'H. K.' 
 
 HIS REALITIES AND VISIONS
 
 L 'H. K; 
 
 HIS REALITIES AND VISIONS 
 
 BY 
 
 NEHEMIAH CURNOCK 
 
 London 
 CHARLES H. KELLY 
 
 2 CASTLE STREET, CITY ROAD, AND 26 PATERNOSTER ROW, E.G.
 
 PRINTED BY 
 
 WILLIAM CLOWES AND SONS, LIMITED, 
 LONDON AND BECCLES.
 
 PREFACE 
 
 FOR permission to republish the following 
 sketches I am indebted to the Proprietors of 
 the Methodist Recorder, also to the Wesleyan 
 Methodist Magazine, in which the last of the 
 series originally appeared. 
 
 The nom-de-plume * H. K.' was invented 
 for the author by his friend and first literary 
 chief, the late Dr. Benjamin Gregory. 
 
 It may add interest to these studies if I 
 explain that all the 
 
 . Old men, and babes, and loving friends, 
 And youths and maidens gay 
 
 who cross this mimic stage are real per- 
 sons, though renamed. Their sayings and 
 doings, their sorrows and joys, are realities. 
 
 5
 
 6 PREFACE 
 
 Commonplace the actors and their plays 
 may be ; but each reality, however trivial, 
 has its answering vision in the unseen world 
 of thought and hope and love. 
 
 NEHEMIAH CURNOCK. 
 
 RAYLEIGH, ESSEX, 
 January, 1907.
 
 TABLE OF CONTENTS 
 
 PAGE 
 
 FIRST' 9 
 
 PICTURES 21 
 
 FOLLOWING 30 
 
 DOORWAYS 43 
 
 SAP . . . . .54 
 
 A ' PINNY' 61 
 
 PALS 71 
 
 THE MOUND 83 
 
 LIONS 95 
 
 ' As A CHILD ' 101 
 
 BRICKS . .109 
 
 BOOKS "6 
 
 A Kiss 124 
 
 BUDS 135 
 
 SONG . 143 
 
 KNOTS 152 
 
 A GARDEN 162 
 
 GOOD' 171 
 
 RAIN ... , 178 
 
 ICE ..,.... 188 
 
 THE PASTOR 204 
 
 BLUE-EYES 215 
 
 BALANCE 228
 
 <H. K. 5 
 
 HIS REALITIES AND VISIONS 
 
 ' FIRST ' 
 
 LAST Sunday morning our minister 
 preached in his own pulpit, with 
 hymns and lessons and prayers all 
 suitable to the occasion. Not the least 
 striking feature in a service worthy of a 
 new beginning was the sermon. Its text I 
 will here print, because it may fitly serve 
 as a New Year's greeting for the Methodist 
 people in every city, and in every village 
 also, wheresoever their lot is cast 
 
 'TO ALL THAT BE IN ROME, BELOVED OF 
 GOD, CALLED TO BE SAINTS : GRACE TO 
 YOU AND PEACE FROM GOD OUR FATHER, 
 AND THE LORD JESUS CHRIST.' 
 
 Of the sermon I have nothing more to 
 9
 
 io 'FIRST' 
 
 say, except this, that a work-worn journalist 
 who chanced to be sitting by my side 
 punctuated the preacher's Amen, with the 
 whispered remark, ' You have a preacher 
 who gives you something to think about.' 
 
 For two reasons I refer to this Covenant 
 Sunday service. It gave the motto-text on 
 which, as it seems to me, every Methodist 
 can preach his own sermon ; and, incident- 
 ally, it gave the word which stands at the 
 head of this chapter. 
 
 Many years ago my dear old friend 
 Moody drilled me in a habit that grows 
 stronger with the passing years. He used 
 to say, ' You should never go to church 
 without a Bible ; and let it, if possible, 
 be your own Bible, the Bible you read at 
 home, the Bible dear to you by sacred 
 memories.' Moody had a theory that if a 
 preacher found his people habitually bring- 
 ing their Bibles to church and using them, 
 the habit would react wholesomely, inducing 
 him more frequently to refer his hearers to 
 the words of Holy Scripture in their proper 
 places, and thus cultivating in himself the
 
 'FIRST' ii 
 
 habit of expository preaching, and in them 
 the habit of Bible study. 
 
 On Sunday morning, venturing a pre- 
 liminary visit to the vestry to greet my 
 pastor, the church-going Bible an India- 
 paper Revised rested in its wonted Sunday- 
 morning place under my arm. The preacher, 
 in presence of the two Society stewards, did 
 a strange thing. He blessed the Book, 
 taking it into his hand and fondling it 
 lovingly one more memory added to a 
 volume that year by year is growing more 
 precious. When the preacher announced 
 his text I read it in its place Rom. i. 7. 
 And instantly there flashed out the opening 
 word of the next verse 'FIRST.' The 
 word blazed, spoke, thrilled. I could not 
 get away from it. Point by point through 
 the sermon it sounded out like the pealing 
 of a great far-away bell. Again and again 
 it drew me to the open page. At home, 
 when a long - scattered family gathered 
 around the dining-table, Paul, servant of 
 Jesus Christ, whispered in my ear, 'First.' 
 In the Covenant service it came over and
 
 12 'FIRST' 
 
 over again. Through the pleasant hours 
 of a memorable Sunday evening, and finally 
 in dreams of the night, the word came 
 now a solemn tolling, now a triumphant 
 clangour, and now a jubilant chiming, the 
 message of the bells of God : 
 
 'FIRST, I THANK MY GOD THROUGH 
 JESUS CHRIST FOR YOU ALL, THAT YOUR 
 FAITH IS PROCLAIMED THROUGHOUT THE 
 WHOLE WORLD.' 
 
 The word stands alone. It is not a 
 preacher's ' First.' There is no ' second.' 
 Those who, even with some of the more 
 recent and scholarly expositors, imagine 
 that Paul used the word conventionally, put- 
 ting into it a numerical value and nothing 
 more, miss, as it seems to me, the signi- 
 ficance of a unique method of emphasizing 
 a momentous truth. It is an illuminated 
 initial word. It is a great underscoring of a 
 fact dominant above everything else. As with 
 the blast of trumpets the faith of a Christian 
 people is proclaimed. Surely something 
 to thank God for ! These saints, whether
 
 'FIRST' 13 
 
 in ancient Rome or in modern Methodism, 
 may not be so saintly as might be. They 
 may be children in knowledge, and not men 
 in wisdom or holiness or courage. At many 
 points they may need correction, warning, 
 instruction in righteousness. Nevertheless, 
 here is the broad, strong, rock-fact they 
 hold the faith ; they have a definite ex- 
 perience ; they know Him whom to know 
 is life eternal ; they know Him whom Paul 
 served, promised afore in the Holy Scriptures, 
 born of the seed of David according to the 
 flesh, declared to be the Son of God with 
 power, according to the Spirit of holiness, 
 by the resurrection from the dead. How 
 wonderfully Paul lingers over the great 
 foundation truth ! If I may reverently use 
 the expression, he takes it to himself, fond- 
 ling it as the minister fondled my Bible ; for 
 is it not everything to him, and must it 
 not be everything to them, his dear friends 
 whom he has never as yet seen in the flesh, 
 and must it not be everything to us also? 
 ' Even Jesus Christ, our Lord, through 
 whom we received grace and apostleship,
 
 14 'FIRST' 
 
 unto obedience of faith among all the nations, 
 for His name's sake : among whom are ye 
 also, called to be Jesus Christ's : to all that 
 are in Rome, beloved of God, called to be 
 saints.' How curiously and with what 
 wealth of suggestion does St. Paul reiterate 
 words and phrases 'called to be an apostle* 
 ' called to be Jesus Christ's ' ' called to be 
 saints.' Open your Greek Testament. Look 
 at the word thrice used. Trace its history. 
 Think of all the meaning that has gathered 
 around it and its allies, and you will gradually 
 come to understand what 'the election of 
 grace' is, and how great is the calling of 
 those who are at once children of God and 
 servants of His Son Jesus Christ. 
 
 Have you ever seen a living Foraminifer ? 
 It is beauty, mystery, simplicity, complexity. 
 Its story goes back to the roots of the ages, 
 to the beginnings of mountains, to the founda- 
 tions of cities and empires. Certain of its 
 forms remind me of such passages in the 
 writings of St. Paul as we have now been 
 reading. The Foraminifera belong to that
 
 'FIRST' 15 
 
 order of life known as the Protozoa. Does 
 not this truth scintillate and throb in the 
 first verses of the first of all the Epistles? 
 Does it not stream forth protozoic life of 
 all theology and all Christian experience ? 
 In plain English, we are here face to face 
 with that which, in the language used by 
 St. Paul, is known as First Life. 
 
