situation squarely. He had 
 no intention of deserting again. He was going to 
 serve the King here. Did this mean that for the 
 rest of his life he was to minister to a church of 
 one hundred and fifty members, that could be 
 added to only by birth, or the occasional recruit, 
 bringing ?. letter of transfer? He had no taste 
 or talent for proselytizing. Was this, then, the 
 end toward which his struggles and strivings had 
 brought him to preach to that little band for 
 the rest of his life? His world shrank to a prison 
 house. He was rector of a church, and suddenly 
 he felt that this title did not define his duties to his 
 King. It shut him up in a world smaller than that 
 in which the King moved. He knew that some 
 new truth was coming into his life, for he had 
 become conscious of a great need; and, even in 
 
54 I n tKe Service of tKe Hing 
 
 those days, he had learned to call his doubts and 
 dissatisfactions his "growing pains.*' While he 
 tarried for the vision, which he knew would come, 
 he began to make some spiritual experiments. 
 They seemed to him to be in a way distinctly 
 clerical extras. He was the rector of a church, 
 but he would try to be the King's minister to that 
 community. The other ministers in the town, 
 guarding their tribal interests, were also in the 
 service of the King, and he would know them, not 
 casually, but intimately. If he believed he had a 
 message from the King to men and was debarred 
 from delivering it, because he could not speak the 
 language of the tribe, then he would seek out the 
 prophet of the tribe and convince him that there 
 was a message from the King, and persuade that 
 prophet to deliver it to his own tribe. 
 
 Memory takes him back to that night when, on 
 a street corner in the rain, he pleaded with the 
 haruspex of a hostile tribe to climb with him the 
 hill of vision. "Let me lend you a book that will 
 show you what I am driving at," said the parson. 
 "To what Church does the author belong?" 
 asked the haruspex. The parson replied that he 
 did not know, or care. The haruspex seemed 
 utterly astonished, and asked: "Do you mean to 
 say that you would read a book without knowing 
 
XHe Town Ministry 55 
 
 the Church affiliation of the author?" The par- 
 son answered: "If a turbaned Turk should bring 
 me a message of truth, I should know he came to 
 me from the Most High God. God chooses His 
 messengers; not I." As one ashamed, the harus- 
 pex promised to come and get the book. This was 
 the beginning of a new life for that man. Truth 
 became something to win and to share; not a 
 labelled treasure-box which he was set to guard. 
 The parson began to take courage. He had 
 filed through a captive's fetters and set a strong 
 man free. He had done more he had stumbled 
 upon a basis of unity. It had been there all the 
 time, but unrecognized. It was the assumption 
 that every man who calls himself a Christian is in 
 the service of the King, and loyalty to the King 
 demanded that he help the helper. This assump- 
 tion has found him fighting in strange company 
 Russellite, Roman priest, Baptist preacher, 
 Christian Scientist, Presbyterian, Methodist, and 
 the doughty street warriors the parson has talked 
 of our King and His cause to all of them. He has 
 cut the bitter word from the manuscript of a 
 theological disputant, saying: "I don't think 
 your theology is right, but I am not responsible 
 for that. I know the bitterness of your invective 
 is hurtful to the Cause and, as a fellow-soldier, I 
 
56 In tHe Service of tKe Ring 
 
 protest." He has claimed their Christ as his own 
 Christ, and talked of the common Cause. He has 
 never tried to make an Episcopalian out of any one 
 of them, but he has never failed to try to share every 
 truth that has come to him as a member of the 
 Church, as freely and as eagerly as vedette whis- 
 pers to vedette the meaning of the noises and lights 
 in the camp of the enemy. He has avoided as a 
 plague-stricken district the field of religious con- 
 troversy, and talked ever of the King's business. 
 So long as he could keep the King the centre of 
 interest, the question as to which of them should 
 be greatest could not arise. He was the rector of 
 a church, but neither a book nor a stately ritual 
 could ever interpret the Church to that town, for 
 they would not read the book, nor witness the 
 ritual, and he was determined to make the Church 
 a power in that community. The only possible 
 interpreter of its spirit must be a life of depth, 
 of breadth, of freedom, and of tolerance. He 
 determined to bring the Church out-of-doors, 
 and see if it could speak the common speech of 
 men without the aid of printed book or chanted 
 music. Consciously and persistently he strove to 
 share what God had given him. He preached 
 during those thirteen years nearly two thousand 
 sermons to the little band of Episcopalians 
 
The Town Ministry 57 
 
 gathered in the church building; but he talked 
 of the King and service under Him to every man 
 of every tribe who would give him a hearing. The 
 derringer talks in the drug store were a part of the 
 day's work, and he has listened to the confession 
 of a sin-stricken soul as he sat in a boat waiting 
 for the fish to bite. 
 
 But it was not all sunshine. Many a day the 
 hands hung listless and the doubt would come 
 settling down like a fog and making his world 
 again a narrow, chill prison. He longed at times 
 to get out of it all, and in the big city take a part 
 in the big battle there; but every time he went to 
 the city and talked to ministers there, he came 
 away dazed. They had neither time for the study 
 of the big problems, nor apparent interest in the 
 challenge to battle that was flaunted by vice at 
 every turn of the head. One and all, they seemed 
 to be intent on one thing to save the Church. 
 The parson's brain got into a strange muddle. 
 Was he mistaken about the meaning of all the 
 battle talk and soldier speech in the history of the 
 founding of the Kingdom? Was he mistaken as 
 to what was the glory of an army. He had never 
 gotten over the impression of what it was to be a 
 real soldier that he had got from an old, yellow 
 letter that the mother once gave him to read. 
 
58 In tKe Service of tKe King 
 
 It was from her brother, a boy soldier in the Con- 
 federacy, and was written from the Wilderness. 
 "I have not taken off my boots in a fortnight. 
 We have been in seventeen fights and skirmishes 
 between the Maryland line and Spottsylvania 
 Court House ; and yesterday, only the sergeant and 
 myself answered to our names when the roll of 
 Company F was called. The rest are dead, or 
 captured." A thousand times, through his boy- 
 hood and young manhood, the parson had pictured 
 the glory of being a member of that Company F. 
 He always pitied the two survivors. They had 
 been saved, and, somehow, it seemed to cast a 
 stain upon the record of the company. Was the 
 Church organized to save itself? This question 
 came to him again and again. 
 
 It was during these days that the parson became 
 a fisherman. At first, fishing was only an occa- 
 sional break in the routine of life, but gradually it 
 became a passion. At first, he argued with him- 
 self that he needed the recreation. This argument 
 sufficed, till he found that recreation and duty had 
 a frequent struggle for precedence, and duty did 
 not always take first place. Finally, he faced the 
 matter squarely. He went fishing, not because 
 he needed it, but because he loved it. If he took 
 off too much time, it was dissipation. This truth 
 
The Town Ministry 59 
 
 was pressed home sharply one day, as he was get- 
 ting into his buggy to drive to the fish pond. The 
 paddle and the bait bucket told the story of his 
 intended outing. As he got to the gate, a poor 
 old drunkard, whom he had a short time before 
 inveigled out of a bar-room and helped to his home, 
 was passing. As usual, he was well under the 
 influence of liquor. He stopped the parson, and 
 steadying himself by a grip on the parson's shoul- 
 der, he said: "Parson, I want to ask you a ques- 
 tion. Every man has his weakness, hasn't he?" 
 "Yes, I suppose he has," answered the parson. 
 A drunken grin was on his face as the old fellow 
 continued: "That's what I think. Every man 
 has his weakness; I drink whiskey, but I don't go 
 fishing. And you go fishing, but don't drink 
 whiskey. I have my weakness and you have your 
 weakness. It's about the same thing, isn't it?" 
 
II 
 
 THE parson spent too much time in fishing, 
 perhaps ; but his memory at least is unregenerate ; 
 for he looks back upon that time spent in fishing 
 as among the golden hours of life. He learned to 
 know the woods and waters. He knew every 
 hole of mink and otter in many miles. He knew 
 the hillside where the first arbutus bloomed. He 
 violated the game laws by shooting muskrats by 
 moonlight, and argued questions of theology with 
 a fine old preacher of another Church, who was 
 such an enthusiastic fisherman that he would 
 put on a small hook and fish in the bait bucket 
 while the bacon was being fried for dinner. The 
 parson still contends that fishing is the one demo- 
 cratic sport. He likes fishing for the same reason 
 that Pat likes a street fight. "I dearly love a 
 street fight/' said Patrick, "for in a street fight, 
 one man is just as good as another, and sometimes 
 a blamed sight better." He has prayed for all 
 sorts and conditions of men, and fished with them, 
 too; and he has seen a reprobate, whom no man 
 
 60 
 
The Town Ministry 61 
 
 would trust for a quarter, turn the boat, so that 
 the other fellow could get the best fishing. Such 
 a man only lacked training and opportunity to 
 become a hero. 
 
 There were many days when the parson seemed, 
 even to himself, to be doing nothing at all. Cer- 
 tainly, there were no results that could be tabu- 
 lated in the Diocesan Journal; though he strove 
 to maintain the only ritual (the translation he 
 found one day in Coleridge) that ever won his 
 whole-hearted admiration; "Pure ritual and un- 
 defiled is to visit the fatherless and widows in their 
 affliction, and to keep himself unspotted from the 
 world." During the thirteen years of his ministry 
 in town, sorrow came to almost every home of his 
 people, and the closest ties of friendship that have 
 bound his life to others were knit by the blind, 
 groping hands of wounded love under the shadows 
 of human loss. Whatever the mocker of God's 
 plan may say, the fact remains that pain is the 
 greatest builder in the world. 
 
 There were times when the frail humanity in 
 him hungered for the word of commendation. 
 Sometimes he craved, in spite of all that he had 
 learned in bitterness of soul, to be able to say to 
 all the world: "This has the King done through 
 me." It was during these years that he learned 
 
62 In tHe Service of tKe King 
 
 what he called "his lighthouse philosophy." The 
 keeper of the lighthouse does not launch any ships, 
 it is true, but he keeps many a good ship from going 
 to wreck. The light shines farther than the keeper 
 can see, and brightest when he cannot see at all. 
 Two things he has got to remember to keep the 
 light burning, and never get in between the light 
 and the darkness he is set to lighten. His teacher 
 here was the one who had been the companion 
 and counsellor of his youth. Men have given 
 many names to their mothers. The parson called 
 his mother "The Strawberry," for did not old 
 Isaak Walton say: "God might have made a 
 better fruit than the strawberry, but He just 
 didn't?" 
 
 The best that is in the Saxon is a sense of justice, 
 and the best that is in the Celt is his imperishable 
 youth ; and the mother was a Saxon-Celt. It was 
 not until he was far enough away from it all to 
 get the sense of proportion that he understood 
 the meaning of those solemn moments in his boy- 
 hood, when the busy mother laid down her needle 
 to sit as judge and arbiter. Sometimes, the tear- 
 stained and angry litigants were all her own boys. 
 Sometimes, the court was held in the backyard, 
 and one of her boys, with flushed face and clenched 
 fist, faced a playmate, whose sullen silence told 
 
THe Town Ministry 63 
 
 that he felt certain the judgment would be ren- 
 dered by a biassed court. Sometimes, it was an 
 angry dispute between her boys and a negro 
 servant. It was as one against whom the verdict 
 was often rendered that the parson got his first 
 suggestion of life's hardest lesson: "Justice does 
 not take sides with people ; justice takes sides with 
 right." There were two rulings of this court 
 that often come to his mind: " Fight, if you must, 
 but no sulking ; better a bruised eye than a scowl- 
 ing face"; and "The punishment must ever be 
 greater if the wrong has been done to a smaller 
 boy, or to a servant whose menial position makes 
 him defenceless." This was the Saxon in her. 
 Whatever her sons may come to doubt, they know, 
 for they have seen, the splendid majesty of justice. 
 They must believe that right is right, and to be 
 served, no matter what the cost to self. 
 
 But, after all, the Saxon's is a sombre world, and 
 the mother's world was a world of light. Every 
 Irishman has the power at will to make his eye 
 a convex mirror, and see the world of common 
 things reflected there in strange grotesque. This 
 was the mother's gift. She taught her children 
 to laugh, and led the laughter. So sure was she 
 of the healing power of laughter that, even when 
 sorrow's arrow struck deep and the wound did 
 
64 In tHe Service of tHe King 
 
 inward bleed, the lips were never too hard set to 
 keep back the smile; and, somehow, the Healer 
 wrought the double miracle, for her own wound 
 was staunched as she ministered to the smaller 
 hurts of childhood's hour. The parson still calls 
 her his encyclopaedia of useless information, his 
 last book of reference when all others fail him. 
 It makes no difference whether the quest is the 
 names of the three wives of Felix, or the name of 
 the English general who wrote Peccavi when he 
 captured Sind, he is sure the mother knows. 
 People who have lived are a living interest to her; 
 and she who would gossip about the possible 
 domestic complications in Solomon's household 
 resolutely refused to discuss her neighbour's 
 affairs, on the ground that it was not yet a closed 
 incident, and hence none of her business. A 
 Spanish proverb, or a Latin pun, jumped suddenly 
 into a discussion of the servant problem, making 
 even that desolate waste blossom. When some one 
 suggested to the old French teacher, worn out 
 with labour and ill-health, that he should rest, the 
 eager old man replied: "Rest? How can I rest? 
 I have work planned out for two hundred years." 
 The parson when he read the story, knew that 
 he had found a spiritual kinsman to the mother; 
 for the mother, at seventy-five, is studying a new 
 
THe Town Ministry 65 
 
 language with a zest and eagerness that youth 
 might envy. One day, when the parson and the 
 mother were chumming it, and nibbling the bitter- 
 sweet rind of some precious truth, whose kernel 
 they could not reach, the mother said : " I have had 
 a strange experience. I have not been able to 
 sleep lately, and one night, as I lay there, wide 
 awake, I thought I would try to see if I could say 
 my prayers in Latin. I missed a word here and 
 there, but found I could do it. Then I said them 
 in French, and then in Spanish. It was just an 
 experiment, and not at all a pious exercise. But, 
 somehow, I got into the habit of doing it every 
 night. Suddenly, it dawned on me that I had 
 stumbled on a new truth. When I began my 
 prayer in French, I found I was praying to the 
 good God, and I realized that in my English 
 prayer I had unconsciously been asking God to 
 be good ; and when I prayed in Latin, I found that 
 there was a majesty in the face of the good God 
 that I had missed seeing before; and when I 
 prayed in Spanish, a subtle sense of a new value 
 in the Father's love came to me. It was as if 
 the spiritual inheritance of three great peoples 
 had been added to the gift of what my own fore- 
 fathers gave to me in their language." Then, for 
 the first time, the parson realized the promise 
 
 5 
 
66 In tHe Service of tKe King' 
 
 hidden in the mission of the Church. Man cannot 
 know God in His fulness till all the world knows 
 Him. He had tried to know Matthew's Christ 
 and Mark's Christ and Luke's Christ and John's 
 Christ, but now he knew he would never know 
 the Christ till he knew the world's Christ. 
 
 It was the mother who broke into a monologue 
 of the parson's on Church unity, by saying: 
 "Wait a moment, son. There is too much lost 
 motion in that sort of talk for it to carry you to the 
 end you seek. As long as you talk about the 
 Church and the Churches, you beg the question; 
 but the trouble lies deeper than mere words. It 
 lies in the way you think about it. Suppose you 
 substitute in your thought on this subject, Christ 
 and the Cause, for the Church and the Churches. 
 If you do, I believe the conclusion which you will 
 reach will be an action, not an argument. As 
 long as you confine yourself to talk, the case is a 
 hopeless one ; for every disputant speaks a different 
 tongue and he convinces no one but himself. 
 Action is the only universal language for it is a 
 reality which needs no confusing symbol to inter- 
 pret itself. Most of the arguments I ever heard 
 were only elaborate excuses for not performing a 
 very simple duty." 
 
 This talk with the mother sent the parson back 
 
TKe To-wn Ministry 67 
 
 to his task with a new ideal. He has ever been 
 chary of making rules for other people, but some- 
 times he made one for himself. The rule was 
 hardly more than a programme of work to be done, 
 but it has helped: " Study the big problems all the 
 time, but never skip a small task, for one of those 
 simple duties holds the key to the big problem." 
 One day he met the Baptist preacher on the 
 street. They were good friends, for the parson had 
 initiated him into the mystic Order of Fishermen, 
 and steadied the boat while he struggled with his 
 first big chub. It was the last of July, and the 
 Baptist preacher was going away the next Monday 
 for a month's holiday. The parson, with a little 
 shaking of the knees, said: "I want you to do 
 something for me on next Sunday. Tell your 
 people for me that while you are away I should 
 count it a privilege if they will let me minister to 
 them should any sickness or sorrow come to them." 
 The preacher was deeply moved, and said he 
 would gladly deliver the parson's message. On 
 Monday morning, the parson was sitting in his 
 study, when one of the members of his church 
 walked in. He plunged right into his story: "I've 
 been expecting the coming of Judgment Day all 
 this morning, and I came down for a moment's 
 talk before it was announced. Have you heard 
 
68 In tHe Service of tKe liing 
 
 what happened at the Baptist church yesterday?" 
 The parson replied that he had heard nothing, 
 and his friend continued: "Well, the Baptist 
 preacher delivered your message, and added: 
 'I gladly commit you, my people, to the pastoral 
 care of my friend, the rector of St. Paul's Church.' 
 If that isn't a preface to Judgment Day, it is a 
 preface to something bigger still." The parson 
 asked him what he would do if his next-door neigh- 
 bour and friend were going away for a month and 
 had stopped to say good-bye. Would he not say: 
 "Tell the madam and the children if I can be of 
 any service to them while you are away to call 
 on me?" "Of course, I would," he replied. 
 "Well, all that I did," said the parson, "was to 
 raise the standard of Christian unity up to the 
 level of the common courtesies of life." The friend 
 went away, still insisting that some momentous 
 event was about to shake the world. When, an 
 hour later, the parson was crossing the street, he 
 saw an old fellow rush toward him from the side- 
 walk. Not waiting to shake hands, he grabbed 
 the parson in his arms, and hugged him. The 
 man was an old huckster in the market, and there 
 were tears in his eyes when he said: "We all love 
 you for the message you sent us yesterday." The 
 next Sunday the official board of the Baptist 
 
The Town Ministry 69 
 
 church attended St. Paul's in a body, and on the 
 Sunday after nearly half the congregation were 
 Baptists. And some of them said that it was the 
 first time they had ever been in an Episcopal 
 church. 
 
Ill 
 
 Down on the James, where the parson used to 
 spend his holidays as a boy, and where he first 
 learned to know and love the glow and wonder of 
 burning logs, there is a fire-log lore that never 
 found its way into print. He who has sat in some 
 spacious room, from whose walls be-rufHed gentle- 
 men looked down, and watched in the twilight the 
 big drift-log burning, has been to wonderland. 
 There are greens and reds in the driftwood jets 
 of flame that no artist ever put on canvas; and 
 along the burning log, in glowing fresco, castles, 
 and strange living things, bearing a likeness, 
 now to man and now to beasts, show themselves. 
 The castles loom, the weird faces grin and grimace 
 for a moment, then crumble into ash; but even 
 as you watch the crumbling desolation, unseen 
 fingers build again the fleeting world of glory and 
 of gloom. 
 
 The which is an allegory that will help explain, 
 perhaps, the parson's liking for the company of the 
 human drift that the winds of chance and the 
 
 70 
 
The Town Ministry 71 
 
 floods of ill-fortune have flung at his feet. The 
 tramp, the wanderer, the beggar, the derelicts, 
 have ever appealed to him with growing power. 
 Someone has said that kings are easy to paint, for 
 they are taught to pose from babyhood; but the 
 skulking figures that, with lowered head and 
 slouching gait, come up the walkway as the twilight 
 deepens, are quite a different task to limn. One 
 of the parson's quests was to find his way into the 
 heart of the derelict. His friends had laughed 
 and called him "fool" when they knew that at his 
 table and in his study, smoking the cigar of com- 
 radeship, had sat every type of failure that ever 
 pointed a moral: impostors, ex-convicts, drunk- 
 ards, thieves, victims of a drug, and the care-free 
 adventurer, whose commissary equipment is a 
 tomato can and a short-stem pipe. He has re- 
 duced his method of dealing with these to a well- 
 ordered system. Start with the hypothesis 
 sometimes a difficult one that every one of them 
 is at bottom a human being like yourself. Give 
 to the tramp brevet rank as a gentleman, so long 
 as he is under your roof. Wait for the story till 
 after he has left the dining-room. He can eat 
 with his head down, but no man is going to smoke 
 through a whole cigar without a puff or two toward 
 the ceiling. A man is like a horse. If he is down, 
 
72 In tKe Service of tKe Ring 
 
 you have got to get his head up before he can rise. 
 Until he gets his head up, his struggles are futile. 
 Once get the head up, you can stand aside, for, 
 unless his back is broken, he will get to his feet 
 alone. 
 
 Some of the most interesting men the parson 
 ever knew have been derelicts. Stories of prison 
 life, stories of folly and crime, pitiful tales of 
 poverty and shame, the confession of the wild 
 abandon of passion that sent the wanderer on his 
 way with the mark of Cain on his brow, a grim 
 humour that mocked at despair, and a strange 
 philosophy that drew content out of wretchedness 
 and rags the parson has watched it all, as the 
 fires of memory were kindled in the driftwood of 
 the world. Half of it was lying, perhaps, but the 
 material for the story had been gathered with 
 bleeding hands in the waste places of the world. 
 Sometimes he felt the story-teller was telling the 
 tale of another's life, and not his own, but the 
 parson never questioned the right of the despoiler 
 to his borrowed robe of shame. He has seen hope 
 show its radiant face just for a fleeting moment 
 ere it crumbled into ash, and he has not despaired. 
 If but the passing touch of kindliness could stir 
 the dead soul to even a fitful breath of aspiration, 
 he knew that when once the living Christ, incar- 
 
THe Town Ministry 73 
 
 nate in the life of all who call Him Lord, shall 
 walk the earth again, then will the Saviour's 
 hope be fulfilled, His purpose come to wonderful 
 fruition. It was his ministry to the driftwood of 
 the world that suggested to the parson to study 
 anew the mission of the King. To his glad amaze- 
 ment, when he read the words in Greek, he found 
 that the King had said: "I am come to seek and 
 to save that which has gone to smash. " 
 
 One winter's evening the parson was sitting in 
 his study. The lamps had been lit, and he was 
 reading, when the bell rang. He opened the door, 
 and saw standing there a well-dressed stranger, 
 who asked if this was the rector, and gave his own 
 name. The parson shook hands and said that 
 he was glad to know him. The man replied: 
 "You little know what I am, or you would not 
 say that." "No matter what you are," answered 
 the parson, "it will not prevent you from getting a 
 welcome here. Come in." "Well, sir, I don't want 
 to come in under false pretences. I am a thief," 
 replied the stranger, still standing outside the 
 door. "The welcome still holds good," answered 
 the parson. "Come in!" The man began his 
 story, but the parson stopped him. "Wait until 
 after supper, when we can have the evening to 
 ourselves." The parson then excused himself and 
 
74 I** tKe Service of tHe King 
 
 went to tell the wife there was a guest. "We 
 have a thief downstairs who has consented to take 
 tea with us," he told her. "All right," she an- 
 swered, "I'll be down in a moment. I can stand 
 for the thief, but I am glad it is no worse. You 
 know you might have captured a murderer for a 
 table companion." 
 
 After the stranger rallied from the dazed state 
 into which he seemed to have fallen, he talked 
 freely. He had been a student at the parson's 
 old college, and knew many people who were 
 friends of the parson and his wife. He had been 
 a lawyer and an editor, and talked about his work 
 and his life in a distant city. There was nothing 
 during the meal to suggest that the stranger was 
 not an honoured guest. When the parson and the 
 stranger were back in the study, and the parson's 
 long pipe was aglow, and the stranger had been 
 persuaded to light a cigar, the story came. 
 
 It was the old, familiar story of drink. Months 
 of hard work, then the mad craving for liquor, and 
 the long debauch. The last one had lasted through 
 weeks, till he reached a state of irresponsible mad- 
 ness. When his brain cleared, he found himself 
 in a cell in a jail of a city several hundred miles 
 from his home. He was told that he had forged a 
 check, used the mails for fraudulent purposes, and 
 
THe Town Ministry 75 
 
 stolen and sold a bicycle. At the end of six 
 months he had been set free on a technicality, but 
 faced the probability of being arrested again, so 
 had fled. Potentially, he was a fugitive from 
 justice. "Have you no family?" asked the 
 parson. "My mother is living," he answered; 
 "but she did not write to me while I was in jail. 
 I have no right to criticize her," he added, "for 
 I have broken every promise I ever made to her, 
 and when I was drinking, I have stolen the very 
 ornaments in her parlour to pawn for drink. She 
 believes I am a hopeless case, and I believe so 
 too." "What are you going to do now?" the 
 parson asked. "I do not know," he answered. 
 "I am fleeing from the face of man. My only 
 hope is to find some place where no one lives who 
 ever saw me before. An old acquaintance, or 
 one who was once my friend, is now my worst 
 enemy. Without any warrant for so doing, I am 
 asking you to give me money to make my flight 
 possible." 
 
 The parson depleted his shallow exchequer, 
 and handed him a $5 note. "There is no string 
 to this," he said; "you can do with it what you 
 will. If you believe that your mother is right, 
 and that your own opinion of yourself is right, then 
 you will probably take it and get drunk. If you 
 
76 In tHe Service of tHe King 
 
 do, I shall not blame you. But remember, I am 
 a messenger of the Christ, and He bids me tell 
 you that you are not a hopeless proposition, that 
 the making of a man is still in you. It is on His 
 Word, not on any judgment of my own, that I 
 give you this money." They talked for a long 
 time, and finally the man arose to say good-bye, as 
 he was to take a night train. Up to this point, 
 the parson had travelled over perfectly familiar 
 ground; then, suddenly, he was ushered into a 
 hidden chamber of the human heart. The thief 
 held out his hand. "I thank you very much," 
 he said, "for the money you have given me. I 
 shall not try to thank you for the other gift." 
 ''What other gift?" asked the parson. "The gift 
 of life," he answered, as his voice broke with sobs. 
 "I have a large acquaintance in this and other 
 States, but in all God's universe I know no man, 
 except you, who would have asked me to-night to 
 sit at the table with his wife. When I came here, 
 I was outside the pale of humanity; I had ceased 
 to be a man. When you made me your guest, 
 you made me a human being again. There may 
 be words that can express the feeling of an outcast 
 from the race when he feels the glow of human 
 fellowship again; but I don't know the words. 
 Good-bye." He went out into the night, and 
 
XHe Town Ministry 77 
 
 two days later the parson got a letter. It was 
 very brief: "I had a hard fight when I got up- 
 town. The money would have made it so easy 
 to forget ; but I won out, and I hope yet to be the 
 man God meant me to be." 
 
THE CITY MINISTRY 
 
 THE parson had entered on his thirteenth year 
 in his town ministry, and had begun to have 
 an institutional value in the community. The 
 ministry is the symbol of service, but the content 
 of the symbolism is a living thing; hence a parson 
 becomes a community asset only after the testing 
 years have made his life an open book. During 
 the first years, he argues for the cause; when he 
 is known and judged of men he becomes the argu- 
 ment, good or bad, for the cause. The parson 
 has known men to refuse to go again to a church 
 because, as they said: "I have hunted with that 
 preacher, and he is at bottom thoroughly selfish. 
 He cannot teach me anything." It was that sort 
 of rough comment, heard around the camp-fire, 
 that illumined for the parson the meaning of the 
 King's words, "Ye are the light of the world." 
 It was the parson, and not his sermon, that was 
 the message to men. The realization of this truth 
 
 78 
 
The City Ministry 79 
 
 has made him utterly wretched, when at the end 
 of day he looked back and found that some fool- 
 ish vanity had marred his work, or some petty 
 selfishness or shrinking cowardice had wrought an 
 injury to the cause. It was a poor sermon and a 
 weak argument that he had given to men that 
 day. It was the feebleness of his week-day ser- 
 mons, not of his Sunday utterances, that haunted 
 him. The story of old Dr. Johnson and the beg- 
 gar often came to his mind: "Who are you?" 
 asked Dr. Sam of the beggar. "I am a poor old 
 struggler," came the answer. "Would you mind 
 shaking hands with me, madam?" said the doctor, 
 lifting his hat. "That's just what I am, a poor 
 old struggler." Like a flagellant of old, he was 
 tempted to beat into his brain and heart the words 
 he was forever saying to himself: "Be true to the 
 King. At any cost be true." 
 
 One morning he looked up from his desk to see 
 the Bishop and two strangers coming up the walk- 
 way. The Bishop was the spokesman: "We have 
 come to tell you that the quiet days of your min- 
 istry are over. You have had years in which you 
 found leisure to study and to dream dreams. 
 These men have come to offer you a task too large 
 for one man, but one man is all that can be spared 
 for the work. Will you undertake the hard task? " 
 
8o In tKe Service of tHe Ring 
 
 It was like a blow in the face; but there seemed 
 no escape, and the parson answered: "I will 
 undertake the work if, after a talk with the vestry, 
 they will accept me as a leader." 
 
 The call to the large church had come, and it did 
 not quicken a pulse beat. There was no sense of 
 exhilaration, and the parson knew, as he looked 
 upon the calm of his inner life, that the chastening 
 vision of the King that had come to him as a 
 young deacon had taught him thoroughly the 
 utter unseemliness of vanity when his name was 
 called out to go and find a way. 
 
 The parson met the vestry of the city church. 
 He wonders, sometimes, if they did not have bad 
 dreams that night, haunted by the thought that 
 they had invoked catastrophe on their church by 
 insisting that the parson should come to them. 
 The parson returned to them their formal call, 
 and told them that they were released from any 
 obligation to him. He tried to make them under- 
 stand that there was real danger of a sad misfit; 
 that it was a dangerous experiment to transplant 
 one whose life had been spent in quiet by-paths, 
 into the hurry and strivings of the city; that he 
 had neither temperament nor talent for the r61e 
 of the dignified ecclesiastic; that he had got the 
 habit of snapping conventions if they hampered 
 
THe City Ministry 81 
 
 his freedom; that he had startled his town vestry 
 by preaching repeatedly on the street corner from 
 a wagon, and that if he came to them, it would be 
 with the full and clear-cut purpose to carry what 
 the Church stood for into every side-street and 
 back-alley of the city, and that if they would not 
 help him carry it there, he would not come. 
 