 Looked at with the unaided eye, a Fora- 
 minifer is a minute speck of chalk. Placed, 
 in a friendly environment, under the micro- 
 scope it will presently envelop itself in a 
 glory of pure living light. If you are rough, 
 wrathful, impatient even, the short-lived 
 beauty will fade away. If you are gentle 
 and kindly, and if all your treatment of the 
 mystery is true to nature, there will be dis- 
 played a wonder that will enkindle some 
 such feeling as John experienced when he 
 gazed upon the living creatures before the 
 throne, and heard the anthem of Creation. 
 
 A Foraminifer consists of a number of 
 little chambers. In the species of which I 
 am thinking they are arranged nautilus- 
 fashion in the convolutions of a shell, all the
 
 16 'FIRST' 
 
 chambers being pierced with holes, and 
 therefore communicating with one another, 
 and with the outside world. All these cells 
 are filled with life in its purest and simplest 
 form. This life, as you silently watch, 
 streams forth until the morsel of crystalline 
 chalk shines like a radiant star with a corona 
 of living light. 
 
 Is not this a slight picture of the phe- 
 nomena in these verses ? Here, also, are 
 the chambered cells, the convolutions, the 
 perfect communion between cell and cell, 
 the delicate beauty of the external frame- 
 work, the Life simple, yet profound beyond 
 the grasp of human mind, the streaming 
 forth of the one First Life from every cell 
 until we behold Truth in its purest, pro- 
 foundest, and yet most elemental form. It 
 is in reading over and over again, with con- 
 centration of thought and devout emotion, a 
 passage like this that we realize, to some 
 extent, the glorious fullness of meaning in 
 those words of St. John, which are the 
 Protozoa of the Gospels : ' In the beginning 
 was the Word, and the Word was with God,
 
 'FIRST' 17 
 
 and the Word was God. The same was 
 in the beginning with God. All things 
 were made by Him, and without Him was 
 not anything made that hath been made. 
 In Him was life, and the life was the 
 light of men. . . . And the Word be- 
 came flesh (and dwelt among us, and we 
 beheld His Glory, glory as of the Only 
 Begotten of the Father), full of grace and 
 truth.' 
 
 What is the first, most precious, most 
 foundational, the absolutely indispensable 
 fact in every Church and in each individual 
 member of each Church ? Is it not this 
 gospel of God concerning His Son, through 
 whom we receive grace, to whom we 
 belong, without whom no matter how 
 elaborate our organization or how splendid 
 our gifts, we are nothing ? This is ' the 
 faith ' which, whether it fills the churches 
 with wondering crowds or empties them, 
 is to conquer the world and draw all 
 men to their Lord and Saviour. Dr. 
 Forsyth is perfectly in the right. What 
 we all need for the revivifying of personal 
 
 B
 
 i8 'FIRST' 
 
 experience and for the fulfilment of our true 
 task as the bond-servants of Jesus Christ is 
 this First thing, this ' positive gospel.' Let 
 the preachers preach Christ Jesus the Lord 
 as the sinner's personal Friend and Saviour ; 
 and let people and preachers themselves 
 have a life hid with Christ in God, and this 
 year shall be a year for immeasurable 
 thankfulness. Every chambered cell will 
 be perfectly adapted to its needs, and will 
 be filled with life in its purest, simplest, 
 divinest form ; and the inter-communication 
 between cell and cell will be perfect ; and if 
 there is a peaceful environment and no 
 wrath or clamour of evil speaking rudely 
 shaking the delicate structure, the divine life 
 will flow out through a hundred orifices, 
 each one a mark of beauty and a means of 
 helpful grace to the structure as a whole, 
 and to the outside world ; and thus will it 
 continue to be true of us as it was true of 
 our fathers in the old time 
 
 The gift which He on one bestows 
 
 We all delight to prove ; 
 The grace through every vessel flows, 
 
 In purest streams of love.
 
 'FIRST' 19 
 
 In us the first and most elementary of all 
 God's covenants will be fulfilled ' I will 
 bless thee and make thee a blessing.' And 
 the blessing will store itself through the 
 procession of countless ages for the enrich- 
 ment of an unknown future. The Fora- 
 minifera are falling in silent gentleness to 
 the floor of the Atlantic, and God, as of old, 
 is laying the beams of His chambers in the 
 mighty waters, and is slowly building new 
 mountains out of which, millenniums hence, 
 new cities to dwell in may be built fairer 
 than the fairest cities of the past. We 
 Methodists are but one species of the vast 
 order of spiritual Foraminifera. Let us 
 glance swiftly back upon the mystic past 
 of our life-history. And then let us gaze, 
 with cleared vision and an earnest intentness, 
 upon the present ' calling/ linked as it is 
 with a world-wide mission and with a divine 
 far-off future. 
 
 My friend ! You may be a young girl, 
 or a hard-driven office clerk, or a farm 
 labourer. You cannot to-day read the New 
 Year's message I am going to write. Buy
 
 20 ' FIRST ' 
 
 or borrow James Hope Moulton's Greek 
 Grammar for Bible Students^ as hundreds 
 of working men are doing, and never rest 
 until you have learnt to read the beautiful 
 words written by St. Paul 
 
 KX^rol 'lyjcrov Xyaiorou, . . . ayaTrrjTols eov, 
 K\7)Tols dytots, X^P^ VIMV /cat
 
 PICTURES 
 
 THE Boy and I retreated from the rain 
 into an omnibus. His metropolitan 
 geography was rude and amusing. 
 He knew not whither he was going, but 
 surmised that some day, with practice, he 
 might find his way about the City. The 
 omnibus landed us in a river of mud and 
 traffic before the mouth of Bond Street. 
 With trustful simplicity and without a ques- 
 tion he followed, until, at 175, we turned 
 into the ' Modern Gallery.' Then, with 
 birds and snakes and butterflies around 
 him, he awoke, radiated, and recited ' Wild 
 Nature' by the yard. He was a new 
 creature. On venerable saints he had 
 gazed with awe, but at sight of an adder 
 coiled, and another stretching itself through 
 the glinting grass, he kindled into enthusiasm. 
 Wesley's House, the new Mission House, 
 
 21
 
 22 PICTURES 
 
 City Road Chapel, and the Book Room he 
 regarded with befitting solemnity ; but into 
 the faces of Cherry Kearton's kittiwakes 
 and owls and blackbirds he laughed merrily. 
 Toasted tea-cakes, fairly well buttered, set 
 up a rivalry, but not for long. Solan geese, 
 the streaked lightning of an ichneumon's 
 tongue, and the rain-drops on a sitting 
 mother-bird's wing cancelled effectually the 
 memory of gastronomies. 
 
 On the Gallery walls there may be a 
 hundred photographs, and not a poor one 
 in the lot. They are variously printed, in 
 carbon some, in bromide others, and no 
 two are precisely alike in tone. There is 
 no death or terror or unsightliness anywhere 
 to be seen ; all is life and health and peace. 
 Did the creatures know of a surety that a 
 friend, who would rather lose his right hand 
 than be guilty of cruelty, had engaged the 
 Sun to paint their portraits ? They sit 
 serenely, or feed their babies unconcernedly, 
 or walk with dignity towards their nests, or 
 lift their wings for flight, or actually stand 
 with posed heads to be photographed. In
 
 PICTURES 23 
 
 one picture 'Brer Rabbit' comes to his 
 front door to have his portrait taken. 
 
 The pictures are all framed and glass- 
 fronted. On many of them little red stars 
 appear, which means that visitors have 
 bought them, or copies like them. One of 
 the smallest in the Gallery, half hidden in 
 a corner, has more red stars than any other. 
 It is a photograph of two white butterflies 
 which, with folded wings, have fallen fast 
 asleep clinging to the petals of a white 
 composite flower. In the night the dews 
 have fallen. You can see hundreds of 
 dewdrops jewelling the butterflies and their 
 bed. When the sun rose and had kissed 
 away the tears of the night, the butterflies 
 opened their wings and flew away. 
 
 It is worth miles of tramping over York- 
 shire moors or through London rain-storms 
 to hear Richard Kearton tell stories of the 
 birds, whilst Brother Cherry flashes them 
 on the screen, and ever and anon cries of 
 the wild birds break the silence of the night. 
 One sits dreaming of Yorkshire farmers, and 
 local preachers, and gamekeepers; of the
 
 24 PICTURES 
 
 Dales, and the moors above Bolton Woods, 
 and of Beamsley Beacon, with grouse calling 
 and the curlews crying. 
 
 You may think it odd, to the point of 
 eccentricity, but another picture gallery, in 
 every way different, interweaves itself with 
 K carton's birds in all my present thoughts. 
 This second gallery came to me four days 
 later. It contains about the same number 
 of pictures, and in their own way they are 
 just as wonderful, though I doubt whether 
 the boy would think so. 
 
 They are the printed pictures of chapels, 
 halls, and schools in the Report of the Chapel 
 Committee. 
 