 Even when the parson was talking to the vestry 
 he was conscious of a constitutional weakness that 
 tempts him to meet every crisis of his life by making 
 a speech. He has often felt that he belonged to 
 another age, the age of the monologists those 
 sapient ones who wrote pamphlets when they 
 could not get an audience; and when they met a 
 lone traveller, held him with a glittering eye till 
 the tale was told. Still, when one has grown 
 accustomed to having old chums greet him, after 
 long absence, with the invariable salutation, ac- 
 companied by a slap on the back, "Well, you old 
 crank, how are you?" he is justified, perhaps, in 
 the effort to make men know his standard before 
 entering into a relationship as intimate and 
 thorough-going as that of pastor and people. 
 And this was the parson's creed of service, crude 
 and imperfect it may be, but tested by sixteen 
 years of striving within the narrow confines of 
 his former ministry. 
 
 6 
 
82 In tHe Service of tKe Ring 
 
 When the parson was settled in his new home, 
 he found himself in a swirl of activities. He 
 became at once the helpless victim of a conspiracy 
 of kindness. First came the receptions and even- 
 ings out. He and his wife were expected once 
 and sometimes twice a day to be the guests at 
 some function. In the old familiar intercourse 
 of his town ministry he had been accustomed to 
 drop in to the evening meal, and put his own chair 
 to the table; now he learned the new art of per- 
 pendicular eating. Strange food served in lettuce 
 leaves was his daily diet; and in what looked to 
 him like chicken salad he discovered malaga 
 grapes and curious confections. He was forced 
 to wear what he used to call "his other clothes*' 
 every day ; and instead of sitting down to a square 
 meal of talk, he had to partake of what he called 
 "capsule conversation" (a handshake, a smile, 
 and inanity and a bow). He began to feel as if 
 the tissues of his brain were being picked to pieces. 
 He was hopelessly unfitted for this kind of social 
 manoeuvre and floundered helplessly. 
 
 Then came the invitations to deliver addresses. 
 There is no use in recording the number, for it 
 would not be believed. He addressed every 
 organization known to our modern civilization, 
 from the Bootblacks' Union to the Daughters of 
 
The City Ministry 83 
 
 Royalty. Well for him that his old student 
 habits had taught him how to work. He un- 
 screwed the bells of the telephone, locked himself 
 in his study, and, with a sort of blow-pipe inten- 
 sity, made preparation for these addresses. The 
 fact that he strove by exacting study to give 
 direction and substance to these addresses, was 
 recognized as a tribute to the generous courtesy 
 of those who had asked his counsel, and they re- 
 paid his efforts with a meed of praise wholly out 
 of proportion to their worth. He began to feel 
 the thrill of that subtle intoxicant, the untem- 
 pered word of a crowd's flattery. The parson 
 realized that he was entering upon a phase of life 
 new to him. Whether he liked it or not, he now 
 had to deal with crowds. The one demand upon 
 him was that he should please. At first, it seemed 
 to him a meaningless waste of time. He was not 
 a candidate for public applause, and the brief 
 experience of those first months taught him that 
 here was a real danger of mental and moral deteri- 
 oration. Yet, if he meant to be God's minister 
 to that community, it would not be a negligible 
 asset to knit to himself by a bond of common 
 interest the various groups of men and women in 
 the city. Having decided that it was worth while, 
 he tried to form his code of action. He would 
 
84 In tKe Service of tKe Ring 
 
 learn to take the labour incident to this sort of 
 work as a recreation, not as a burden. He must 
 be sane, and study to win, not betray, the intel- 
 ligence of his audience. He must bear in mind 
 that he who tries to win the favour of the crowd 
 will soon be tempted to pawn his honour in order 
 to save his winnings. He must remember that 
 reputation lives in the crowd, and to live up to 
 his reputation meant only to follow the crowd. 
 If he hoped to lead, he must live beyond man's 
 estimate of him; and so he made a motto for 
 himself, a motto which he tried to translate into 
 Latin, but failed: "Keep yourself in the running, 
 always a lap ahead of your reputation. " 
 
 After the parson ceased to be a novelty and 
 something like a normal existence became possible, 
 he tried to follow the advice of those who told him 
 that an ordered mode of life would increase his 
 efficiency. He must have office hours, and do 
 his pastoral work systematically. Each day was 
 to see a carefully prepared programme, and the 
 earned hours of rest could be set aside. After a 
 brief trial of the system he discarded it absolutely 
 and forever. How was he to have an ordered 
 life when the sick and the sorrowing and the 
 needy were everywhere? How was he to follow 
 a programme when the coveted opportunity of 
 
The City Ministry 85 
 
 intimate converse offered itself in some office or 
 sick-room at the hour when the fixed order of his 
 life demanded that he be waiting for the possible 
 caller at his home? Pain and poverty and shame 
 knew no schedule of hours, and these called to him 
 with urgent voice. How was he to think of hours 
 of leisure when a congregation of men and women 
 listened with eager intelligence and hungered to be 
 taught ? How could he rest when every day some 
 new task beckoned him to the doing of it? 
 
 The problem of poverty had hardly come into 
 his life before, and now when he touched it in the 
 city, he almost felt as if the Church were a failure. 
 The physical needs of the destitute were being 
 met by the agencies of organized charity; but the 
 poor themselves were unshepherded. He sud- 
 denly realized that the question, "Why do not 
 the poor go to church?" was a foolish question. 
 The only question with which he must concern 
 himself was, "Why "does not the Church go to the 
 poor?" Again he found himself confronted with 
 the fact that the Church was too busy trying to 
 save itself. The church of which he found himself 
 the rector was making, through the beautiful 
 service of a band of Christian women, some effort 
 to touch the lives of the needy ones; but even 
 those who gathered in the parish house seemed to 
 
86 In tHe Service of tKe King 
 
 feel that they were coming to man's church, and 
 not the Father's house. Little by little the truth 
 came home to him that the tabernacle of the 
 church, like the tabernacle of her Lord, must be 
 flesh, and not stone or brick. The church was suf- 
 fering from house-mould. Christianity needed sun- 
 shine and exercise. Sometimes as he pondered over 
 the problem he was tempted to pray for a houseless 
 church, with the apostolic substituted for the Sarum 
 usage; with only the outdoor ritual of visits to the 
 fatherless and widows, and the worship of a stain- 
 less life as witness of loyalty to a living Lord. 
 
 The sacramental teaching of the Church had 
 never quite obscured for him the classic meaning 
 of sacrament as the soldier's oath of allegiance, 
 and he longed to keep and help his fellows keep 
 that oath. Whatever he may have failed in, he 
 has at least brought it to pass that every destitute 
 man or woman who comes seeking help from the 
 organized charity of the city is within a few hours 
 brought into touch with that Christian organiza- 
 tion with which the needy one has ever had a real 
 or nominal or inherited connection; and he looks 
 to the day when there shall be no unshepherded 
 poor within the city. 
 
 In his new work, as in his town ministry, he 
 found the derelict was his teacher. One morning 
 
The City Ministry 87 
 
 before the family had come downstairs, he answered 
 the door-bell, and saw an old woman standing 
 there. He knew something of her history. She 
 was the widow of a painter and was dependent 
 now on charity. It was not her first visit, but 
 her request that morning was new. "I come to 
 ask you to give me something good to eat. I 
 have meal and meat, but when I looked at them 
 this morning I loathed that sort of food and could 
 not swallow it." The parson insisted that she 
 should come into his study and talk it over. 
 While they talked, he heard the servant moving 
 about in the dining-room, and saw that breakfast 
 had been brought in. He asked the old beggar 
 to come in to breakfast, and assured her that his 
 wife would give her a glad welcome. The parson 
 will never forget the look upon the aged face. 
 Tears were in her eyes, and for a while the words 
 would not come. At last she whispered in a 
 choked voice. " Oh, no, sir; I could never do that, 
 never, never ! " No persuasion of the parson could 
 make her see that it was a reasonable proposition. 
 The whole thing seemed to her incongruous and 
 out of the question. The parson gave her some 
 food, and an order for a few dainties, and she left. 
 
 After breakfast, the parson sat down to write 
 his sermon; but the face of the old beggar woman 
 
88 In tHe Service of tKe King 
 
 kept getting between him and the page. "What 
 had been the manner of his life that the wife of 
 the painter should think it utterly incongruous 
 that she should sit down at the table of the servant 
 of the Carpenter ?" This was the question he 
 asked himself. He knew now that he had made 
 a grievous mistake somewhere, and he took up 
 the story of the Master's life to find out where 
 he had failed. He found therein the Master's 
 words, "Give, and men shall give unto you." 
 And then he read that other promise, "When 
 thou makest a feast, ask the poor," and thou shalt 
 be blest of God. He knew the satisfaction of the 
 fulfilment of the first promise. Men had given, 
 pressed down and running over, the measure of 
 their appreciation; but had he ever been even a 
 candidate for God's blessing? This is the law of 
 life: "Give, and man shall bless you; share, and 
 God shall bless you." He saw the light; but it re- 
 vealed to him only his fetters. No matter how he 
 strove, the barrier between the poor and himself 
 remained. The habit of the life called Christian 
 had been accepted as the law of Christian living, 
 and no declaration of the gospel of sharing would 
 ever be intelligible to the unshepherded ones till 
 the habit of social exclusiveness be branded as un- 
 Christian by those who had willingly laid it aside. 
 
II 
 
 The parson belongs to a club which has for its 
 qualifications the sole requisite that, as Henry 
 Grady says, every man carries his sovereignty 
 under his hat. It would be hard to find a gather- 
 ing of people who are more certain of their grasp 
 of universal truth, or more ready to lay a lance in 
 rest against any opposing system. Preachers, 
 doctors, lawyers, scientists, socialists, professors, 
 captains of industry, and editors, are among them. 
 When the paper is read and the discussion opened, 
 only he who is prepared for a swash-buckler fte 
 dares show his head. For many years the parson 
 has argued it out with the masters of the world. 
 He has been worsted a thousand times, but he 
 has learned a little of the art. He is always a 
 parson, and fights for his cause. He has learned 
 not to be frightened by great names. He knows 
 that St. Augustine is the spiritual ancestor of 
 Jesuit, Presbyterian, Baptist, and High Church- 
 man ; that Calvin's logical system runs so smoothly 
 that its great non-sequitur is difficult to detect, 
 
 89 
 
QO In tHe Service of tKe King 
 
 because its premises are both true, though unre- 
 lated; that the man who finds it easy to prove 
 everything really believes very little; that the man 
 with the complete system is as dangerous a guide 
 as the special pleader; that if you search long 
 enough you can find a proof -text for any political 
 heresy in the writings of the versatile Thomas 
 Jefferson, just as every controversialist in theo- 
 logy gets his sharpest weapon from that most 
 quotable of all sceptics, St. Augustine. 
 
 The most interesting disputant he knows is 
 the omniscient, militant, German trained Ph.D., 
 armed with a heresy that bears the date of his uni- 
 versity degree. His train of thought is usually 
 propelled by a sort of negative electricity, which 
 will drive the wheels only backward. From inti- 
 mate contact with them the parson has found out 
 that "agnostic" is an objective and not subjective 
 term. It means that the owner of the title believes 
 that nobody else knows anything. Nothing gives 
 him higher joy than to lay violent hands upon 
 some aged truth clothed in the garment of ancient 
 speech, and tear to pieces the outer garb of words, 
 and drive into the limbo of lost ideals the aged 
 ruler of the centuries. His quest is to find a myth, 
 which is to him the one creative force in the sphere 
 of mind. Truth is the barren offspring of time, 
 
The City Ministry 91 
 
 myth the one goddess of the dawn. He is the vice- 
 gerent of a mysterious power, which he calls science, 
 the Lord of the material universe. His Ph.D. 
 confers upon him a grace of orders. He speaks 
 with a note of infallibility in a voice strangely 
 like that of the mediaeval Church. The vice- 
 gerent of a material universe, he claims lordship 
 over all things spiritual. His concept of law in the 
 sphere spiritual is modelled after the Russian 
 code, which defines what a man can do by the 
 gracious favour of the Czar; and all things not 
 granted explicitly are thereby forbidden. His 
 logic is perfect : 
 
 "If a man who turnips cries, 
 Cries not when his father dies, 
 It is proof that he had rather 
 Have a turnip than his father." 
 
 His attitude toward theology is marked by a 
 touch of pity. His voice is lowered when he 
 explains that the seeming halo round its hoary 
 head is but the phosphorescence of decay. He 
 passes from the four walls of his laboratory, where 
 the chastened elements do his bidding, out into 
 the infinite of spirit, and does not doff his crown. 
 He has proved that life exists only within certain 
 degrees of heat; therefore, the nearest approach 
 
92 In tHe Service of tKe King 
 
 to the concept of a Lord of life is heat. He has 
 with his own eyes seen the frog that had no father, 
 therefore a man need not lift his eyes from earth 
 in order to seek the source of being. He has found 
 a law in the jungle that the two forces that rule 
 there are cunning and strength; therefore, morality 
 is only a convention, and sacrifice a meaningless 
 maiming of the life. 
 
 He knows to a nicety the source of the atavistic 
 terror in the ululations of the wolf, but the croon- 
 ing of the mother to her babe brings no message 
 to his mind. Behind the modesty of his humble 
 title, agnostic, is the mental arrogance of papacy. 
 Affirming that God cannot be known, he is forever 
 proclaiming what God is not, with the intimate 
 knowledge of close acquaintance. The constant 
 student of phenomena, he denies the validity of 
 those spiritual forces which make life among 
 men a possibility to him. Unconsciously he is 
 repeating the ancient folly of the Church in trying 
 to solve the equation of life with only two factors. 
 For centuries the Church posited God and a man, 
 and the problem of life was insoluble, for it left 
 out mankind or the world. The agnostic posits 
 man and the world, and leaves out God, and finds 
 the equation a surd, as meaningless as the square 
 root of a minus quantity. 
 
THe City Ministry 93 
 
 The club is a valuable incident in the parson's 
 routine existence. He knows that no argument 
 of his under such conditions can carry conviction ; 
 but 'tis a good school of fence, and he understands 
 history a little better now that he has watched the 
 ancient errors of the Church being repeated in the 
 name of science. He understands a little better 
 than he did that for man truth is not a proposition 
 but a life. He has learned to accept God's nam- 
 ing of life's Trinity, "Thou and God and thy 
 neighbour." 
 
 Of course the parson has met the other type, the 
 honest, reverent seeker for the keys to the locked 
 chambers of nature, the man who in humble 
 loyalty to his chosen work struggles ever to keep 
 his mind sensitive to the approach of light; who, 
 moving in a world of material things, seeks to 
 know only facts; to whom science is a just and 
 gracious sovereign, claiming the fealty of his intel- 
 lect; the man who gazes out into the infinite of 
 spirit, and frankly says: "This is to me the great 
 unknown. The training of the laboratory, with 
 its test-tubes and its microscope, has not fitted 
 me to judge of that which cannot be confined and 
 is intangible and imponderable. When you talk 
 to me of spiritual data, I tell you frankly that the 
 sensitized tissues of my brain have been trained 
 
94 In. tHe Service of tHe 
 
 to respond only to the call of the senses. I, be- 
 cause my life has been spent in the service of man, 
 the child of earth, cannot grasp the meaning of the 
 talk of man, the child of God. Sequence I see 
 and law, but the law is but the nature of the thing 
 I see. Whence came this law I do not know. I 
 am like the men who travelled with the Christians' 
 saint toward Damascus, the light I see, but the 
 voice I cannot hear." For such men the parson 
 has an honest admiration. Their courage quick- 
 ens his pulse-beat. Their loyalty gives his own 
 allegiance new forms of expression. Their rever- 
 ence for the tested law has taught him that rever- 
 ence is not a thing of bowed head and bended 
 knee, but the necessary expression of a loyal mind 
 in the presence of truth. Their humility has 
 chastened his own vanity, and their devotion 
 typified his own desire. 
 
 One day the rector of another church in the 
 city asked the parson to consider with him the ad- 
 visability of planting a new congregation in the 
 suburbs. To this rector such a movement would 
 mean the maiming of his own church, for every 
 member was apparently needed to do the work of 
 the body, and a withdrawal meant in every case 
 an amputation; but the rector in this, as in every 
 test in which the parson saw him tried, put his 
 
TKe City Ministry 95 
 
 own interest at a negligible quantity and planned 
 for the Cause alone. With the inspiration of 
 such an example the parson sat down to study the 
 question. To the other church it would mean the 
 loss of a few much-needed men and women, but 
 to the church under the care of the parson it would 
 mean the loss of a large group who represented 
 the present strength and future growth of the con- 
 gregation, those just entering upon the maturity 
 of life with their young children, born to the sweet 
 proprietorship of beautiful homes. 
 
 But to the parson's mind a new church was 
 needed, and the field ought to be occupied. It 
 was, however, a new experiment, where instinct 
 rather than knowledge was his guide. The church 
 people were summoned to a conference, and to this 
 conference many others who lived in that section 
 of the town came. The parson and the rector of 
 the other church urged their people to break the 
 bonds that bound them to their old congregational 
 life, and to enter upon a new life of their own. 
 If the parson had any misgivings as to the wisdom 
 of their action, those doubts were dispelled by the 
 whispered comments of the visitors present. They 
 said with a note of sadness, in which there was 
 mingled, however, a note of exhilaration: "We 
 never realized what a church meant before. To 
 
96 In tKe Service of tHe King 
 
 see two ministers driving from the fold some of the 
 choicest of their flock, and telling them it is their 
 duty to depart, is a sight so strange that we never 
 thought it among the possibilities of life. We 
 have been taught to struggle for the upbuilding 
 of our congregation. If there is a church which 
 can see beyond its own congregational life, we 
 want to know it better than we do." 
 
 The sequel of this incident (and the parson is 
 persuaded that such an event ought to be an inci- 
 dent in the life of every church) was striking proof 
 of its wisdom. A new church sprang into being, 
 to whose open doors people are drawn who never 
 knew the Church and her ways. The church of 
 the rector who began the work has rallied from 
 its loss and entered upon larger activities, with a 
 higher vision of service and joy in the discovery 
 of unappreciated powers within itself. For some 
 months within the mother church, the story of the 
 exodus of her young life was told anew at every 
 service ; but a new life began to show itself in every 
 branch of congregational activity. Within the 
 year the vacant places were filled, and lives in 
 which undiscovered or unappropriated powers of 
 service had lain unutilized were sending energy 
 into the church whose need of them had just been 
 realized. The parson is persuaded that the child- 
 
The City Ministry 97 
 
 less church is as tragic in the pathos of its finality 
 as is the childless home of man. 
 
 As the parson sat for three weeks in Synod Hall, 
 and followed with increasing interest the life of 
 the Church struggling for expression, he realized 
 as never before the splendid vitality of the Church 
 he loved. He had dreaded the test, for the great 
 metropolis was to him the symbol of material 
 power. The very bigness of the buildings was 
 evidence of man's daring and man's strength. 
 The rush and rumble of the city were to his pro- 
 vincial ear like the noises of nature in convulsion. 
 The teeming multitudes of the streets seemed to 
 mock the efforts he was making to bring to a 
 knowledge of the King the little city in which he 
 lived. The problems of poverty and sin were 
 multiplied a thousand-fold, and God, who seemed 
 so near to him as he ministered to his own little 
 flock, seemed infinitely distant there in the great 
 city. It was hard to retain the sense of spiritual 
 values, when on every side the struggle for mate- 
 rial things absorbed the life of men. The Christian- 
 ity he knew had come to him in the symbolism 
 of the home, and he found it difficult to associate 
 the ideal of home with the crowded dwellings of 
 the poor or the artificial housing systems of the 
 well-to-do. To his experience, the life of a com- 
 
98 In tKe Service of the King 
 
 munity had been in the home, but here man's 
 life seemed to be in the streets. The cynic's 
 definition of man as the trading animal came to his 
 mind, and he realized that until man recognizes 
 that commerce is God's, he cannot be saved. He 
 looked at his fellows in the hall, and wondered if 
 the shadow of the big buildings had fallen on 
 them too. 
 
 As the days passed the parson's fear subsided, 
 for the New York Convention was the triumphant 
 assertion of the transcendent worth of spiritual 
 things. He had been reared among a people to 
 whom loyalty is the first of virtues, and the fierce 
 loyalty of those who stood to guard the heritage of 
 the Church filled him with admiration. What 
 that heritage was, became more and more a con- 
 fused conception to him as the strife of words 
 went on. Both sides were in deadly earnest, and 
 brother fought against brother. Each claimed to 
 be the loyal son and each demanded the right to 
 be sole guardian of the life and honour of the 
 Church. The very intensity of every man's 
 purpose gave a reality to the struggle. None 
 could question the candour and the courage of 
 those who flung their claims to heirship into the 
 face of a hostile majority, a majority that shrank 
 to a timid minority at the first taunt of disloyalty. 
 
The City Ministry 99 
 
 One fact stood out, and that was, that every type 
 of temperament was represented there. The 
 Church was clearly a family, and not a cult; for 
 a cult is a temperamental group, and a family, 
 the unity amid variety. 
 
 As day after day the struggle went on, the 
 parson began to dread a victory for either side. 
 He was as much a partisan as any; but he asked 
 himself whether there was in him the spiritual 
 capacity either to use wisely the fruits of victory, 
 or to serve with fidelity under the rule of a system 
 hostile to the habit of his mind and life. It was 
 then that he first put to himself the question, 
 "What is the meaning of the struggle? What are 
 we striving to do?" The answer to this question 
 came with startling clearness: "For three weeks 
 the chosen representatives of the Church have 
 fought with the fierceness of strugglers in the 
 arena in order to save the Church." The answer 
 frightened him, for it was the same that had come 
 when he sought the reason for the Church's failure 
 to bring sweetness and light into the scattered 
 homes of his first field of labour in the country. 
 It was the same answer that had explained to him 
 why Christianity wasted its strength in the petty 
 strivings of village jealousy. It was the same 
 answer that he had found written large on every 
 
ioo In tKe Service of tKe King 
 
 rival meeting-place of Christians in the town. 
 It was the same answer that had explained to him 
 the presence of the multitude of unshepherded 
 ones in the city. 
 
 The Church was seeking to save itself. As the 
 parson pondered the words there in Synod Hall 
 the long-delayed vision came to him. He leaped 
 to his feet to speak; but well, perhaps, for the 
 cause, he was denied recognition. God will one 
 day vouchsafe to a larger soul, with hands more 
 fit to bear it, His message to His Church. "He 
 that loseth his life for My sake shall find it." 
 That is the King's message to His Church as it is 
 to every soldier in the line. The Church does not 
 exist in order to save itself. Its one mission is 
 to carry out the King's will. The Church exists 
 to save the world. The Church is His Body, and 
 that Body must be broken, offered with the glad- 
 ness of willing sacrifice in order that men may live. 
 Its seamless robe must be stripped from it, and 
 its vesture parted. Its splendid history must be 
 made a common heritage. Its compact organiza- 
 tion must be dissolved, so that in open formation 
 there may be place for every soldier to find a way 
 up the steep ascent. Its unity, transcending any 
 bond of local or inherited tradition, must be 
 grounded in loyalty to Christ alone, and the Church 
 
The City Ministry 101 
 
 must fling itself without reserve against the forces 
 of evil, unheeding what its fate may be. This is 
 the Church's destiny. Better that the Church 
 should lose its life fighting for the Christ in regions 
 a thousand miles beyond where Ingle died in far- 
 off China, and find it amongst the redeemed 
 millions of the East, glorified by sacrifice and 
 transformed by experience, than to waste its 
 strength in struggles at home in the futile effort 
 to save itself. God's purpose is larger than the 
 Episcopal Church, though it may be granted to 
 that Church to make that purpose clear to the 
 world. 
 
Ill 
 
 Somebody has said that a Russian consists of 
 three parts : body, soul, and passport. Be this as 
 it may, it is certain that every Virginian consists 
 of man, and gun, and a faithful negro friend to 
 whom, in spite of all fourteen amendments to 
 the Constitution, his white friend is still lord and 
 master. The parson's third part was named Bill, 
 and like Gunga Din, he was white, clear white 
 inside. The parson was not the best shot in the 
 world, but Bill never lost heart. When the bag 
 was empty at sunset he would still insist: " You'se 
 sure goin' to git somethin' on the way home." 
 As a final proof of his belief that something would 
 show up, he would say: "Cap'n (for some occult 
 reason he always called the parson "Captain"), 
 I'll promise to eat anythin' you kill 'ceptin' a 
 snake." One afternoon, when Bill had paddled 
 many miles and not a single mallard had been 
 seen, he prodded the parson's waning hope with 
 the usual promise. Just then, the parson caught 
 sight of a big barn owl, perched on the dead limb 
 
 102 
 
The City Ministry 103 
 
 of a tall pine. He fired, and the bird fell. " There 
 is your supper, Bill," he said, "I hold you to your 
 promise." Bill looked at the big owl dubiously. 
 "I ain't never heard of anybody eatin' an owl, 
 but if it can be done, I'se gwine to do it." Next 
 day the parson met Bill, and inquired if he had 
 kept his promise. "I honest tried to, Cap'n. 
 I sot down to pick dat owl, and worked on 'im 
 for an hour. I was knee- deep in feathers when 
 I got through, but I ain't never found no owl. 
 He warn't thar. Them feathers growed right 
 out of de bones. No, sir, I swar it, the owl hisself 
 warn't thar." Bill has gone to the nappy hunting- 
 grounds, but when at night the wind howls and 
 the cold creeps under the blankets, the parson 
 knows, even in his sleep, that the ducks are coming 
 to their refuge in the marshes, and like a nodding 
 hound he too hunts in his dreams, and Bill is with 
 him again. 
 
 The parson has always been a collector. He 
 has gathered arrowheads, birds' eggs, stamps, 
 counting-out-rhymes, and picked up Minie balls 
 from an old battle-field; but Bill's story of his 
 attempt to eat the owl gave him a new idea. For 
 many years now he has been a collector of owls. 
 Owl is the genus, and the species are many. He 
 has collected owl books, owl sermons, and has a 
 
IO4 In tKe Service of tKe Iling 
 
 long list of people who, in spite of the fact that 
 they vote or want to vote, are really only owls. 
 He has what he believes to be some almost per- 
 fect specimens. He has picked till the room itself 
 seemed full of feathers, but "the owl hisself warn't 
 thar." And this is the test of a perfectly de- 
 veloped owl. The owl is a natural ponderer. He 
 shuts his eyes to facts and then begins to ponder 
 the riddle of the universe. The parson has one 
 specimen which he keeps apart from the rest. 
 There was no dearth of feathers; the picking took 
 many hours, and was renewed from day to day; 
 but in the end, the owl "was thar." And by the 
 same token, he was not an owl at all. The parson 
 was looking out of his study window, and saw 
 him coming, tall, gaunt, walking with shoulders 
 bent and head thrust forward, looking with intense 
 vision, as if he expected something suddenly to 
 materialize in the open spaces. He was plainly 
 the problem man. Even as he came up the walk- 
 way, the parson could see his hands working ner- 
 vously. Sometimes for a second the long fingers 
 rested tip to tip, and then they would interlace 
 and he would twist them as if tying a knot. The 
 parson understood it all afterwards. The man 
 was a master mechanic and an inventor, and all 
 his life his hands had interpreted his thoughts. 
 
THe City Ministry 105 
 
 As soon as he began to talk the fingers were busy; 
 they were never still. But it was his face that 
 told the story. It was the face of one who lived 
 indoors, bleached like a prisoner's, and seamed with 
 deep lines, with one furrow like a gash between the 
 bushy brows. The deep-set, grey eyes kindled 
 to intensity as he talked. His great beard had 
 once been red, but was flecked now with grey. 
 It was the finely-textured beard that had never 
 known the touch of razor, and the grey mingled 
 with the red looked like ashes on a burning log. 
 As he stood there at the study door, trying to 
 explain the meaning of his visit, the parson, who 
 had kept a book of people for twenty years, knew 
 that he had found a new type. "I have come," 
 he said, "on a strange mission. I am looking for 
 words. I have been to the libraries and searched 
 their shelves in vain. At last they sent me here 
 to you. I want to make myself understood, and 
 they told me you were a teacher of men. I do 
 not come looking for ideas. I have my message; 
 but the men to whom I give it do not understand. 
 I want words, simple words, strong words, words 
 that carry and stick in men's brains, words they 
 will not forget. Is there no book where I can find 
 such words?" The parson made the old man sit 
 down, and then he lit his long-stemmed council 
 
106 In tKe Service of tKe Ming 
 
 pipe before he made reply. The parson's pipe 
 has long served a double purpose. Smoking is 
 the most conciliatory of all the serious occupations 
 of man, and the lighted pipe tempers the dogmatic 
 air that is the bane and blight of all counsellors. 
 The pipe transforms the functionary into a friend, 
 and creates that level of intimacy along which 
 confidence travels with never a jolt. The pipe 
 brings calm, and under its spell the taut muscles 
 of the over-wrought are relaxed. The pipe frees 
 the poor slave of time from his serfdom to the 
 clock, for life's span becomes a matter of un- 
 measured pipe-lengths. The clock may nick its 
 notches in the passing hour, but to him who watches 
 the circling smoke ascend, time has ceased to be 
 attended by the noisy huzzy whose one aim is to 
 hurry. The old man's fingers, which had been 
 moving like shuttles while he stood, were resting 
 now on their tips as he watched the parson light 
 the council fire. When the pipe began to draw, 
 and smoke-rings hovered in the air, the old man's 
 fingers began once more their restless tattoo. He 
 was growing impatient. "The book," he said. 
 "Surely there must be such a book." "There is 
 such a book," replied the parson, "and you have 
 passed it by a thousand times. It is called Mother 
 Goose" The old man rose from his chair, and 
 
XHe City Ministry 107 
 
 glared at the parson in sudden anger. "You are 
 mocking me. I came to you for help, and you 
 are trying to show me up as a fool." The parson 
 waved the old man back to his seat, and said: 
 "Listen. I am going to repeat some of the words 
 of the book: 
 
 1 Simple Simon met a pieman going to the fair, 
 Said Simple Simon to the pieman, " Let me taste 
 
 your ware." 
 Said the pieman to Simple Simon, " Show me first 
 
 your penny," 
 Said Simple Simon to the pieman, " Indeed 1 have 
 
 not any." * 
 
 I have repeated four lines, every word in them is 
 a part of the vocabulary of every man you know. 
 They stick in the brain like cockle burrs in a cow's 
 tail. Not only the words stick, but the story they 
 tell sticks. You see it all: the simpleton, the 
 pieman, the pies, even the empty pocket, and you 
 will never see another pieman or an idiot boy that 
 the story will not come back to you. For you, 
 that pieman will never die, and every fool's name 
 is Simon. 
 