 Many of the thoughts and emotions 
 kindled by the Kearton birds are re-kindled 
 by these Hornabrook pictures. I call them 
 by that name for convenience' sake. Mr. 
 Hornabrook is present-day Secretary of a 
 Committee which for fifty years past has sat 
 every month in Manchester helping all the 
 churches in English Methodism to build, 
 and to build aright, and to pay for what they 
 build feeding the young life, fighting all
 
 PICTURES 25 
 
 manner of foes, helping young churches in 
 their flight into the sunlight where God is ; 
 yes, and helping their songs also. If I were 
 to name all the people who have helped in 
 this holy and beautiful work, I should fill 
 pages. Mr. Hornabrook will forgive me if 
 I use his name for all the rest. 
 
 I look at these Hornabrook pictures. 
 Some of them are, to me, redolent of woods 
 and gardens and farmyards ; others recall 
 mills or mines, or stately city streets, or the 
 ' thundering shores ' of places to which we 
 scatter for summer holidays. But every 
 picture has its tale, its romance, its angel- 
 recorded story of struggle, of heroic Hope 
 beating back traitor fears, and of sacrifice. 
 There have been months, sometimes years, 
 of planning and managing and wise over- 
 sight and judicious feeding, not infrequently 
 interspersed with needful nest-cleaning or 
 repair ; and at last the end has come in a 
 burst of song and a picture in this Horna- 
 brook gallery. Or, if not a picture, then a 
 line in a mighty list, for there are really 
 hundreds of chapels, and lovely Sunday
 
 26 PICTURES 
 
 school houses, and splendid mission halls, 
 and cosy manses, to say nothing of organs 
 and mendings and enlargings of old nests. 
 Everybody cannot have a picture otherwise, 
 instead of one volume there would have to 
 be half a dozen. 
 
 This is the question I want to ask, How 
 comes it to pass that this hard and costly 
 work has been done, and done so well ? 
 
 How did these Kearton brothers get their 
 bird pictures and their stories? By love 
 and patience and hard thinking ; by waiting 
 and watching ; by the ' good luck ' that 
 somehow in this world always attends people 
 who have souls as well as bodies, brains as 
 well as bank-notes, and who, in a passion of 
 enthusiasm, throw their souls into their work 
 and make all the impossibilities fly like 
 stones under the wheels of a motor-car. 
 They are mad on birds and nature and all 
 living things, and the birds and even the 
 insects know it. If they did not love their 
 work with a deathless devotion, do you 
 think they could wait for hours curled up 
 in holes or oxskins, or standing waist-deep in
 
 PICTURES 27 
 
 water, or swinging above the green, white- 
 crested waves over the edge of a crag at the 
 end of a fowler's rope ? 
 
 In the Manchester Central Hall, high 
 above the places where the lost sheep of the 
 house of Israel are being sought and saved, 
 there is a beautiful room hung with portraits 
 of bygone secretaries and treasurers, where 
 thousands of difficult problems in circuit 
 work have been wrestled with and con- 
 quered. Once or twice, as a great favour, 
 I have been allowed to sit in that room and 
 watch. I have looked into the faces of men 
 from Lancashire, Yorkshire, Cheshire, Shrop- 
 shire, and have said to myself, ' They stand 
 for thousands of ministers and stewards and 
 trustees in the circuits, and how worthily 
 they represent them ! How they love their 
 work! How proud they are of it! What 
 patience, minute care, tender-heartedness, 
 resoluteness ! They have been at it for fifty 
 years. Where are the debts the old writh- 
 ing, wiry debts by help of which the devil 
 thought of strangling our dear old Method- 
 ism ? And what are the results ? '
 
 28 PICTURES 
 
 As I sit thinking and picturing things that 
 I know to be facts, I hear the song of the 
 Methodists in crowded town and sweet far- 
 away village 
 
 These temples of His grace, 
 
 How beautiful they stand ! 
 The honour of our native place, 
 
 The bulwarks of our land. 
 
 Experience tells me that the mightiest 
 force in the battle with difficulties, in 
 managing cranky people, in working one's 
 way through crowds of impossibilities to a 
 triumphant end, is Love. It is Love that 
 can wait, and labour, and carry loads, and 
 face peril and suffering with shouts of joy ; 
 Love that opens the eyes and makes dull 
 folks bright and lazy people alert. Let a 
 little knot of village Methodists fall in love 
 with ' the cause,' as they call it, and they will 
 say to one another, ' Us be goin' to have a 
 new chapel,' and having found the will they 
 may be trusted to find the way. 
 
 Let me add one word. Everything that 
 tends to foster love in a church or in any 
 other public community, still more in a home
 
 PICTURES 29 
 
 among boys and girls, is so much gain to 
 the cause of God, and so much loss to the 
 devil. And do not despise the little things 
 small friendships, love of nature, enthusiasm 
 for books, or birds, or beasts, or butterflies ; 
 love for the house, the school, the class, 
 the thousand and one homelinesses that give 
 Methodism its charm. 
 
 It is an old, old lesson, often repeated, but 
 not yet worn out, thank God ! 
 
 O sweeter than the marriage-feast, 
 
 Tis sweeter far to me, 
 To walk together to the kirk 
 
 With a goodly company 1 
 
 To walk together to the kirk, 
 
 And all together pray, 
 While each to his great Father bends, 
 Old men, and babes, and loving friends, 
 
 And youths and maidens gay ! 
 
 Farewell, farewell ! but this I tell 
 To thee, thou Wedding-Guest ! 
 
 He prayeth well, who loveth well 
 Both man and bird and beast. 
 
 He prayeth best, who loveth best 
 All things both great and small ; 
 
 For the dear God who loveth us, 
 He made and loveth all.
 
 FOLLOWING 
 
 IN every Hymn-Book is a song that 
 comes to us from long ago, and that 
 everybody likes to sing. It has two 
 great thoughts 'Come' and 'Follow.' It 
 was written to be sung antiphonally that is 
 to say, by two voices or two choirs of voices, 
 one, in each verse, asking a question ; the 
 other answering. A choir on one side of 
 the church sang 
 
 Art thou weary, art them languid, 
 Art thou sore distrest? 
 
 and a choir on the other side answered 
 
 Come to Me, saith One, and, coming, 
 Be at rest. 
 
 If you read the hymn through to the end, 
 you will find that each verse is built on the 
 same plan. A question is followed by an 
 answer. The question is asked by the 
 coming sinner, or on his behalf the sinner 
 
 30
 
 FOLLOWING 31 
 
 who, in his sore distress, needs a Friend, a 
 Friend who has Himself suffered, a crowned 
 and conquering Friend, One who will never 
 leave, never fail, no, not even when all else 
 passes away 
 
 What His guerdon here? 
 What hath He at last ? 
 Will He say me nay? 
 Is He sure to bless? 
 
 And the answer is given by the witnessing 
 Church on behalf of the dear Lord whom 
 she knows and loves so well 
 
 Many a sorrow, many a labour, 
 
 Many a tear. 
 Sorrow vanquished, labour ended, 
 
 Jordan past. 
 Not till earth, and not till heaven 
 
 Pass away. 
 Saints, apostles, prophets, martyrs, 
 
 Answer, Yes ! 
 
 I often hear the hymn sung in this way, 
 and the effect is not only very beautiful, 
 but instructive and impressive. Is not this 
 the one reason why, instead of simply read- 
 ing them, we chant Psalms and sing hymns, 
 that they may mean the more to us, and 
 that their memory may linger in our hearts,
 
 32 FOLLOWING 
 
 as the fragrance of musk and lavender and 
 roses lingers in drawers and boxes ? 
 
 We must remember that antiphonal sing- 
 ing is ancient, so also are refrains and 
 choruses and other simple devices in wor- 
 ship, by means of which the meaning of 
 words was brought out and impressed upon 
 the memory. Miriam and Moses so taught 
 Israel to sing ; David also. The masters of 
 sacred song in days when by the waters of 
 Babylon harps were taken down from the 
 willows and re-strung for use in the great 
 processionals, did not disdain similar musical 
 devices. What floods of new and loveliest 
 meaning would be thrown upon portions of 
 the Bible now obscure if school masters and 
 mistresses would be at some pains to 
 discover how the Psalms the Songs of 
 Degrees, by way of example were sung ; 
 and if, telling the children the story and 
 helping them with maps and pictures, they 
 would teach them to sing * as in the ancient 
 days ' ! 
 