 "The story of the man in the moon, who burned 
 his mouth upon some cold pease porridge, will give 
 your hearers more knowledge of the physical 
 conditions in the moon that a two-hours lecture 
 
io8 In tKe Service of tHe Ring 
 
 on astronomy. You know it is so cold up there 
 that if the old gentleman whose fat face we see 
 in the moon, should attempt to eat what you left 
 of yesterday's apple-dumplings, it would be so 
 much hotter than what his regular fare is that the 
 first spoonful would make him howl with pain. 
 What you have got to learn is that words are only 
 labels, and a man's vocabulary is the list of names 
 on his stock of experience. You might as well 
 give him a lot of empty boxes or bottles, as to 
 talk to him in words whose meaning he does not 
 know. Don't dress the shepherd boy in the war- 
 rior king's armour. Give him a sling-shot, and 
 help him find the smooth, round stone." 
 
 For several pipe-lengths the old man and the 
 parson talked of words ; and when he left he asked 
 if he might come again. He came often after that, 
 and their talk ate the heart out of many a pro- 
 ductive morning. The old man was morbidly 
 candid. "Remember," he said, "I come by your 
 invitation, and I have no claim upon your time. 
 I am not a Christian. I believe in psychology, 
 but I have no theology. This is the only Creator 
 I know," and he touched his brow, and the pliant 
 fingers began their weaving of invisible things. 
 "All right," said the parson, "we will talk with 
 that understanding. I have a theology, and claim 
 
THe City Ministry 109 
 
 kinship to a Maker of my mind. You refuse to 
 posit God. Pour in the grist, and we will begin 
 to grind. " Again and again as they talked 
 the parson would say: "Back to your side of the 
 line. You've gotten on God's side." And the 
 old man would struggle to restate his answer to 
 the riddle and to make man the measure of all 
 things. 
 
 The old man was a reformer. He was in search of 
 a method or means by which to re-make the world 
 of men. The parson has known many reformers, 
 but never one to whom his purpose was dearer. "I 
 am an old man," he said, "and I must hurry. If 
 I cannot find the way I must invent one. Man has 
 solved the other problems, he can solve this one. 
 The answer is not physical force, for it must act 
 on mind. If I can only find the law, and fix it 
 in a phrase so that it can drive the mind of men. 
 That is the reason I must leave out the God of 
 whom you talk. There must be no unknown 
 quantities in the answer to the world's need. I 
 have read books till I am almost blind, but they 
 do not help." "What sort of books?" asked the 
 parson. "Books on wages," he answered, "books 
 on labour and capital, books on government. I 
 have found books which helped me to see more 
 clearly what I already knew, but no books which 
 
no In tHe Service of tKe King 
 
 helped me to make the other man see the man 
 who does the wrong." 
 
 "I, too, have read these books," said the parson, 
 "and even when they satisfy my intelligence I 
 feel their schemes are futile; for they deal with 
 men as things, not persons. The equilibrium 
 they establish is hopelessly unstable; for it holds 
 only as long as men are full-fed. They make 
 hunger and cold the worst of human ills. They 
 make the strong share with the weak under threat 
 of the law's coercion, forgetting that law is only 
 the weapon of the strong. They leave the world 
 an armed camp still. The only laws that interest 
 me deeply are interpretative, not coercive. I am 
 more concerned with motives than with measures. 
 The law of the pack can never be the code of man. 
 It will take man at his highest efficiency to estab- 
 lish a social equilibrium ; and man reaches that effi- 
 ciency only in the service of a cause for which he 
 will gladly sacrifice himself. What you have to 
 prove is the worth of humanity, not the rights of 
 man. Men argue and contend about rights; but 
 they surrender in the presence of a worth they 
 cannot deny. To my mind, the whole problem is 
 to establish a ground for the assumption of human 
 brotherhood. If every man is an individual 
 creator, and there is none higher, then the prob- 
 
The City Ministry in 
 
 lem is insoluble ; and had the world never heard of 
 God it would have to postulate Him in order to 
 begin the solution of the problem." 
 
 Such was ever the manner of their talk: each 
 flying his kite in the storm, with the key to the 
 strong box of his inmost thought tied to it, hoping 
 that some lightning flash from out the unknown 
 might seal the confirmation of his guess. 
 
 One afternoon a brother parson and teacher of 
 philosophy in a college was in the study when the 
 old man came. The professor rose to leave, but 
 the parson whispered: "Wait, you will never see 
 another like him." The old man never got very 
 far away from his favourite theme, and he soon 
 had the universe by the ears, shaking it, and de- 
 manding an answer to his questioning. He hurled 
 queries at the professor which could be answered 
 only by a treatise. Finally, he said: " You 
 men who believe in God, sometimes, I almost feel 
 you are on the right track. Though if you are, you 
 make small use of your power. Why don't you 
 change the world? I know little of your be- 
 lief. My father had argued God out of the 
 universe before I was born, and there never was 
 a God in my home, even as a child. But there is 
 something in man, I know not whether it be his 
 strength or his weakness, which tempts him to 
 
H2 In tKe Service of tHe King 
 
 make a god for himself. May I tell you a story 
 of a man whom I know well?" Then he told this 
 tale. Never once did he forget and speak as if 
 the story were a chapter from his own life; but 
 more than once he rose and pointed his long finger 
 to a corner of the room as if the thing of which 
 he talked were close at hand. His voice quivered 
 with the tense passion of his emotion, and his hand 
 shook as if a present horror held him gripped. 
 
 "There was a man who once lived in this town, 
 a man of the people. All his long life he had toiled 
 with his hands. He was a mechanic. He knew 
 the sufferings, the needs, the shame, the injustices 
 borne by his fellow- toilers. He had known days 
 of plenty, when for a time he was tempted to forget 
 the things that he had seen. He had known days 
 of scarceness, when day by day he bartered all 
 the comforts of his home for bread, until at last 
 he, with his wife and child, had watched the very 
 beds on which they had slept, still warm with the 
 heat of their own bodies, carried off to pay debts; 
 and he and they stood empty-handed in the empty 
 house, helpless as a babe in the desert, forgotten 
 by a moving caravan. But even then his was a 
 more favoured lot than that of many of his fellows, 
 for he was a master-workman, and among the 
 first to be called when the strong ones flung to 
 
The City Ministry 113 
 
 the starving multitude the blessed or cursed privi- 
 lege of toiling like slaves to keep the reservoir of 
 wealth filled to the brim. All through the years 
 of toil a passion like a blight was on the man, ever 
 to find a better way of doing his task. Now it was 
 a better drill, now a new device to make the fric- 
 tion less. Again and again he saw the result of 
 many a night of toil swept like all the rest into 
 the stream that emptied into that huge reservoir 
 from which he could not drink. He listened to 
 the murmurs of the other workmen, joined their 
 clubs, and heard wild talk of torch and bomb, 
 and knew he could never follow such madmen. 
 He longed for order, not for chaos, in the world. 
 There must be some way to stay the waste and 
 to lessen the friction of the world. The problem 
 was a mechanical one, and he set himself the task 
 to solve it. He studied the conditions of his 
 f ellow- workmen ; he read and thought until the 
 hinges of his brain were hot. He tried to teach 
 the men about him to value and to demand the 
 decencies of life in home and shop. He must 
 clean the machine before he began to experiment 
 with it. The men he strove to help called him a 
 faddist and a fool. He sought the employers and 
 demanded that they give the men these things. 
 The employers asked if the men had sent him, and 
 
 8 
 
H4 In the Service of the King 
 
 if they wanted what he asked; and he was forced 
 to answer * No. ' They too thought him a foolish 
 dreamer and sent him away ashamed. He did 
 not despair, but still wrestled with the scheme 
 of things, ever seeking the better way. He gave 
 himself no rest. Body and brain alike he drove 
 with rein and lash, till one day his body failed him 
 and for weeks he could not work. For the first 
 time he knew despair. The struggle seemed utterly 
 vain. There was no better way. Might was the 
 only right, and the weak were made to be preyed 
 upon. There was no meaning or purpose in the 
 world. He laughed aloud when he thought of 
 the poor fools who had made themselves a god. 
 His own life had been a stupendous folly from the 
 first. He no longer thought of the world of men. 
 His world was peopled by only two other than 
 himself his wife and child and he found himself 
 snarling at them if they crossed for a moment his 
 selfish will. It was time to end the farce. He 
 would die. When he had formed this decision a 
 sudden calm came to him. He planned the end 
 and took a joy in arranging every detail. He 
 found a thick grove standing in an open meadow, 
 and chose within it the very spot where he would 
 die. He went to the druggist and bought a drug 
 he knew would kill. He had often bought chemi- 
 
The City Ministry 115 
 
 cals from the man, and they gave him what he 
 wanted without question. As he walked for the 
 last time through the crowded streets, he experi- 
 enced a strange exultation. He could feel the 
 weight of the bottle in his coat, and again and 
 again he touched it to get the thrill it sent through 
 his whole body. It was the key to freedom that 
 he held. As he left the outskirts of the town and 
 entered the open field, he smiled at his own eager- 
 ness, and said aloud: 'My youth has come back 
 to me. I am a boy again. ' But even as he spoke 
 he found himself stopped as by an unseen hand. 
 Between him and the grove there lay the bare 
 carcass of a horse. The birds had had their feast, 
 and now only a lone dog, almost as gaunt as the 
 dead thing whose bones it gnawed, was there. 
 The joy died in his heart. So this was death, the 
 prize he sought! The sight, loathsome as it was, 
 did not make him afraid. He was but more eager 
 to get rid of life whose way led only to the carcass 
 and the dog. He tried to turn his eyes away, but 
 could not. Just then, the dog lifted its head and 
 saw him. It dropped a bone and came fawning 
 at the man's feet, bringing with it the stench of 
 carrion. The man kicked the foul thing from him 
 and hurried on ; but the dog followed at his heels. 
 He found a stone and threw it, but even as he 
 
Ii6 In tHe Service of tKe King 
 
 turned to go on the dog came towards him. Then 
 the man saw a stick and picked it up, keeping it 
 close to him till the fawning hound crept near, then 
 he struck it with all his might, and the dog, yelp- 
 ing with pain, fled from him for a little space; 
 then, whimpering still, crept cringing back. Still 
 holding the stick, the man hurried on, not looking 
 back till he reached the edge of the wood; then, 
 when he looked, the dog was still there. He 
 threw the stick at it and cursed it, but the dog 
 would not leave. When the man's rage had spent 
 itself, he stood there gazing at the dog, and tried 
 to calm his throbbing brain that he might think. 
 He had pictured the scene so often to himself. 
 He would lie down and put the blessed fluid to 
 his lips, then sleep would come to him. He would 
 sink with a soft surrender into nothingness, would 
 cease to be. In a day or two at most, some passer- 
 by would find him sleeping there, and take what 
 had been a man home to his wife and child. The 
 wife would touch his brow and say: "The poor 
 old struggler deserves his rest"; and his son would 
 say: "He was so tired with it all. It is well." 
 But now he pictured another scene. The presence 
 of the carrion birds would make men stop to 
 look, and they would find the mangled body, torn 
 by the teeth of a starving dog. They would take 
 
The City Ministry 117 
 
 the horrid mass and lay it at the door of his home, 
 and the sight of it would make his wife a maniac 
 and drive his son to drink or madness. He could 
 not do as he had willed. Death was denied him. 
 Through all the planning of his deed there had 
 come to him no thought of God ; but now he asked 
 himself what it was that stayed his hand? A dog? 
 He called the dog to him, and looked into its eyes 
 and talked to it: 'Can it be that the God I have 
 denied and mocked at all my life is here, speaking 
 to me through you? Can it be that the God whom 
 men call Infinite has wrapped Himself within 
 the body of a hound, to tell me that the life 
 He gave is not mine to fling away? Chance, 
 or God, or some unknown directing will, thou 
 art greater than I, and to thee I surrender. 
 Oh! possible God within this dog, to Thee I bow 
 my head. ' 
 
 "It may have been a passing madness, but 
 the man felt conquered by the Presence that 
 would not leave him. He flung the poison from 
 him, and retraced his steps. The dog fol- 
 lowed him to where the meadow met the town, 
 and then left him. When the man reached home, 
 the wife and son were waiting at the gate, and 
 for the first time in many weeks he kissed them 
 both." 
 
Ii8 In the Service of the Ring 
 
 When the old man ceased, there was silence 
 for a little while; then he arose, saying: "I am 
 afraid that I have tired you with all my talk. 
 Good-bye." 
 
FIRESIDE TALK 
 
 No recorded memory of the way could fail to 
 make glad mention of the power that for nearly 
 twenty years has made the hard task easy. God 
 gave to him a home, and wise and blessed woman- 
 hood to make beautiful and sweet its rich posses- 
 sion. The kindly critic who has tried in vain, 
 alas, to check the parson's apostolic failing of long 
 preaching by asking him, "Why did you preach 
 two sermons this morning? Would not one have 
 sufficed?" who has whispered, "Tu quoque," 
 when the parson's own weakness or self-indulgence 
 has been the theme of his warning to his people; 
 whose gracious hospitality has brought to many 
 a lonely heart the sense of home, whose transform- 
 ing touch made the house beautiful, even in those 
 first meagre days, till one who knew said to her, 
 "Yours is the most graceful poverty I ever saw"; 
 whose insight read the meaning and found the 
 answer to many a problem, in which the blunter 
 
 119 
 
I2O In tKe Service of tKe King 
 
 senses of the parson blindly groped; whose courage 
 has so often changed the hopeless quest to one of 
 glad adventure; whose road song has made the 
 mile-posts seem never very far apart, even to tired 
 feet; who has somewhat of the Master's power, 
 that wondrous gift of His to the chosen few, the 
 power that wins the love of little children, and 
 makes the beggar long to touch the garment with 
 clinging, helpless hand of trust; who keeps the 
 bitter balm of pain hid like miser's gold, but 
 shares the laughter with a lavish hand ; who wears 
 amid the mass of dark hair the broad band of grey 
 that came in a single day, when the repeated 
 wrench of human loss failed to bring from the 
 set lips a single plaint, and God's finger touched 
 her brow and left Its print upon her head; who 
 moves among her children, to them the first and 
 best of earth; who has reared two young idolaters, 
 for Mother is the religion of her boys, and until 
 the King vouchsafes to them the larger vision of 
 Himself, the parson is glad to have it so; whose 
 nature is as rich in surprises as when the parson 
 used to thumb the rhyming dictionary as a boy 
 in order to tell her how many ways he loved her. 
 
II 
 
 There is an Idyl of the King no poet yet has 
 sung. The story is the call of God to youth. 
 Amid his books the boy hears whisper, clear to the 
 inner sense, as sound of bell to outer ear when the 
 wind sleeps. To him who hears within his soul 
 the still, small voice, saying, "Come to me," 
 there is no need to ask, "Who speaks?" If one 
 born inland were carried in his sleep to where the 
 mighty ocean laps the shore, and, wakened sudden- 
 ly, should hear the murmur of the waves, he would 
 not have to wait for dawn to know the sea is there. 
 No man has ever yet kept tally of his pulses' beat 
 when, suddenly aroused, he stood where mortal 
 sense ends, flush with the infinite. No man has 
 told his vision of the King of kings; for words are 
 symbols of familiar things, and He who lays the 
 consecrating hand upon the head of youth, is to 
 the senses veiled. This is perhaps the one great, 
 wondrous hour of a disciple's life the call to 
 service, the vision of the King, the utter helpless- 
 ness that clings to the might of Him who is so 
 
 121 
 
122 In tKe Service of tHe King 
 
 near, the knightly sense of honour undeserved. 
 There is no mortal witness to this dedication of a 
 life untried, undisciplined, and uninformed. To 
 the knightly soul there is no thought of self, 
 only the deep desire to fight under the banner of 
 the King. He enters the new life, eager for the 
 struggle. At the very threshold stands the temp- 
 ter, so little like a form of evil that the young 
 soldier never harbours for a moment a thought of 
 danger. The voice is sweet and gentle as the 
 Mother's own. The life of the one who speaks is 
 but the gracious sequence of gentle thoughts and 
 kindly deeds. She loves the Cause for which the 
 young knight would fight. She loves him for his 
 devotion to the Cause. It is the hand of misguided 
 love that turns the young soldier from the way 
 that leads to the shining table-land, where dwells 
 the goodly company of those who have seen His 
 face. The cup she gives to him is mixed with 
 death; for she tells him to look within himself 
 and see the splendid sacrifice he has made in giving 
 his life to the King. He who listens to such talk 
 will not go far. When soldiers see their captain 
 lead his horse to drink before the charge is sounded, 
 they know they will be leaderless ere long. The 
 thirsty horse for him who would not funk the 
 fight. Oh, ye who love the Cause, keep the young 
 
Fireside TalK 123 
 
 knight in the way. If you must speak, tell him 
 that if he stop but for one moment to look for 
 life's reward, the battle will be lost. The martyr's 
 crown covers the furrowed brow, and hides the 
 scars of battle. To gild this crown with foolish 
 words of praise, and place it on the head of him 
 who never yet has breathed the dust of fight, is to 
 turn your young soldier into a vain and foolish 
 popinjay. They are not few who ' ' for the spangles 
 wear the funeral pall." Alas, they are not few 
 who make a bauble of the cross and spear. 
 
 There is a kind of praise that stunts the life, 
 that clogs the cells of growth, and keeps men 
 childish and fond of toys. The food of man is 
 truth; and he who treasures in his life the con- 
 sciousness of duty done, has furnished his soul so 
 that it feeds from the roots. One day the parson 
 was in the office of a great physician, and a mother 
 brought a blear-eyed child to be treated for its 
 ills. The physician tested the vision of the little 
 lad, and his face was grave. "Doctor, what ails 
 my child?" the mother asked. "Your child has 
 candy-eye," he replied. "You have let him stuff 
 himself with sweets till he has no desire for proper 
 food. The eye must have its nourishment like 
 every other organ. This child's eyes are starving ; 
 his hands are sticky now." A score of times since 
 
124 In tHe Service of tKe King 
 
 then the parson has realized that when the forms 
 he knew as evil began to grow dim, and the colour 
 of his thought was blurred, he had an attack of 
 candy-eye. The pilot has sticky hands. Is it 
 any wonder he fails to read aright the signal lights? 
 
 The young knight brings a message from the 
 King. Not yet he wears visible to the eyes of 
 men the fatal gift the tempter gave. He keeps 
 it hid, but ever with him. He comes to bring a 
 message. Again the tempter meets him. He is 
 a herald, and women praise the manner of his 
 speech, or give to his words the subtler flattery 
 of tears. The cup put to his lips is deadlier than 
 Circe's wine, for if he drink thereof he thinks him- 
 self a king, and henceforth plays with life. He 
 struts and fumes and plays the king. He has 
 forgotten that he was but a voice. The tempter's 
 gift no longer hid, he wears abroad as children 
 wear a paper crown. He writes Ich dien upon his 
 seal, but Him he serves is in a far-off land, and 
 tarries long. When with the drunkard's doom 
 his senses ache, he must have praise to still his 
 sense of shame. The yearning for approbation, 
 to loyalty betraying and betrayed, this seems the 
 quest of God. 
 
 But there are other tempters on the road. For 
 him who carries the message of the King danger 
 
Fireside TalK 125 
 
 lurks not only in the kindly word but in the 
 kindly deed. Nobody seems ever to have troubled 
 to write the psychology of gifts, though there is a 
 frugal philosophy of dole compiled as a protection 
 against the prowling mendicant. Men are told 
 how a gift affects the diseased tissue of the beggar's 
 brain, but none has pointed out the effect on the 
 healthy fibre of a strong man in his strength. The 
 parson had not gone far on the way till he found 
 that his life was threatened. Open-eyed, he was 
 fighting the vanities, and though worsted often, 
 still he knew his foe. Something else was sapping 
 his strength, and fettering the freedom of his soul. 
 He had found the poison in the kindly word of 
 praise, but surely no danger lurked within the 
 kindly deed. It hurt like the treachery of a 
 friend to find that death lay hidden in the offered 
 gift. As one who gropes for the door in a room 
 grown suddenly dark, the parson searched the 
 pages of the Book for confirmation of his dread. 
 He found that confirmation written large, though 
 none had ever shown to him the words of doom: 
 "A gift destroyeth the heart"; "He that receiveth 
 gifts overthroweth judgment"; "Take not a gift, 
 for a gift doth blind the eyes of the wise " ; " He that 
 hateth gifts shall live." What was he to do? 
 Must life be stripped of kindly words and kindly 
 
126 In tHe Service of tKe King 
 
 deeds? He sought the counsel of older men, and 
 in crude fashion tried to make them understand. 
 They smiled and called him a dreamer, and 
 matched his texts with other texts ; but with face 
 hard set, the parson answered: "This may or 
 may not be the universal law, but it shall be law 
 for me. My weakness needs the prop. Praise 
 shall npt make me drunk, nor gifts put out my 
 eyes." For many years the parson has thought 
 on this, and ever more and more conviction grows 
 that even in those callow days he stumbled on 
 the truth. God's man is meant to be the voice of 
 conscience to the sons of men, and human weak- 
 ness incarnate in the broken lives of men, struggles 
 to still the voice that speaks. If praise cannot 
 seal the lips, then gifts shall sap the strength, till 
 the voice become a whisper lost amidst the shriller 
 sounds of earth. The voice of conscience heeded, 
 leaves the one who hears steeped in a sacramental 
 silence too deep for froth of praise. Men love, 
 not praise, the man whose saving word has warned 
 them of the deep abyss. Why should the soldier 
 whine when the forced march carries him past 
 the crowded inn where idlers feast? It is enough 
 the town is saved; and when he comes again, the 
 children crowd around and mothers add his name 
 to love's best list, the ones for whom they pray. 
 
Ill 
 
 One evening the parson was taking tea at the 
 home of a woman whose brilliant mind was a 
 recognized asset of the social world. She and the 
 parson never met that she did not fling some play- 
 ful taunt at him. The taunt was ever a challenge 
 to a battle of words. The company was a merry 
 one, and the spirit of banter was in the air. The 
 parson had had a hard week and was rather jaded. 
 Suddenly, the hostess turned on him, and said: 
 4 'Wake up, Parson, I have been watching you for 
 a month, you are going to pieces in the extremities. 
 Your talking finger, as my brother calls it, is para- 
 lyzed. You haven't made it give point to a good 
 story in a blue moon. You know your favourite 
 saint has taught us what all work and no play does 
 for a fellow." 
 
 "You have brought it on your own head," 
 replied the parson, laughing, "and you will 
 have to listen to the telling of a story that has 
 not yet been tested before an audience. Telling 
 it to you now will be a sort of experimentum in 
 
 127 
 
128 In tHe Service of tKe King 
 
 mil corpore, which is priest-Latin for ' try it on the 
 dog.' 
 
 "One Sunday I preached at the University, 
 or, rather, I floundered for thirty minutes in a 
 mass of words. I could not explain to myself why 
 I failed so utterly, until my old cook furnished me 
 with the explanation this morning. She would 
 have left me, I think, if I had not got her a cow; 
 and this morning I went into the kitchen to ask 
 how she was getting on with a patent churn that 
 was warranted to make butter in five minutes. 
 I told her I would time her. She worked it for 
 ten minutes, and still no signs of butter. Then 
 she took a look into the churn, and said: * Tain't 
 no use of trying any longer. Just look in thar. 
 The foam done riz first. Dere is too much milk 
 for dis size dasher to handle, and much milk and 
 little dasher makes de foam rise; and till you kill 
 de foam de butter won't make. You is either got 
 to take out some of dat milk or you is got to kill 
 dat foam wid hot water. ' 
 
 "I understood the meaning, then, of Sunday's 
 failure: 'De foam riz first/ 
 
 The parson had been drawn into the arena, and 
 after his story the rest of the company were silent, 
 while he and the hostess fought it out. To the 
 parson, philosophy was a code of spiritual laws. 
 
Fireside XalK 129 
 
 To her, it was a guess more or less clever at the 
 answer to the riddle of life. She used to say that 
 she read science to get away from adjectives. A 
 volume of Huxley's was always at hand. She 
 mocked at her scientific and philosophic studies, 
 and always spoke of Huxley as the Grand Vizier 
 of the Simian Dynasty. It was the introduction 
 of the Grand Vizier into the talk that started the 
 parson on the exposition of a droll bit of scientific 
 nonsense. He expounded it with mock earnest- 
 ness and with a wealth of illustration. 
 
 " Huxley, " he said, "is a striking illustration of 
 his own theory. He had a prehensile mind. He is 
 hanging from the tree of life, head down, half the 
 time. His mental activities are marvellous, though 
 the vision he gets of life is distorted. The Simian 
 philosophy, however well it may serve as a working 
 hypothesis of man's descent, breaks down hope- 
 lessly in accounting for woman. Her progress is 
 along entirely different lines. The oldest legend of 
 the race is the story of the snake lady, Lilith, who 
 was Adam's first wife. Eve was an afterthought." 
 
 "That is a contribution to Spencer's philosophy, 
 not Huxley's," said the hostess. 
 
 "That is true enough," replied the parson, "but 
 the merit of my scheme of things is that it fur- 
 nishes a meeting point of the two schools. I have 
 
130 In tKe Service of tHe Ring 
 
 been working on my thesis for years, and the data 
 are unimpeachable. When I was a youngster I 
 began to gather it at the women's meetings that 
 used to be held in my home. Every woman 
 talked at the same time, and the woman who 
 talked the most was the one who heard most. 
 The power of hearing seemed in some way to be 
 measured by the use of speech. My sister, who 
 was at times a voracious talker, could hear what 
 every woman in the house was saying, and repeat 
 twenty conversations carried on while she herself 
 was talking. To me it was an inexplicable pheno- 
 menon, until I began to study snakes. The snake's 
 auditory nerves lie along the tongue, and the 
 tongue must be put in violent vibration in order 
 for it to hear. The faster its tongue moves, the 
 better it hears. The bird, we know, is evolved 
 from a snake. The suggestion of the bird-nature 
 of woman is ever a part of the male consciousness; 
 and every woman, at some time in her life, is an 
 angel to some man, and an angel is a sort of celestial 
 bird. Browning calls his love 'half angel and half 
 bird,' thus providing the missing link. Legend, 
 habit, analogy, the link of snake and bird, and 
 the instinct of man's highest moment of devotion, 
 all substantiate the theory of woman belonging 
 to the reptilia." 
 
Fireside TalK 131 
 
 "I acknowledge myself vanquished," said his 
 antagonist, "for to transform your enemy into a 
 snake is, in the language of Scripture, to make 
 him bite the dust. You are a great disappoint- 
 ment to me, however, for I thought woman's 
 nature terra incognita to you; and I had promised 
 myself the pleasure of being a continual surprise 
 to you, but I find your knowledge of her antedates 
 the record of creation." 
 
 "You little know how learned I am in this field," 
 said the parson, still keeping up the solemn non- 
 sense. "I am just beginning the second volume 
 of a treatise that will, I think, revolutionize the 
 world. It is, I believe, a new science, the science 
 of feminine psychology. The discovery that wo- 
 man belonged to a different genus from man has 
 opened a new field of investigation. Every 
 student of mental phenomena has been aware of 
 the failure of psychologic laws to explain certain 
 processes of the feminine mind. The only plausi- 
 ble explanation heretofore offered is that of an 
 old Danish philosopher who suggests a difference 
 in the polarity of intellect as the cause. The 
 psychology of the text-books, the laws of logic, 
 and the accepted processes of reasoning, whether 
 written or spoken, are all in accord with the 
 recognized dicta of a masculine psychology. The 
 
132 In tHe Service of tHe King 
 
 most acute intelligences of the race, in its masculine 
 line, whose success has been due to their knowledge 
 of man, have ever been helpless in the hands of 
 some clever girl. Even the giants of science have 
 been hopelessly mizzled, for Kepler was as tract- 
 able as Mark Antony or Lord Nelson, thus proving 
 that the very knowledge of masculine psycho- 
 logy, when applied by a master of the science to 
 the working of the feminine mind, invariably led 
 to a wrong conclusion. The new science shatters 
 many idols of the market place. The thing we 
 have been calling ' an intuition' in a woman, turns 
 out to be as truly the result of an orderly, psycho- 
 logic process as the reasoned conclusion of a man. 
 The curious thing, however, is that woman has 
 only two terms in her syllogism. She leaps from 
 generalization to conclusion, unhampered by a 
 troublesome middle term, and having one less 
 term for the mind to carry, the process is quicker; 
 but it is a leap in the dark, and the chance is 
 about even that she will be right. Again, a wo- 
 man's mind is incapable of dealing with a chain of 
 sequences. A man's reasoning carries him far 
 into the future; but woman deals with the present 
 alone. The present wish furnishes the readiest 
 impulse to act; hence, woman directs her per- 
 suasive powers to the affections alone. Having 
 
Fireside TalK 133 
 
 established a sufficiently strong wish, she is sure 
 of the result, and can direct it with unerring skill. 
 She makes no appeal to the reason, for she knows 
 instinctively that reason is her enemy. The secret 
 of woman's power is that she is not a reasonable 
 being at all. She is the enemy and successful 
 foe of reason. When a woman attempts to reason, 
 she fights with man's weapon, and is comparatively 
 helpless. The study of causes is the highest 
 sphere of investigation. Of first causes we know 
 nothing; of final causes we know very little, though 
 Coleridge contends that snuff is the final cause of 
 the human nose. My own study has largely 
 confined itself to proximate causes; and it is 
 certain that woman's mastery of the present, and 
 the manner in which she deals with men, have 
 made her the proximate cause of most of the great 
 events in history, and at the same time have 
 made history the most unreasonable of things." 
 
 "You deserve the fate of Dr. Guillotin," said 
 the hostess, "for having fathered such a hideous 
 invention as your new science. I dread to think 
 of the royal heads that will fall when the madness 
 of a new-found liberty shall take possession of 
 enslaved man." 
 
 "You both ought to be put in a lunatic asylum," 
 said one of the company, "for when you two 
 
134 I* 1 t^ e Service of tHe Ring 
 
 once get started you drive a four-in-hand smash 
 through the sacred preserves of science, history, 
 and theology. " 
 
 The hostess was evidently smarting under what 
 she considered a fling at woman's mental processes, 
 for there was a touch of acerbity in her tones, when 
 she continued: "The parson works himself into 
 a fine frenzy of loyalty to what he calls truth, and 
 I can't make him see that he is devoting himself to 
 only the first of the fine arts. Truth is a branch 
 of aesthetics, and the world crowns the great artist 
 here as elsewhere. The brilliant, untrained mind 
 gives to the world the plausible. It attracts the 
 passing attention of men much as she does a clever 
 drawing in a magazine. The steady plodder, 
 careful of his lines, and with a photographic mind 
 which can catch and reflect that which it has seen 
 at a particular time and under particular con- 
 ditions, suggests a memory to every observer; and 
 men admire, but weary of, the probable. He can 
 paint a picture of his mother; and men accept, but 
 tire of, somebody else's mother. Such men are 
 truth's failures. Then comes the true artist 
 the man who can paint a woman who is the mother; 
 a face which suggests not a fleeting memory, but 
 which summons into life a presence. But the 
 time comes when the canvas cracks and the colours 
 
Fireside TalK 135 
 
 fade. The picture becomes a thing to criticize. 
 The critics only write obituaries. That sacred 
 science of philosophy which the parson dotes upon, 
 is only a book of the dead. It is packed with 
 funeral orations over dead truth. Truth is made 
 by man, and the creature is as mortal as its maker. 
 A little more elaboration, and a few great names 
 with which to conjure, and your snake philosophy 
 will be hung in a good position in the Salon of 
 Science. It will hang there, too, till somebody 
 gives the world a fish philosophy, and reduces 
 your diversity to unity. I shall look forward to 
 the great artist of truth who shall supersede you." 
 