 But to return to this Christian hymn that 
 comes to us from long ago. I recall one
 
 FOLLOWING 33 
 
 memorable Sunday evening when its proper 
 singing did high service for our Master. 
 The London Choir of the Children's Home 
 was in Leeds. It was Palm Sunday. The 
 boy who should have taken the principal 
 soprano solos had returned home stricken 
 with the sickness which, some years later, 
 carried him away to another and higher 
 choir. We were all very sad. The people, 
 too, were disappointed, for the boy had a 
 wonderful gift. Everybody loved him, and 
 of late the hand of the Master, more often 
 than not, had rested upon him, so that he 
 sang not only the music, but the soul of 
 the words. A girl came to fill Llewellyn's 
 place. The Sunday-night service was held 
 in Brunswick Chapel. Mr. F. A. Mann 
 now also at rest played the organ, as did 
 Samuel, son of Charles Wesley, at the 
 opening of the great instrument. The con- 
 gregation was immense. Bonner Road girls 
 and boys filled the choir seats. In the 
 midst of the service the preacher announced 
 this ancient hymn, explaining how its writer 
 intended it to be sung, and emphasizing the 
 
 C
 
 34 FOLLOWING 
 
 fact that the bride, the Church, speaking 
 for her Lord, answered the question of each 
 verse. From one of the carved mahogany 
 choir seats flanking the organ rose a girl- 
 voice singing the question 
 
 Art thou weary, art thou languid, 
 Art thou sore distrest ? 
 
 And then, from the vast congregation, in 
 one mighty volume of song, came the 
 answer 
 
 Come to me, saith One, and coming, 
 Be at rest. 
 
 Long before we reached the last verse, 
 in which the whole Church triumphant 
 joins the song, the congregation was in 
 tears, and many a one that night must 
 have risen to follow Jesus. 
 
 There are, let me again say, two lead- 
 ing thoughts in the hymn ' Come ' and 
 ' Follow.' 
 
 Come to Me, saith One. 
 If I find Him, if I follow. 
 
 Are not these two words great, especially 
 for those who, in the early morning of life,
 
 FOLLOWING 35 
 
 are opening the books and beginning to 
 learn ? Last week most of the schools 
 were refilled with boys and girls all remi- 
 niscent of the fun and joy of the Christmas 
 holidays. In many schools, so I am told, 
 the Scripture study for examination this 
 term is St. Matthew's Gospel. Early in 
 that wonderful story the children, if they 
 are properly taught, will hear the still small 
 voice of their Lord ' Come/ ' Follow Me.' 
 May I say one word to teachers, whether 
 mothers helping the bairns with home lessons, 
 or ministers holding Bible-classes in schools, 
 or masters or mistresses let me speak to 
 you one earnest word of entreaty : Do not 
 let this first message of the Master come 
 to the ears of the children's souls harshly, 
 roughly, or in a dull, dry monotony of mere 
 lesson-learning. Let it come to them as it 
 came to Peter and John, as it came to 
 Matthew, with the melody of Galilean waters 
 rippling on the shore, with the wind sighing 
 among the reeds. Let the voice that speaks 
 the words be His voice : royal ! yes, but 
 also infinitely tender and winsome. Think,
 
 36 FOLLOWING 
 
 my friend, before you begin those lessons 
 of yours, how many children have been 
 forced into hatred of the Bible, and of 
 religion, by the heedless, not to say vicious, 
 fashion in which the Bible has been taught. 
 To this day I instinctively shrink from 
 Catechisms. Why ? Because when I was 
 a very small boy a grammar-school master 
 was stupid enough to teach me my duty to 
 God and my neighbour at the point of a 
 cane. The sting of it abides. He meant 
 well, doubtless, but did ill, for he inflicted 
 a life-long injury on one small child. Our 
 Lord reserved His severest words of anger 
 for sham religion, and for those who wrong 
 children. Think of it ! ' It were better for 
 him that a great millstone were hanged 
 about his neck, and that he were drowned 
 in the depths of the sea.' 
 
 If we try to teach the Bible, whether in 
 church or school or home, is it not well to 
 set upon the work with this fact shining 
 before us that the Bible is the most 
 picturesque, songful, storyful Book in the 
 world ? You must sing its truth. You
 
 FOLLOWING 37 
 
 cannot help wondering, imagining, dreaming 
 as you read. I ask you now, in all serious- 
 ness, Is it not a sin so to teach the Bible 
 as to make it a wearisome task-book to 
 children ? I know little Jewish boys and 
 girls whose great punishment it is to be 
 kept away from school when the Bible is 
 being taught and Christian hymns are 
 sung. 
 
 How much that is brave and mysterious 
 and pleasant and solemn is suggested by 
 this word ' following ' ! Soldiers follow their 
 leader through fire and flood and blood, 
 daring everything that he dares, and the 
 more they love and honour him the more 
 perfectly they trust him. So may we follow 
 Christ. 
 
 Birds through countless millenniums have 
 followed the same path through the upper 
 air, crossing sea and land, that they may 
 find in southern climes the summer warmth 
 and food which the winter-stricken north 
 denies them. So may we follow the Light, 
 and of us it shall be true, ' Their sun shall 
 no more go down, neither shall the moon
 
 38 FOLLOWING 
 
 withdraw herself! and the days of their 
 mourning shall be ended.' 
 
 On Saturday night the Boy and I heard 
 a lecture on ' Protection by Mimicry.' The 
 charm of the lecture was in its illustrations. 
 All the odd things described by Drummond 
 in Tropical Africa we saw. Some were the 
 queerest imitations imaginable. There were 
 sticks, and thorns, and splotches of lime, and 
 lichen-like insects, and butterflies with folded 
 wings mid-ribbed, veined, coloured, shaped, 
 stalked, even spotted with mildew and 
 people vowed and declared they were not 
 butterflies at all, but dead brown leaves. 
 One butterfly, differing utterly in size, shape, 
 and colour-marks from her liege love-lord, 
 had exactly imitated the form and adorn- 
 ments of another insect which, to the palate 
 of every questing bird, is a nauseous morsel. 
 It was all mystery, and the only conceivable 
 explanation lay in that same word ' follow- 
 ing.' Through how many millenniums we 
 know not, the creatures have followed the 
 great law within the law of self-preserva- 
 tion, and so, little by little, they have been
 
 FOLLOWING 39 
 
 changed into images of something else. 
 Are there not similar laws in the spiritual 
 world, which we men and women, boys and 
 girls, may follow ? How great and wonder- 
 ful it is to have within us that which Paul 
 the apostle calls ' the law of the Spirit of life 
 in Jesus Christ ' ! 
 
 A week ago a long procession, mostly of 
 sailors and marines, followed a gun-carriage 
 as it slowly wound through country lanes, 
 four miles, to a quiet churchyard. On the 
 gun-carriage rested a coffin which was 
 wrapped in a Union Jack, borrowed from 
 the majestic ironclad that led the fleet in 
 the Solent when Queen Victoria passed 
 from her island home through lines of battle- 
 ships, and the thundering farewells of all 
 nations, and the solemn strains of Chopin's 
 funeral march, and flames of red light from 
 the setting February sun, and her people's 
 tears. And on the Union Jack lay a worn 
 cocked-hat, with sword and epaulettes and 
 insignia of rank and honour and a cross 
 woven of white orchids, and lilac, and lilies 
 of the valley, and fern. Later, a wreath was
 
 40 FOLLOWING 
 
 added, sent by an Emperor, and sailor-men 
 carried memorial flowers, and the arms of 
 Mother Earth, opened in the village church- 
 yard to take the old sailor-dust, were lined 
 with flowers; but, according to the story 
 told by one who was present, at first only 
 the one cross of white flowers rested on the 
 coffin. To the cross was fastened a note 
 written by the Queen's hand * In loving 
 memory of my beloved " Little Admiral," 
 the best and bravest of men, from Alexandra. 
 " Rest in Peace." ' And whilst the proces- 
 sion was passing through the country lanes, 
 in the Chapel Royal the King and Queen, 
 and many of the noblest and fairest in the 
 land, silently heard the great words ' O 
 death, where is thy sting ? O grave, where 
 is thy victory ? ' And they sang together 
 Mr. W. G. Alcock playing his own tune the 
 hymn we know so well : 
 
 Safe home, safe home In port ! 
 
 Also that other hymn for which Sir 
 Frederick Bridge wrote the music : 
 
 Sunset and evening star.
 
 FOLLOWING 41 
 
 He was an old man born in the early 
 years of the last century and was known 
 as ' the Father of the Fleet.' In the days 
 of his strength every sailor counted it joy 
 and honour to serve under ' Harry Keppel.' 
 At home, and in circles where princes and 
 princesses forget their royalty in homely 
 friendship, he was ' dear Uncle Harry.' And 
 when the end came, the greatest in the land 
 and the lowliest followed him to his last 
 resting-place. At such times we think of 
 careers, rewards, honours, brilliant deeds 
 winning brilliant distinctions. And then 
 something happens that brings home to our 
 plain English sense of the fitness of things 
 the fact that the simplest is the best the 
 wreath of bay leaves without gold or jewel. 
 Can we imagine anything better among 
 earthly honours than the white cross of 
 flowers with its simple words, ' My beloved 
 " Little Admiral"' ? 
 
 These flowers fade, and the echoes of 
 song and salute die away among the hills. 
 But there is something in which we all may 
 share that will never fade, never be hushed
 
 42 FOLLOWING 
 
 into silence. One day the great white 
 throne will be set. Think of it ! Not black. 
 That would be terrible. But a white throne. 
 And the books will be opened, and white- 
 robed angels will hear the crowned Lord say 
 to those who have followed Him 
 
 Come, ye blessed children of My Father !
 
 DOORWAYS 
 
 OVER the dinner-table in a City restau- 
 rant a friend told me tales about his 
 children. 
 
 You hear a tune. It may not be a very 
 good tune, but some mystic quality therein 
 sets chords in your soul vibrating, and the 
 chords will not be silent until the tune has 
 been played over again, and sung to its 
 proper time, in the congregation or at the 
 Sunday fireside. ' Do play " Sound the 
 battle-cry," ' said Theodora last Sunday 
 evening. ' It is singing in my head all the 
 time, and I cannot get rid of it.' A few 
 weeks ago I heard a great musician say 
 precisely the same thing. Coleridge made 
 effective use of a similar mental experience 
 in his ' Rime of the Ancient Mariner.' 
 
 Day by day since the City dinner-hour 
 one of my friend's stories has been singing 
 
 43
 
 44 DOORWAYS 
 
 its quiet tune in my brain, and I cannot 
 get rid of it except by telling it to some- 
 body else. 
 
 Of what persuasion, male or female, the 
 wee bairn is, I do not know. But one day 
 its soul was disburdened of the thoughts 
 sighing for utterance in the following strange 
 version of a well-known hymn : 
 
 There is a happy lamb, 
 
 Far, far away, 
 Where saints in doorways stand 
 
 The rest of the verse I never heard for 
 laughing and crying and wondering. 
 
 Now, I strongly object to parodies of 
 sacred things, whether texts of Holy Scripture 
 or verses of scarcely less holy hymns. This 
 bairn's father and mother, I am sure, feel 
 just as strongly on such matters as any of 
 us. But this was no frolicsome parodying 
 of words consecrated by long use and tender 
 memories. On the contrary, it was a most 
 serious interpretation of something the child 
 had heard and thought about a various 
 reading of beautiful old words written on 
 the unsoiled tablet of a child's mind.
 
 DOORWAYS 45 
 
 Little Huldah she must be a prophetess, 
 and I must give her a name has begun to 
 see visions and dream dreams. What has 
 she seen ? What words has the angel, who 
 sees the face of the child's Father in heaven, 
 whispered in the ear of her soul ? Has she 
 seen the Lamb in the midst of the throne, 
 and the ' many mansions ' on the golden 
 street of the City, where the children play, 
 and the Holy Ones standing in the door- 
 ways doors that are never shut by day, for 
 there is no night there ? Has little Huldah 
 seen the Holy Ones in their white array, 
 and heard them singing their welcome to the 
 pilgrims who are weary of the night ? 
 
 I do not despair of discovering some great 
 thinker about the unseen, who will agree 
 with us that really little Huldah's version is 
 just as true as the original, and in some 
 ways a better reading. 
 
 There is a happy Lamb, 
 Far, far away. 
 
 Has He not entered into His joy ? Does 
 He not now see of the travail of His soul ?
 
 46 DOORWAYS 
 
 Why, for us, ever since John wrote the 
 Revelation, has all heaven been full of joy- 
 ful music ? Is not the Lamb that was slain 
 the Lamb that liveth again, and reigneth 
 in boundless power to save ? Is He not 
 the Light of the City, its Life, the Spring 
 of all its joy ? Child-like souls, like the 
 saintly Rutherford, understand these things. 
 It is not of heaven as a place they think, 
 so much as of Him who fills all heaven 
 with the joy of His presence. The ' happy 
 land, far, far away' is real, but how much 
 more real the 'happy Lamb,' who, in one 
 sense, is so far away, but in another sense 
 is very near ; just as heaven is near, lying 
 about the infancy of new-born souls, to 
 whom Jesus is all and in all. 
 
 Where saints in doorways stand. 
 
 We may be quite sure, for the teaching 
 of the New Testament is clear, though not 
 frequently expressed, that not only is the 
 Lamb waiting to receive to the place He 
 has prepared for them those who have 
 washed away their sins in His most precious
 
 DOORWAYS 47 
 
 blood, but the saints also are waiting. They 
 
 without us will not be made perfect. We 
 
 are encouraged to think of life far, far away 
 
 in song and picture, in dream and vision, 
 
 as well as in terms of sober theological 
 
 expression. ' Glory ' is vague. It conveys 
 
 to the mind of a little child nothing definite 
 
 unless it be a haze of brilliantly coloured 
 
 light, an Aurora Borealis, a summer evening 
 
 sunset over a silver sea. But a doorway 
 
 is so real. Is it not a refuge from the 
 
 pelting snowstorm and the bitter wind, from 
 
 the darkness of the night, from the perils 
 
 of street or moor ? Is it not an entrance 
 
 into the house that may be a castle, or a 
 
 mansion set in gardens, or a cottage home 
 
 where the fire burns brightly on the swept 
 
 hearth, and mother sits rocking the baby, 
 
 and father rests after the toils of the day, 
 
 and children play with whispered words ? 
 
 How is it possible for any child who has 
 
 heard her father or mother read at morning 
 
 prayer the beautiful words, ' In My Father's 
 
 house are many mansions,' not to picture 
 
 the scene ? She constructs a heaven in her
 
 48 DOORWAYS 
 
 imagination, and is encouraged to do so. 
 There is no possibility of conveying to her 
 mind at present just ideas of the unseen 
 world, except by help of imaginary scenes 
 and sounds. It is all a fairy story ; and yet, 
 like the best fairy stories, it is full to over- 
 flowing with truth and reality. You cannot 
 tell by any process of abstract reasoning 
 how much of the outer shell of the story 
 is real to the child ; nor can you tell how 
 far she perceives the inner life, and loses 
 the shell in the life. Every now and then 
 a burst of childish confidence makes thought- 
 ful mothers feel that, somehow, the children 
 understand the inner spiritual reality, and 
 that they actually care for it far more than 
 they care for the outer framework con- 
 structed by a vivid imagination. ' I thank 
 Thee, O Father, Lord of heaven and earth ' 
 of the unseen and of the seen 'because 
 Thou hast hid these things from the wise 
 and prudent, and hast revealed them unto 
 babes.' 
 
 Two men talked in the train. Asked 
 why he had chosen a certain London suburb
 
 DOORWAYS 49 
 
 as his future residence, one replied : 'It's 
 the people. The place is nothing, but hosts 
 of friends live there.' Nothing that you 
 read about heaven makes you care greatly 
 to go there. The charm is the company, 
 not the place. ' That where I am, there 
 ye may be also.' Hymns of long ago that 
 gave luscious descriptions of heaven do not 
 appeal to you except by their quaintness. 
 But to sing * What are these arrayed in 
 white, Brighter than the noon-day sun,' 
 or 'There all the ship's company meet, 
 Who sailed with our Saviour beneath,' 
 
 And if our fellowship below 
 
 In Jesus be so sweet, 
 What heights of rapture shall we know 
 
 When round His throne we meet 
 
 these hymns of our own people stir one's 
 pulses, as they say ' Home, sweet home ' 
 does in distant lands. Why do English 
 people like Tennyson's hymn, ' Sunset and 
 evening star ' ? Some say there is nothing 
 in it except a jingle of words. I differ. It 
 contains one phrase which alone accounts 
 for its popularity : ' I hope to see my Pilot 
 
 D
 
 50 DOORWAYS 
 
 face to face, When I have crossed the 
 bar. 1 
 
 Little Huldah's vision of heaven, with ' A 
 happy Lamb, far, far away/ and saints in 
 doorways standing, ' bright, bright as day,' 
 is not far removed from Charles Wesley's 
 vision, or from St. John's. 
 
 On a dark, draughty railway platform, I 
 ran against a friend who spends all the time 
 he can spare from business among the poor, 
 the lonely, the tempted. Presently the train 
 whirled us into sulphurous tunnels. But the 
 carriage was lit by something better than 
 electric lamps. I looked into my friend's 
 face, and heard, above the tunnel-roar, the 
 sweet voice of my little prophetess singing 
 1 Bright, bright as day.' 
 
 Said he, ' I sometimes feel a bit down- 
 hearted, but I never let them see it. No, it 
 would not do. You must face them with a 
 smiling face.' They do come to the open 
 doorway in which he stands the most lost 
 of them, sodden old men, and dreary women, 
 and crowds of children whose only play- 
 ground is the muddy street. And many a
 
 DOORWAYS 51 
 
 little corner in that heaven-in-hell has its 
 miniature mansions, and in their way they, 
 too, are ' halls of Zion ' 
 
 All jubilant with song ; 
 
 And bright with many an angel 
 
 and the next line is not all untrue 
 
 And all the martyr throng ; 
 
 but the next is absolutely true, as Huldah 
 would tell you if, with her seeing eyes, she 
 visited those tiny halls of Zion 
 
 The Prince is ever in them ; 
 The daylight is serene. 
 