 "His picture of the primal fish," said the parson, 
 "will doubtless be a charming water colour." 
 Then the change came over the parson. The 
 soldier had been sitting with the crowd around 
 the camp fire, jesting of war; but now he faced the 
 enemy. The soldier was fighting for his King and 
 the Cause. His talking finger was busy pressing 
 home some argument, like an old Indian fighter 
 ramming down the charge in his rifle. He com- 
 menced calmly enough, but the fierce joy of the 
 fight was in his eyes: 
 
 "Your playful treatise on truth as a department 
 of aesthetics, is the working creed of half the world. 
 They make completeness, or prettiness, or utility, 
 
136 In tKe Service of tKe King 
 
 the marks of truth. The philosopher wants 
 completeness in his system; the artist demands 
 beauty; the canny modernist, with an eye to the 
 main chance, demands that truth pay dividends. 
 He calls himself a pragmatist and asks of truth, 
 'Can you work?' which to him means only, 'Will 
 you work for me?' You are right when you say 
 that the study of philosophy is to me a passion. 
 I love philosophy, but philosophers provoke me 
 to rage by their irreverence. Truth is the august 
 reality in whose presence my own littleness be- 
 comes an aching agony. Truth is the reality to 
 whom my soul does homage as a king's man to his 
 sovereign. Reverence is but a word that describes 
 the behaviour of loyalty in the presence of his 
 king. Reverence becomes service the moment it 
 leaves the audience chamber. The summons 
 into that presence has come to me many times. 
 Sometimes in my study, while smelting the ore 
 of another's mind, I have found the gold of reality, 
 which is talisman of the presence. Sometimes in 
 a mud hut on the mountainside, as I watched an 
 unlettered slattern bathing the bloated face of a 
 drunken husband, or gazing with sleepless eyes 
 at the sick child on its rough bed of boards. Some- 
 times a beggar's word opens for me the door; and 
 only yesterday I heard the Voice from the lips of 
 
Fireside TalK 137 
 
 a dirty little street Arab, who was the under-dog 
 in a gutter fight. Just as I got to them the little 
 chap, whose face was bleeding and who was being 
 badly beaten, said, between his sobs, to the big 
 boy who had him down: 'You can kill me if you 
 will, but you can't make me say I didn't see you 
 steal that old apple- woman's money.' I pulled 
 them apart, and stood, uncovered, before that 
 soiled messenger of the King, as he got up from 
 the gutter. He is going to live with me, and I 
 hope some day to prove my loyalty as truly as 
 he did. I am a parson, and am one gladly, will- 
 ingly, passionately. I am also a soldier of the 
 great Cause, and follow the details of the fight in 
 other fields with consuming interest. My own 
 feeling as a private in the ranks is very different 
 sometimes from that of the great leaders of the 
 Church. I don't fear the materialists, for the 
 first one that has a sick child betrays the utter 
 weakness of his position. I don't fear, but wel- 
 come, the smug, self-complacent agnostics. To 
 me, they are only the prim, liveried servants of 
 knowledge, holding the door of the future open 
 for the coming of the King. But I do fear for 
 they are the disloyal ones in the army itself 
 those idolaters who want a graven image of the 
 truth. To coin a word, they are not truth-seekers, 
 
138 In tHe Service of tKe King 
 
 but ' picturists,' makers and worshippers of pictures. 
 Pale souls, who love a pictured storm, but who 
 have never known the joy of fighting the wind for 
 every inch of leeway, nor the shivering delight 
 of dragging the boat through the last line of break- 
 ers to the beach. I took, perhaps, a roundabout 
 way to a creed, and I was startled to find at last 
 that my revelation, the one which had come to me, 
 squared with the life of the Christ. What I had 
 dimly seen and vaguely hoped for, that He was. 
 Truth was sovereign, personal, living, compelling. 
 I understood at last what He meant when He 
 said, ' My Father worketh hitherto, and I work. ' 
 Pragmatism has given me the word I wanted. 
 Christ, the Worker, Worker with fire, with sword, 
 with disease, with death, counting nothing too 
 costly that stands in the way to the end. I am 
 persuaded that nothing but cowardice on the part 
 of His Church keeps back the sound of the moving 
 wheels of His chariot." 
 
 The men and women who were there had never 
 seen the parson so deeply stirred. He had not 
 once raised his voice; but the sustained passion of 
 his speech made them wish to shield their faces 
 from the too heated glow of the fire whose warmth 
 kept them near. He rose, and held out his hand 
 to the hostess without a word. She took it, and 
 
Fireside TalK 139 
 
 turned to the company, and said: "You go too, 
 I feel as if I had been jesting at the stars, and a 
 mighty meteor had suddenly struck the earth 
 beside me, scorching me as it passed." 
 
IV 
 
 Almost at the beginning of his ministry, the 
 parson began to be appalled at the prospect of the 
 amount of sermon-making that lay before him. 
 He preached one hundred and fifty times a year, 
 and he calculated that if he were still in active 
 service at sixty-five this would mean six thousand 
 sermons to his credit or discredit. From the 
 condition of utter mental and spiritual emptiness 
 on Sunday night, he felt sure that the balance 
 would be on the wrong sheet. He did not have 
 the migratory instinct and did not believe in short- 
 time enlistment. He enlisted for the war every 
 time, and got his franchise transfer the day he 
 unpacked his books. He faced the prospect of 
 preaching to the same community for a lifetime. 
 How could it be done? He could not depend on 
 the thousand aids to preaching, the catalogues of 
 which filled his waste basket. His mind, like 
 his body, seemed to be an odd size, and he could 
 no more clothe his mind in the garments of an- 
 other's thought than he could practise economy 
 
 140 
 
Fireside TalK 141 
 
 by wearing ready-made clothing. He could not 
 preach an old sermon, for the reading of an old 
 manuscript of his own has always filled him with a 
 new admiration for the patient endurance of his 
 people and goaded him to fresh effort not to strain 
 it to the breaking point. He was the shepherd. 
 He could not lead his flock to the strange waters 
 of another's mind, nor dared he let them drink 
 from the stagnant pools of his own memory. 
 They must have the living waters. He was a 
 messenger. He could not bring some hearsay 
 tale or rumour of the King's will; he must seek 
 audience with the King Himself, hear Him 
 speak, and know the One whose 'will he must make 
 known to men. To know the King! The auda- 
 city of the desire frightened him at first ; but once 
 conceived, the desire became a passion. For 
 many an agonizing month he struggled to be free. 
 It is the fashion to mock at dogma ; but dogma was 
 once a living thing the channel of the best life 
 of men. Like some encircling vine it wound itself 
 about the Tree of Life, and to tear it down with 
 ruthless hands meant injury to that on which it 
 grew. The impulse of youth was to use the axe, 
 to strip the mind naked and bare, and let the 
 life-blood of the faith in Christ heal the wounds. 
 There are always two ways of looking at truth. 
 
142 In tKe Service of tKe 
 
 The parson stood alone one day in Melrose Abbey. 
 Its broken arches and marred walls hurt him like 
 the bruises on the face of a friend. While he 
 looked, the ancient guardian of the Abbey, an 
 old Scot, to whom every stone of the Abbey was 
 sacred, came towards him. The parson asked the 
 old man: "What vandal wrought this ruin?" 
 There was a glint of humour in the eyes, but the 
 voice that answered was solemn enough: "It was 
 the work of John Knox, the Deformer." When- 
 ever the parson has felt the desire to turn reformer, 
 he thinks of the old Scot's answer. He deter- 
 mined not to run the risk of being a Deformer. 
 He made up his mind to treat the ancient dogmas 
 very much as another old Scotchman did the devil. 
 The preacher who, in his two hours' discourse, had 
 touched all the great themes of theology, paused 
 for a moment, then said: "My brethren, we have 
 now come to the subject of the devil, whom we will 
 face boldly and pass by." The parson, intent 
 upon the fulfilment of his one desire, has found no 
 time to go heresy hunting within the Church, nor 
 has he feared the taunt of heretic when flung at him. 
 He has read the volumes wherein men disprove 
 their knowledge of the Christ by the very tones 
 in which they speak. He has found amusement 
 in the solemn declaration of the omniscient build- 
 
Tireside TalK 143 
 
 ers of complete systems. He has shocked the 
 delicate sensitiveness of the trained ear of his 
 city church by the repetition of the oft-repeated 
 story of the Mississippi pilot, who, when asked by 
 a stranger in the pilot house if he knew where all 
 the snags were in the river, replied: "No, but I 
 know where all the snags ain't. Tain't my busi- 
 ness to hunt snags. " 
 
 How was he to know the Christ? The trans- 
 lators had again and again woven their dogma into 
 His words. The commentators were as timorous 
 as the mediaeval schoolmen. Fragments of His 
 words had been broken from their context and 
 made into shibboleths. The parson determined 
 to see for himself; and a Greek lexicon, whose 
 loose leaves and torn back tell the story of much 
 thumbing, was his companion. Never will he 
 forget the joy of one discovery. Many another, 
 no doubt, had seen it, but had not passed on to 
 him the precious secret. It was in the story of 
 the Good Samaritan. The lawyer's answer to his 
 own question the King accepts, and then He tells 
 him a story. The parson had read that story a 
 thousand times, but he had never caught but a 
 suggestion of its beauty and its power till he 
 found that when the King asked the lawyer a 
 question at the close of it, He did not say "who 
 
144 In tKe Service of tKe King' 
 
 was neighbour to him that fell among thieves?" 
 but "who became a neighbour ?" That was the 
 secret He came to tell. God does not command 
 the impossible. You can love only your neigh- 
 bour, the man next to you. The Jew read the 
 law aright, but missed the wonder of it. God's 
 law is ever the revelation of a principle. You 
 not only ought to love your neighbour, you are 
 bound by the necessity of your being to love your 
 neighbour. The thing worth doing, the glory and 
 the wonder of it is, that you can get next to any 
 man. Here was a Samaritan who heard a cry of 
 human need. He found a hated Jew. To get 
 to him he had to break down the barriers of racial 
 hate, of religious prejudice, of a lifetime of loath- 
 ing; but he broke down those barriers to get to a 
 man in need, and when he touched him his old 
 loathing died. He was next to him, and he could 
 do no otherwise than love him. His beast, his 
 time, his money, his care, he gave with eager zeal. 
 This, then, was Christianity, to smash the barriers 
 and get next to your fellow-man. That was 
 man's part; for the rest, the instincts of the soul 
 of man could be trusted. 
 
 Step by step the parson followed, saw the King 
 set His face to go to Jerusalem to worship in the 
 temple, saw Him on the feast day leave the crowded 
 
Fireside TalK 145 
 
 street and take a route that led through the sheep 
 market. Why was He there? No other Jew 
 would take that route on such a day, lest he be 
 defiled. The King's way to the temple lay through 
 the slums. As the parson saw the King stop by 
 the pool to touch and bless the loathsome creature 
 whose wrecked body told its tale of shame, he 
 knew the meaning of the words, "Divine service," 
 for which the Temple itself and all its offices are 
 only the imperfect symbols. Back to the begin- 
 ning the parson went, saw the Mother and her 
 Babe, and stood awed at the great God's sweet 
 remembrances of man; for, lo! among the many 
 rich gifts of His love was the revelation of the 
 heart of a boy. The Mother, like every other 
 mother since, one day found that her boy had 
 strayed out of her world. She found Him looking 
 out into the big world, and asking questions. 
 Every man of earth has stood as a boy just where 
 the King stood ; but who were those that gave the 
 answers to youth's questionings? The parson 
 pondered many an hour over the mystery of that 
 growth from boyhood to manhood the long 
 apprenticeship to toil the silent years of Him 
 who for thirty years was the Christ of the home; 
 saw Him at last break the bonds of home and 
 village life and come into the larger life of His 
 
 10 
 
146 In tKe Service of tHe King 
 
 people; saw the son of Mary's home, the village 
 carpenter, assume the highest privilege of earth, 
 citizenship; saw Him touch every phase of His 
 nation's life, until at last He dared what none 
 even of His own hardy Galileans had dared to do 
 fling down the gauntlet to the corrupt Sanhedrin, 
 and brand their assembly place as a den of thieves; 
 saw Him stand for hours in that place that the 
 challenge of His rights as a citizen might be taken 
 up ; saw the matchless majesty of Him who brought 
 down certain death upon His head in an attempt 
 to shame the leaders of His people to a cleansing 
 of the highest courts of the nation. Among the 
 many titles by which the parson learned to know 
 the King was that of the first citizen of history. 
 How He loved the things of earth! No poet ever 
 sang the beauty of the flowers as He did. He 
 made the sparrow itself a thought of God, and 
 from the mothering instinct of the fowl He bor- 
 rowed the symbolism of His fostering care. The 
 central sun for Him was imagery sublime, but 
 the humble lamp of twisted thread within a dish 
 of oil, the flickering thing that lit the peasant's 
 home, had for Him a meaning too. No home so 
 poor but that a gentle spirit, a penny-dip, could 
 give it light. The sunlight on the ripening grain ! 
 His was the one true eye that saw the garnered 
 
Fireside TalK 147 
 
 sunshine in the headed wheat. He saw and 
 loved the white light of the harvest field. It was, 
 however, His manhood that thrilled the parson's 
 soul. When Peter's anxious love strove to turn 
 Him from duty's path, the matter touched His 
 honour, and quick as the arrow springs from a 
 taut bow His answer comes: "Back, you devil, 
 let me pass." When Herod threatened, and 
 when men whispered what the tyrant meant to do, 
 He lifts His head, and loud enough for every 
 spying ear to hear, flung back His answer: "Go 
 tell that fox I do my work to-day." When in 
 the garden the armed clients of the High Priest 
 rushed on His little band, He steps forward into 
 the light of their torches, and says: "I am the one 
 you seek; let these men go. If there be crime, 
 'tis Mine alone." Tolerant of every misguided 
 groping for the truth, but hating above all ugly 
 things the whited lie. The Lord of Earth and 
 Heaven, touching the lives of lowly peasants, 
 hopeless outcasts, and proud pedants, but never 
 in any mood one single touch of patronage. Wise 
 above the measure of the race, but speaking ever 
 in simple speech. Lifting the little children where 
 they could see at work the mighty enginery of 
 eternity, and explaining as a father to his child 
 how the weaving of the web of life is wrought. 
 
148 In the Service of the King 
 
 The parson had studied what the theorists call 
 "the method of uplift," with its gospel of thrift, 
 and its devil whisper that knowledge is power, 
 motives that leave the soul untouched and only 
 make effective the selfish instinct of the race. It 
 was an increasing joy to study the King's way. 
 Ever the human touch that dignified and ennobled. 
 Ever the appeal to the latent gift of daring that is 
 in every man. He offers Matthew the opportu- 
 nity of walking with Him in the open life of day, 
 and the man who had sold all for money shuts his 
 ledger and closes his office in the rush hour of 
 business. He offers the restless brothers the cup 
 of agony and the baptism of fire when they come 
 begging for place and power, and henceforth they 
 are knit to him with hooks of steel. He meets 
 the Magdalene, and instead of sermons, gives 
 her a place near His mother. He goes as a self- 
 invited guest to Zaccheus' home and henceforth 
 an honest gentleman is master of the house where 
 once lived only a rich publican. 
 