 These little mansions in the Father's 
 house on earth, which the Lamb always pre- 
 pares when the people adore Him, have 
 much in common with the heavenly places of 
 the child's song. It is true of them also 
 
 And saints in doorways stand 
 Bright, bright as day. 
 
 Churches, class-meetings, Sunday schools, 
 have their doorways. Suppose the ' saints ' 
 who stand in the doorways have scowling 
 faces, will even the weariest pilgrims care to 
 come in ?
 
 52 DOORWAYS 
 
 Some who call themselves ' Followers of 
 the Lamb ' shut to the door, and bolt it, and 
 look out through prison-barred openings, 
 their faces black as night. Is it wonderful 
 that their houses are left unto them de- 
 solate ? Would little Huldah come in, or 
 the Prodigal Son, or broken-hearted Peter, 
 or the woman that was a sinner ? 
 
 Ah ! Huldah, my dear, perhaps just now 
 you have nothing better than a doll's house. 
 Well, keep it clean and cosy. Set the door 
 wide open. If anybody wishes to give you 
 a doll, ask them to buy a little one, with a 
 smiling face and shining hair. Call her 
 Mercy, and let her stand in the doorway. 
 And, Huldah dear, sing! 'Sing unto the 
 Lord a new song.' And pass what I am 
 saying on to father and mother, and all the 
 ministers in your circuit. And, especially 
 just now, be sure you pass it on, or beg 
 father to pass it on, to all the saints who are 
 going to stand in the doorway of the Mis- 
 sionary Church. It is no manner of use for 
 any class-leader to talk to his members about 
 Foreign Missions, or for any canvasser to
 
 DOORWAYS 53 
 
 knock at anybody's door, unless he has 
 been far, far away, up into the mountain of 
 God, and has there seen the King in His 
 beauty, and has caught the radiance of His 
 hope and joy and love. 
 
 There is nothing in all its work that 
 Methodism more needs to-day than this 
 wisdom that came to my friend's little child 
 who knows ? as a message, it may be, for 
 you and me 
 
 And saints in doorways stand 
 Bright, bright as day.
 
 SAP 
 
 THERE is a touch of spring in the air. 
 For the first time these many weeks 
 the sun is shining. A week ago snow 
 lay on the garden, and sleet drove through 
 the black fruit trees. This morning there 
 are six primrose blooms in the south border, 
 and crocus buds are showing above the 
 sodden earth. The other day I met a little 
 maid. From her pocket she produced three 
 snowdrops, the spoils of a sheltered garden 
 facing the sea. Yes, the spring is coming, 
 and after spring, summer. 
 
 We are saved by hope. Through dreary 
 days of winter, when the wind wails requiems 
 for withered leaves, and cheerful flowers with 
 bees for lovers are no more, Hope shines 
 and sings, and we know that for every dead 
 leaf there will one day be two living leaves, 
 and that the flowers through death will bring 
 forth life, and life more abundant. 
 
 54
 
 SAP 55 
 
 Out of the noisy City I turned, this after- 
 noon, into an alley that runs by the side of 
 an ancient graveyard in which are trees, and 
 ivied walls, and a grey old church tower that 
 stands alone. Up in one of the leafless trees 
 perched a great chorus of sparrows in full 
 song. They were singing their evening 
 hymn before the hush of night fell. The 
 song filled all the enclosure with a very 
 madness of joy and love. As I passed out 
 of the alley where the city sparrows have 
 ' found a house/ my eye caught the name, in 
 white enamel, ' Star Alley/ Why did men 
 so call it ? Was the old church tower used 
 as an observatory, from which, long ago, 
 they watched the stars ? Or did white star- 
 wort grow in profusion over the graves of 
 the dead ? Anyhow, the sparrow-chorus 
 and the star-name helped that touch of 
 spring in the air that sets everybody to-day 
 cheerfully shaking hands. 
 
 At the turn of the year, when the sap 
 begins to rise, how responsive are all living 
 things ! Even the old renew their youth, 
 desiring to sing a new song unto the Lord,
 
 56 SAP 
 
 and everything that hath life, birds and 
 trees and bees, and creatures you cannot see 
 except with a glass, lift up their hearts 
 and want to begin over again the cycle of 
 their lives. 
 
 I paid a visit just now to the library, 
 searching for the paper on which these lines 
 are written. Swathed in borrowed robes 
 stood a girl's cycle, being there for safety 
 and dryness. It also has upon it the touch 
 of spring. The owner used the implements 
 of girlish toil to such purpose and, I am 
 bound to acknowledge, her tongue also that 
 the old winter-rusted, mud-splashed cycle 
 returned from the cycle-mender's restored 
 and resplendent. It awaits the spring morn- 
 ings and the long summer evenings. 
 
 On the table by my side lies a rosy-lipped 
 doll, with tiny leather boots, and red stock- 
 ings, and a white lace frock, and sky-blue 
 mantilla, and sash and hood. To-morrow 
 another Ruth, who also belongs to the 
 harvest field and to the ' everlasting wings/ 
 will come to nurse the doll, and will lay her 
 in the blue-lined cot, with real sheets and
 
 SAP 57 
 
 blankets and pillows. Is not this also the 
 touch of spring ? 
 
 The coming of a little child into a house, 
 whether on a visit or for ay, what an event 
 it is ! What a new beginning for everybody ! 
 One fact always impresses. The more 
 Christian the atmosphere into which a little 
 child comes, the more potent its influence. 
 The book that Isaiah wrote is more quoted 
 than any other book of the Bible, except the 
 Psalms and the Gospels. One of the most 
 quoted sentences in Isaiah is the one which 
 describes a little child as leading. But it is 
 not the wild creatures in their wildness that 
 follow. They have all fallen wild and tame 
 together under the spells of righteousness 
 and meekness ; and the wolf dwells with the 
 lamb, and the leopard lies down with the 
 kid, and the calf and the young lion and 
 the fatling together ; ' and a little child shall 
 lead them/ This touch of spring, with its 
 freshness, and delicate beauty, and subtle 
 power overman and beast, over trade and 
 commerce, over things good and noxious, 
 great and small, how quickly it would vanish
 
 58 SAP 
 
 before blustering winds and sleet showers ! 
 How easily are the songs of childhood 
 hushed, and its joys withered, and its 
 influence for good in our homes perished ! 
 
 On Saturday afternoon I went to the 
 children's Bible festival in the Albert Hail. 
 It was wonderful to see that vast hall 
 crowded with children and their parents, 
 and to hear them sing ' Tell me the old, old 
 story.' One of the Royal Princesses a lady 
 whose days are spent in good works cut 
 the great Bible Society birthday cake. 
 The Lord Mayor and a brave show of City 
 grandeur graced the platform. It was 
 indeed a meeting that will long be re- 
 membered. But the most impressive sight 
 of all was not the splendour of London City, 
 or the white-robed choir, or even the kindly 
 face of the good Princess ; but a little blind 
 boy. Whilst we sang the first hymn the 
 child came forward with his Blind Bible. 
 He laid it on the table near the Marquis- 
 President, found the place, and, as soon as 
 the hymn ceased, began to read. One of 
 his readings was this : ' And the blind and
 
 SAP 59 
 
 the lame came to Him in the temple, 
 and He healed them. And when the chief 
 priests and scribes saw the wonderful things 
 that He did, and the children crying in the 
 temple, and saying, Hosanna to the Son of 
 David, they were sore displeased, and they 
 said unto Him, Hearest Thou what these 
 say ? And Jesus said unto them, Yea, have 
 ye never read, Out of the mouths of babes 
 and sucklings Thou hast perfected praise ? ' 
 
 As the child-voice reading these words 
 stole penetratingly through the vast hall- 
 spaces, there came also the mystic breath 
 of the good south wind that brings the touch 
 of spring, and makes the sap rise, and drives 
 away winterly moroseness and fretfulness, 
 and draws men together in brotherhood, 
 because it brings them nearer to the Father 
 of all. The voice of the blind boy recalls 
 what was happening a hundred years ago 
 here in England, when, under the spells of 
 a new springtide, the sweet flowers of God's 
 garden bloomed afresh, and ferocious ani- 
 mosities among His children were so far 
 allayed that Isaiah's picture once more came
 
 60 SAP 
 
 true. Christian men were too busy with 
 evangelisms and philanthropies, and the 
 gathering of the blind and lame to Jesus 
 in the temple, to bite and devour any more, 
 and therefore it was that, as Mr. Paton said, 
 ' a little child led them.' 
 
 This present time may seem to many a 
 time of fierceness. The blast of winter 
 has withered. The Beautiful Gate of the 
 Temple is crowded with frowning faces. 
 The still small voice is lost in the roar of 
 whirlwinds and the crash of earthquakes. 
 The Lord within sorrowfully waits until 
 once more the blind and lame come to Him. 
 Outside, among Christian Churches the wind 
 blusters, the sleet drives. But into the midst 
 of it has come the touch of spring, the dawn 
 of a new day, the peace of God, the leading, 
 in the greatest of all the religious societies, 
 of a little child, ' and the suckling plays at 
 the hole of the asp, and the weaned child 
 lays its hand on the basilisk's den.' 
 
 Will ye interpret, O my masters ?
 
 A 'PINNY' 
 
 THE child sat in her high chair at 
 the breakfast-table. The most con- 
 spicuous portion of her morning toilet, 
 and to my thinking the prettiest, was a blue 
 cotton pinny striped with white. 
 
 ' That's Yorkshire,' I remarked. I might 
 have added 'West Riding.' 
 
 'Yes,' retorted her mother, 'and thereby 
 hangs a tale/ 
 
 ' Tell it ! ' And everybody listened, for 
 in our house everybody loves a tale, down 
 to the maid who ought to have been 'in 
 the garden hanging out the clothes.' 
 
 The story proved to be neither a tragedy 
 nor a comedy, but a simple incident in 
 humble life. 
 
 ' One of our mothers in the Mission wanted 
 to give Baby Ruth a present. She was poor, 
 and had nothing to give, as she thought, 
 61
 
 62 'A PINNY' 
 
 worthy of the child's acceptance. So she 
 went out and did a day's work, and with 
 her wage bought this pinny.' And as the 
 tale was told, the pinny became ' all-glorious,' 
 like the clothing of a queen's daughter. 
 
 I sometimes think there are no children 
 around whom more love has gathered than 
 the children of ministers, and most of all 
 the children of Methodist ministers, whose 
 lot is cast among the poor. If nurseries 
 could be ransacked, how many pathetic little 
 tokens of a great love would be discovered ! 
 'The Mission baby!' How often in recent 
 years have I heard the words, and seen hard 
 hands stretched out to touch the gift sent 
 by the good God into the minister's busy 
 home, and into the fellowship of his service 
 for the lost and the neediest! I think of 
 country circuits, where everybody knows 
 everybody, and nothing that happens in any 
 house can be hid. If the minister, or, worse 
 still, the minister's wife, should live aloof 
 in lonely pride, and the children should be 
 jealously guarded from contact with the 
 sympathetic humanities of lowly family circles,
 
 A 'PINNY* 63 
 
 what becomes of the sermons preached from 
 pulpits, and words of wisdom spoken when 
 ' tickets ' are given ? They wander echo- 
 like in the dreary interspaces of half-empty 
 pews and forms, finding no lodgement in 
 human hearts. One would cherish the 
 belief that such misfits are rare. Indeed, 
 as I write these words, no instance of so 
 melancholy and disastrous a failure in a 
 Methodist preacher's family life comes to 
 my remembrance out of recent experience. 
 For reasons not difficult to understand, 
 Methodism is becoming not less, but more 
 and more homely. No fuss is made about 
 it. No Synod, as yet, has invented a 
 schedule in which to tabulate the assets 
 and results of Methodist friendliness the 
 number of people in town and village 
 societies who know almost as much about 
 'our minister' as his own mother, who are 
 fairly well posted in the domestic joys and 
 sorrows of the good man's wife, and could 
 pass a creditable examination in the names 
 and ages, the ailments and rogueries, of 
 their children. The last sentence describes
 
 64 A 'PINNY' 
 
 the first line only in the hypothetical 
 schedule. The remaining lines would be 
 barring their straightness like the outer 
 and indefinitely extending rings in a deep, 
 still pool when a stone is thrown into 
 the water. Can any one estimate with 
 approximate accuracy how far-reaching is 
 the influence of a home where the Master is 
 a frequent visitor, and the door is always ' on 
 the sneck/ and the windows are not frosted, 
 and there is always a cup and saucer for 
 one more, and, though there may be many 
 sorrows, there are no secrets ? Can any 
 man living count or measure the influences 
 of such a home ? 
 
 Last Sunday I worshipped in a kind of 
 town-village congregation. When the Bene- 
 diction had closed the service, the people 
 fell into little groups, whispering one to 
 another in friendly greeting. The minister's 
 wife had with her a little boy, who became 
 the centre of one such group. The preacher 
 shook hands with him. His face became 
 radiant with gladness as there fell to his lot 
 words of kindness from neighbourly people.
 
 A 'PINNY' 65 
 
 Outside rose the roofed shell of a stately 
 church, into which, presently, the hall-con- 
 gregation will migrate. Until quite lately 
 there was nothing but a grass field no hall, 
 no congregation, no Sunday school, no 
 Wesley Guild, no likelihood of a church, 
 stately or otherwise. I have wondered since 
 Sunday morning whether these things ever 
 would have been but for the subtle and all 
 but omnipotent compulsions of Methodist 
 friendliness. Some churches are built up 
 on the immeasurable popularity and mighty 
 preaching of one man. Others never, or 
 only fitfully, share in helpfulness of this 
 kind. Nevertheless, they rise, and grow, 
 and gather golden sheaves, and in quiet 
 ways distil aromatic fragrances, and become 
 nurseries of influence that never dies. Such 
 churches, be they big or little, are like rivers 
 of God that never run dry, and are always 
 kind to men and birds and fish. Like 
 Tennyson's brook, they sing 
 
 Men may come, and men may go, 
 But I go on for ever. 
 
 The church of the little boy with a 
 
 E
 
 66 A 'PINNY' 
 
 laughing face and wondering eyes had its 
 remote beginning in a great burst of tender- 
 ness and friendship. I heard the man who 
 built the hall, and who is doing not a little 
 towards the building of the stately church, 
 say that years ago, in the black days of the 
 Lancashire Cotton Famine, he read stories 
 of the sorrow and suffering, and, having 
 seven and sixpence in his pocket all that 
 he had he gave it. Truly there are 
 memories in Methodist families more 
 precious than rubies. 
 
 A baby's pinny ! You consider this, 
 madam, if, indeed, you have had the patience 
 to read thus far a babyish subject. I 
 heartily agree with your criticism. But may 
 I deprecate your scorn ? May I ask you to 
 consider again ? Time was, madam, when 
 you, too, were as infantile as little Ruth, and 
 wore pinnies, and played with dolls, and, 
 because of your baby ways, filled all the 
 house with new interest, kindling afresh fires 
 of love and joy and concern. Is not a 
 baby the springhead of a hundred little loves 
 and joys, and hopes and fears ? Are these
 
 A 'PINNY' 67 
 
 of no account in older human lives ? Do 
 they contribute nothing towards the making 
 or re-making of grown-up lives ? And 
 therefore to the making or re-making of 
 Churches, States, schools of science or 
 philosophy ? Read books of biography 
 Arnold of Rugby, Charles Kingsley, Lewis 
 Carroll, Queen Victoria, or, the last and 
 greatest of all, Morley's Life of Gladstone. 
 And when you have exercised your thinking 
 faculties by the space of one year in the 
 study of these books, or the like, ask your- 
 self what these personages would have been, 
 and what England and all the British Empire 
 would have been, if all the influences that 
 belonged strictly to little children had not 
 played upon the harpsichord strings of those 
 great lives during their most formative 
 years. 
 
 Why did Jesus so earnestly say, 'Suffer 
 the little children to come unto Me'? 
 Luke doctor, historian, man of accurate 
 words and vivid picturing uses a word that 
 transforms these particular children into 
 babies: 'And they brought unto Him also
 
 68 A 'PINNY' 
 
 their babies' too young to be taught 
 'that He should touch them.' But this is 
 the special question I desire to ask. Was 
 it for their sake only that He said, ' Suffer 
 them to come' ? Or for their sake, for His 
 own, and for the sake of the disciples them- 
 selves? If the babes needed Him, did not 
 He need them ? And did not His disciples 
 need them ? I overleap the centuries. 
 There rises before me the picture of a 
 Methodist mission in a crowded city. The 
 responsibility falls upon a young minister. 
 In the midst of the wildest rush of work and 
 anxiety that, in these modern days, ever fell 
 upon a Methodist preacher, God sends into 
 his little home a baby boy, and then another, 
 and another, and yet another. And, as the 
 years pass, I see the little children creeping, 
 all unconsciously, into multitudinous lives. 
 There is no one, no matter how poor, or 
 sorrowful, or in need of the Master's miracle- 
 working, who does not know something 
 about * our minister's boys.' Even the angels 
 in heaven, do they fully understand how much, 
 for the sake of the man and his wife and
 
 A 'PINNY' 69 
 
 their comrades in service, and for the sake 
 of all the work that had to be done from 
 day to day, the Master Himself needed 
 those little children ? 
 