 Sometimes the reckless courage of the Galilean 
 made the parson's breath come quick. Five 
 thousand of the stoutest of the Jewish race threat- 
 ened to take Him by force and make Him a King. 
 He retires across the lake, and when they follow 
 Him He tells them the terms on which alone He 
 
Fireside TalK 149 
 
 will be their leader: "I am going to give my flesh 
 for the life of the world. If you will do the same, 
 then come with me. Not for Galilee alone, nor 
 for Israel do I fight, but for the world. Will you 
 follow?" The crowd fell away and only the awed 
 and hesitating twelve were left. He faces them. 
 "Do you not also want to go? Remember the 
 conditions." He was ready to go on alone, if need 
 be. Those who followed must have no doubt as 
 to the meaning of the Cause for which he 
 fought. 
 
 All along the parson knew that he was learning 
 to know the King better day by day, but knew 
 also that there were depths his littleness could 
 not sound. He could watch Matthew bringing 
 his clerkly skill to the effort of giving an orderly 
 recital of the activities of that life that touched 
 the changing life of man as the sunlight plays 
 upon the moving leaves, and he has smiled when 
 the critics disputed about the chronology of some 
 act or utterance. The eifort to be the exact 
 chronicler of such a life was a task as futile as for 
 a man to try to chronicle his mother's myriad 
 services of love. He has pictured the alien Luke 
 during those two years he lived with Paul at 
 Caesarea, searching the villages and countrysides 
 for those whose privilege it had been to see and 
 
150 In tHe Service of tHe 
 
 hear the King, cross-questioning the man who 
 once, at the approach of his fellow-man, called 
 out, " Unclean, unclean," until the King heard that 
 cry, and came to it. Luke knew what it was to be 
 a despised alien. Was it from one of a hated race 
 that he got that story of the good Samaritan? 
 Who was the prodigal in whose heart had lived 
 through all the separating years that story of the 
 younger son? To Luke more than to the other 
 chroniclers of The Life appealed the picture of the 
 King at prayer. It was the alien recorder of the 
 King's life that has given us the kneeling Christ. 
 The empty pagan years of his prayerless life had 
 taught him to prize the oasis hour of day when 
 man drinks at the fount of God. In the intimate 
 story of John, the parson learned how the King 
 spoke to the understanding ear of friend. Such 
 speech could find its way to written record only 
 after the testing years had trained the brooding 
 heart of him who loved, to sense the finer issues 
 that the others had missed. It was with consum- 
 ing interest that the parson followed Paul in that 
 learner's effort to appropriate the Christ. The 
 knowing ones of the critical school tell us that Paul 
 is the founder of Christianity; that he was fur- 
 nished a system of ethics and created for the 
 Church a system of theology. To the parson 
 
Fireside TalK 151 
 
 such words are meaningless. Day by day the 
 Tarsian Jew tested some hitherto unused lesson 
 of the King's life, and power that was a living 
 presence touched his life. He died learning, and 
 the record of his desire to know Jesus is next to 
 The Life itself, the most precious heritage of the 
 race. He left us the secret of his method: if a 
 man would learn Christ he must first know the 
 truth as it is in Jesus. Ever since the parson 
 was a little boy the poet has been his prophet. 
 He has never quite got over the habit of turning 
 the pages of a new book in search of scraps of 
 poetry, taking these first as the child plucks the 
 raisins from his cake. It was an added joy, then, 
 to find a poet among those who knew Him here 
 on earth. Peter had the gift of eloquent speech, 
 but in his letters the poet shows himself. The 
 parson tried again and again to make his own in 
 English speech the beauty of Peter's words. The 
 spirit he believes he has caught, but that illusive 
 something that marks the poet's hand is lost. 
 Thus Peter sings the making of a Christian gentle- 
 man: Have a love that reaches out to lift the 
 fallen ones, and throw the mantle of that love 
 about the sin-soiled ones, and take them home 
 with you, nor think yourself ill-used with such 
 for guests. As each one has received a home, the 
 
152 In tKe Service of tKe King 
 
 gift of God, so let him use it as a beautiful almoner 
 of the many coloured kindness of the Lord. 
 
 When the parson was a boy at school he counted 
 himself lucky if it came to him to translate that 
 portion of the Anabasis which described the army 
 of Cyrus on the march. Xenophon always re- 
 peated the same formula: "Cyrus marched so 
 many parasangs, so many days' journey, etc/' 
 In fact, the teacher used to say that when Cyrus 
 marched the class marched, but always halted 
 with the army. One day the boy had no desire 
 to halt, for he found a story that has lived in his 
 brain ever since. Cyrus is riding ahead of his 
 army and looking back finds that the line has 
 halted. He returns, and sees the wagon train 
 stalled in the mud. Standing well back are the 
 rich, young Persian nobles watching the struggling 
 horses and guarding their silken robes from being 
 spattered by the mud. Cyrus looks first at the 
 helpless teams, and then at these silk-clad soldiers. 
 His anger finds voice at last: "You lordly sons of 
 Persia, you offered to go with me into the East, and 
 help me win a kingdom, and here you stand guard- 
 ing your silken dress and tinsel trappings while my 
 army waits. Fling off those flowing robes that clog 
 your hands and feet. Into the mud with you, 
 every one, or turn your traitor faces to the West." 
 
Tireside TalK 153 
 
 In the East the servant's loose cape was fur- 
 nished with a girdle, which, when tied, left the 
 hands and feet free. This cape was called, in 
 common speech, a "tie-up." It brought a thrill 
 to the parson like that he had when he read of the 
 anger of the warrior prince, to hear Peter say, 
 "If you would be really free to serve, put on your 
 tie-up and help." 
 
 When will the Christian Church, with daring 
 greater than had any of those early teachers save 
 Stephen, give to the King His chosen title of Son 
 of Man? The truth as it is in Jesus! Paul tells 
 us that such knowledge gives to the old man the 
 heart of a boy again. The parson had studied the 
 office and function of the Christ in the books, but 
 it was a book-Christ he knew at best. The study 
 of the life of Jesus took him where he saw the 
 hopes and needs of all the race converge. He saw 
 them meet and be fulfilled ; and while he looked the 
 Son of Man, who is the promise of the race, was 
 crowned in his heart the Son of God. Nor since 
 that day has it ever been aught but a splendid 
 privilege, in any company, whether of abjects or 
 of jeering worldlings, to bear witness on bended 
 knee or with uplifted head to his allegiance to the 
 Lord of Life. 
 
 One day there came to the parson's study a man 
 
154 In tHe Service of tKe King 
 
 whom he had known in the hunting field and in 
 the home. He took his seat, and plunged straight 
 into his story : 
 
 "Parson, I want your help. The ties that 
 bind me to home must soon be broken. Only 
 one is left, and she is near the end of life. I 
 have been wondering what will then become of 
 me. I have tried it all dissipation till it palled; 
 adventure till I became almost as wild as the 
 things I hunted. The things with which men try 
 to kill the restlessness are stale. I have fought 
 with beasts and men, and learned to master both. 
 Desire seems dead in me, save the maddening 
 itch to be forever on the move. The Wanderlust 
 is all that is left. I have no goal and seek nothing. ' ' 
 
 "No chart, no haven, and no pilot?" said the 
 parson. "The end seems pretty well assured. 
 It's either a wreck or a derelict/' 
 
 "That's just the way I figured it out," he re- 
 plied. "You have used the very word 'a dere- 
 lict. ' There is enough of manhood left in me to 
 hate that thought. That is why I came to you. I 
 have been watching you for years, and you seem 
 to know what you are headed for; so I came to 
 get a chart." 
 
 "Well," replied the parson, "you know what I 
 am a minister of Christ." 
 
Fireside TalK 155 
 
 "Oh, cut out that sort of talk," he broke in. 
 "Don't ask me if I believe in Christ. The ques- 
 tion has no meaning to me. If you produce the 
 evidence and prove your case I will assent. It's 
 to me only a historical question, and I believe in 
 Julius Caesar on the same grounds. Please don't 
 try any conjure words on me. Except for a fu- 
 neral service I haven't been in a church for twenty 
 years, and the whole business is absolutely mean- 
 ingless to me." 
 
 I hardly know where to begin," said the parson, 
 "if you don't believe in anything, there doesn't 
 seem to be a starting point." 
 
 "But I do believe in something," answered the 
 man. "I believe in you that's why I'm here." 
 
 These unexpected words haunted the parson 
 for many a day. That night he awoke trembling, 
 with the words still ringing in his ears: "I do 
 believe in something, I believe in you." "But 
 you don't understand," answered the parson, 
 "what it means when you say you believe in me, 
 and ask for a chart. I don't know the way any 
 better than you do. I am like a man in the engine 
 room. The pilot runs the ship. My one duty 
 is to obey the signals. When he says, ' Full speed 
 ahead,' I pull the throttle; and when he signals, 
 'Stop,' I choke the steam." 
 
156 In tHe Service of tHe King 
 
 The parson laid his hand on his friend* s shoulder, 
 and asked: "Will you kneel here by me and let 
 me pray God to guide us?" 
 
 " No," said the man, "this is too serious a business 
 for me to tolerate any mummery. Of all the non- 
 sense you preachers talk, prayer seems to me to 
 be the greatest. I can think of nothing more 
 foolish than a man crouching by his bed and 
 mumbling a few words, and then getting up with 
 the thought that something is going to come to 
 pass because he has said a few words. The whole 
 thing is a superstition, too foolish to discuss 
 seriously." 
 
 "See here," said the parson, "answer me. 
 You have been a soldier, and you have had men 
 under you at other times. Tell me, did you ever 
 face the situation where the lives of helpless men 
 and women depended on you and those under you 
 facing danger, and when the crisis came they 
 failed you?" 
 
 "More than once," he answered. 
 
 "What did you do?" asked the parson. 
 
 "There wasn't but one thing to do," he replied. 
 "I asked them if they were men or lily-livered 
 cowards, and told them they might save their skins 
 if they wanted to, but I was going to do my 
 duty." 
 
Fireside TalK 157 
 
 "What happened then?" asked the parson. 
 
 "Oh, they followed me. A man with a drop 
 of red blood in him couldn't swallow that talk." 
 
 "Could you have driven them in at the point 
 of a pistol?" asked the parson. 
 
 "Not a foot," he answered. 
 
 "Well, then, what made them go in?" persisted 
 the parson. "Surely there was something that 
 worked the change. One minute they were the 
 lowest order of human life cowards; the next, 
 they were ready to die with you. Something 
 changed them. What was it?" 
 
 "If you put it that way, I suppose I did it," he 
 answered. 
 
 ' ' I have no doubt of it , " said the parson. ' ' Now 
 if you can work a change like that, don't you 
 think it a little impertinent to ridicule the idea 
 of the great God of the universe doing for you 
 something of the same sort of thing that you did 
 for those men ? " 
 
 For a moment the man looked dazed; then his 
 eyes flashed. "By Heaven, I see it! You are 
 talking about prayer. Why the thing isn't non- 
 sense at all. Of course He can do it. Man, why 
 didn't you come and tell me about it long ago? 
 Why, the thing proves itself. Yes, you can pray 
 for me. I'll pray for myself. We've got a start- 
 
158 In tKe Service of tKe King 
 
 ing point now. Go on, and tell me something 
 about your Pilot." 
 
 For hours they sat and talked, and when he 
 held out his hand in parting, he said: "Don't 
 bother about me, Parson. I'll get the Book and 
 learn the Pilot's signals. I know what it is to 
 obey, and I promise to follow instructions. I 
 don't know yet the port I'm making for, but I'm 
 beginning to trust the Pilot, and I shall not be a 
 derelict. Be sure of that." 
 
Jl Selection from the 
 Catalogue of 
 
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 Complete Catalogue sent 
 on application 
 
Knowledge and Life 
 
 By Rudolf Eucken 
 
 Author of "The Truth of Religion," "The Life 
 of the Spirit " 
 
 Crown Theological Library. 12. $1.50 
 
 Through his sustained and heroic appeal to 
 what is most spiritual in man, Eucken has 
 ennobled the significance and the mission of 
 philosophy. He aims at developing, not a new 
 category but a new culture, and holds that it 
 is the privilege of philosophy, by penetrating 
 to what is most inward in human nature, to 
 bring a religious inspiration to bear upon the 
 problems of the world of human labor. Euck- 
 en's philosophy is a philosophy of life. It is 
 a philosophy of reality as well. It treats of 
 the sources of man's strength, and the meaning 
 and purpose of his spiritual endeavor. And 
 can there be anything more real than the 
 activity of a life that has consciously realized 
 the true sources of its power and the goal of 
 its ultimate aspirations? 
 
 G. P. Putnam's Sons 
 
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PERSONALITY 
 
 By F. B. JEVONS, LittD. 
 
 Author of 
 
 "The Idea of God," "Comparative 
 Religions," etc. 
 
 72. $1.00 net 
 
 This work deals with the problem 
 of personality, especially as raised by 
 William James and M. Bergson. If a 
 man imagines himself bound, in defer- 
 ence to science or psychology, to deny 
 the existence of personality, he commits 
 himself to saying " I do not exist." If 
 he shrinks from that absurdity, he must 
 accept personality as a reality : a person 
 is both a subject who knows others and 
 an object of others' knowledge. The 
 bond, however, which holds persons, 
 human and divine, together, cannot be 
 merely intellectual: it must be emotional 
 as well as intellectual the bond of love. 
 
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 New York London 
 
The 
 Science of Happiness 
 
 By Jean Finot 
 
 Author of " Problem of the Sexes," etc. 
 Translated from the French by 
 
 Mary J. Safford 
 
 8. $1.75 net 
 
 The author considers a subject, the solution of 
 which offers more enticement to the well-wisher 
 of the race than the gold of the Incas did to the 
 treasure-seekers of Spain, who themselves doubt- 
 less looked upon the coveted yellow metal, 
 however mistakenly, as a key to the happiness 
 which all are trying to find. " Amid the noisy 
 tumult of life, amid the dissonance that divides 
 man from man," remarks M. Finot, "the 
 Science of Happiness tries to discover the 
 divine link which binds humanity to happi- 
 ness through the soul and through the union 
 of souls." The author considers the nature 
 of happiness and the means of its attainment, 
 as well as many allied questions. 
 
 New York 
 
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Talks in a Library 
 
 with 
 
 Laurence Mutton 
 
 Recorded by ISABEL MOORE 
 
 Octavo, 475 pages. With Portraits and 65 other 
 Illustrations 
 
 Net, $2.50. Postage Extra 
 
 Mr. Button was one of the kindliest and most genial of 
 men, and drew to himself a host of friends players, 
 writers, artists, and well-known men in every walk of life. 
 Further than this, Mr. Button possessed a fascinating 
 collection of portraits, autograph letters, inscribed books, 
 play-bills, and other literary and artistic bric-a-brac. It 
 was in the room containing this collection that Mr. Button 
 talked with Mrs. Moore. Browsing among his treasures, 
 he would pick up here a book, and there a portrait or 
 autograph letter, and as the object brought to his remem- 
 brance the personality associated with it, he would have 
 something to say concerning the personality and the 
 occasion. Nothing could be more spontaneous and less 
 artificial than this record of talks with such a charming host. 
 
 It may be added that the manuscript was revised by 
 Dr. Button before his last illness, and the volume stands, 
 therefore, as his final word to his friends and to the public. 
 
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