 I read over again what has been written 
 on the first sheet of paper lying on my blot- 
 ting-pad. It is, I fear, an utterly inadequate 
 representation of the child's 'pinny.' Did 
 you ever know a man who had a gift for 
 seeing, let alone describing, the details of 
 the attire of bride, mother, or baby ? This 
 pinny, in particular, is not to be thought of 
 as sixpennyworth of blue striped calico 
 shaped and stitched together, but, as in truth 
 it is, a beautiful and relatively costly outer 
 garment. At this pofnt you, madam, are 
 sorely tempted to ask a question that I beg 
 to remind you is ancient ' Wherefore this 
 waste ? ' Would not the price of the 'pinny* 
 have been better spent on something less 
 decorative and more useful ? Do you re- 
 member the answer our Lord made to that 
 question, when all the room was filled with 
 the fragrance of the spikenard, and the
 
 70 A 'PINNY' 
 
 fragments of the precious alabaster box lay 
 about His feet ? Will you take all the 
 poetry, all the extravagance of heavenly- 
 mindedness and self-sacrifice out of the lives 
 of the poor ? Will you sternly forbid them 
 ever to indulge in any mad profusion of love 
 for Christ, and Christ's disciples, and Christ's 
 work in a prodigality that the world will 
 stigmatize as reckless ? Some of us give of 
 our abundance, perhaps give largely, yet 
 within a few days we are not conscious of 
 any pinch of poverty as the result of our 
 giving. But even now, in these more 
 matter-of-fact times, there are men and 
 women who give their all, and give it not 
 always in forms more utilitarian than the 
 gift of the woman, who chose the better 
 part, the part that her Lord would not 
 allow Judas or anybody else to take away 
 from her.
 
 PALS 
 
 YOU do not like this title ? You call it 
 slang. 
 
 Should the title seriously disturb 
 your equanimity, cross it out, and substitute 
 ' Chums/ or ' Mates.' Either will serve 
 almost, though not quite, equally well. 
 Only, in all honesty, I am bound to warn 
 you that the preferred titles also are slang, 
 as, indeed, are not a few of the most 
 picturesque words of our English tongue. 
 If words have come to us from the Latins 
 or the Greeks, we count them in the peerage 
 of language. Norman-French also is in 
 honour, and, of late years, Saxon, Celtic, 
 Sanscrit. Is Gipsy, or Romany, less ancient, 
 or, for the matter of that, less honourable 
 than some of these ? Possibly not. At all 
 events, ' Pal ' is pure Gipsy. Perhaps, if 
 you made a careful philological and historical 
 
 71
 
 72 PALS 
 
 study of this word, that has come to us fresh 
 from the gipsy tents, you would find for it 
 astonishing affinities and heraldic quarter- 
 ings rivalling the shields of German prince- 
 lings. But that is not our business just 
 now. 
 
 On my way to the new railway station 
 early one Saturday morning, I bestowed a 
 halfpenny on an intercepting newsboy, re- 
 ceiving in exchange one of the news rivals 
 that are striving to do for half the price 
 what used to cost a penny. After reading 
 the tidings of the day, I alighted on one of 
 those tit-bits of natural history with which 
 most of the popular newspapers spice their 
 columns. 
 
 A large jelly-fish, examined, will be found 
 to contain a number of small white shrimps 
 with brilliant green eyes. They feed on 
 the little living creatures captured by the 
 stinging tentacles of the jelly-fish, yet they 
 themselves are not stung. It is said that this 
 particular shrimp is never found except in this 
 strange partnership. The two creatures are 
 chums, mates wandering, tent-dwelling
 
 PALS 73 
 
 gipsy pals. Living together, they both 
 make provision for the next season, and 
 then, as the chills of autumn fall upon the 
 sea, they both die. If you have eyes to 
 see, and any soul of poetry, you will not 
 object to the quotation of a text over their 
 evanishment ' Lovely and pleasant in their 
 lives, in death they were not divided.' 
 
 Once I saw a similar palship. It was on 
 a hot summer's day, in the mouth of one of 
 the numberless caves that pierce the rocky 
 base of Sark. A fisherman, his boat, a 
 couple of zinc pails, a basket of wide- 
 mouthed bottles, a dredge, a tow-net, a 
 quiet sea, and a sunshine that pierced the 
 crystal green water to deep places where 
 long weed - fronds waved in the shore 
 currents such was the equipment for an 
 excursion in search of anything curious, or 
 terrible, or beautiful. 
 
 The first oddity on which we alighted was 
 a jelly-fish. I can see it now, with its long 
 fringe of tentacles, and its breast richly 
 coloured and palpitating. As the shadow 
 of the dipping-pail fell athwart the creature,
 
 74 PALS 
 
 I saw with no little astonishment a shoal of 
 tiny fishes flash like gleams of silver through 
 the fringed tentacles into the safe shelter of 
 the dome-like crystalline tent. When the 
 bucket of clean sea-water, to which the 
 Medusa was transferred, had stood undis- 
 turbed for a while, the fishes swam out into 
 the open ; but when a hand, however gently, 
 touched the surface of the water, the wee 
 fishes fled in terror to their foster-mother, 
 who sheltered them from danger as a hen 
 gathereth her chickens under her wings. It 
 was a pretty picture, and worth a journey 
 all the way to Sark to see. The fisherman 
 assured me that the friendship between the 
 two was quite common. They were pals. 
 
 Many similar and even stranger friendships 
 may be seen. 
 
 A huge mussel lay among the ' rubbish ' 
 at the bottom of a fisherman's boat. I 
 opened it with some difficulty. Inside the 
 strong shells was the soft, creamy builder 
 and owner thereof, fat and flourishing, en- 
 joying the best of health. And nestling in 
 the midst lay a jovial little crab. Lest you
 
 PALS 75 
 
 should do yourself the injustice of wrong- 
 fully accusing me of truthless romance, I 
 will give you the scientific name of this 
 crab. Naturalists call it Pinnotheres. This 
 is what they soberly and scientifically say 
 about it : 
 
 * The pinnothere is a brigand who causes 
 himself to be followed by the cavern which 
 he inhabits, and which opens only at a 
 well-known watchword. The association 
 redounds to the advantage of both ; the 
 remains of food which the pinnothere 
 abandons are seized upon by the mollusc.' 
 The crab is well furnished with fishing 
 tackle and hunting weapons. His host pro- 
 vides him with a travelling caravan, ambush, 
 robber's cave, from which he can rush out 
 on his unsuspecting prey, and to which he 
 can return in safety. Then comes the rent- 
 audit, which, as on land and in higher spheres 
 of life, is a dinner shared by landlord and 
 tenant. They are not enemies, but friends 
 gipsy pals, or, to use the term accepted 
 by naturalists, ' messmates.' Do you crave 
 a stately Latin title ? Then here it is
 
 76 PALS 
 
 1 Commensalists.' Any boy with a dictionary 
 will tell you its meaning. 
 
 We think of Nature as cruel red in tooth 
 and claw, living by rapine, waging ruthless 
 war. But not always is Nature thus. Nor 
 is the other side so scantily illustrated as 
 some would imagine. On land, among birds 
 and beasts and insects, there are friendships 
 quite idyllic, and not always to be accounted 
 for by self-seeking or even mutual advantage. 
 But you must search the waters which still, 
 as at the beginning, bring forth so abundantly 
 for the most striking examples of pal- 
 ship. 
 
 The fisherman out of whose boat I took 
 the mussel that housed the crab helped me 
 the same day to find a bewildering assort- 
 ment of little sea-beasts dwelling together 
 in joyful and helpful friendship. Many of 
 them loved a roving life, and were depen- 
 dent on the kindly offices of neighbours for 
 power to gratify their itinerant instincts. 
 Oddly enough, those neighbours were not 
 always mild-mannered vegetarians, or Quaker- 
 like people, opposed on principle to fighting
 
 PALS 77 
 
 and to blood-curdling methods of house- 
 keeping. Often they were the most ram- 
 pant, riotous, murdering, voracious creatures 
 anywhere in the shallow seas to be found. 
 But even they seemed to have a better 
 side. 
 
 You may say that nowhere in the great 
 water-world can life be discovered that gives 
 * something for nothing ' ; that always, if you 
 could get behind the scenery of these queer 
 friendships, there would be discovered some 
 law of mutual gain or comfort governing the 
 friendly actions or tolerances not only of 
 crabs and mussels, but also of sea-worms 
 and barnacles and zoophytes. It may be 
 so, but I am bound in simple justice to 
 say that sometimes it is very difficult to 
 discover the law. In some instances one 
 is driven back upon that love of beauty, 
 or, if you prefer it, of coloured and graceful 
 finery which seems to be inseparable from 
 Nature, prevailing in unlikely places and 
 producing astonishing effects. One of the 
 first things I picked out of the fisherman's 
 trawl-net, when it came up from the sea-floor
 
 78 PALS 
 
 under the shadow of great chalk rocks, 
 was a crab with fin-like claws. It was about 
 the size of a five-shilling piece. Its eye- 
 stalks glittered like jewels. Its back was 
 like a miniature Devonshire cottage garden. 
 Every atom of space was covered with 
 weeds and zoophytes, brilliantly coloured 
 and teeming with life. As I write these 
 words of poor description there comes back 
 a picture which the first sight of this 
 wandering crab-garden suggested. It was 
 the picture of a London costermonger's 
 hand-barrow in the early morning of a 
 summer's day a barrow fresh from Covent 
 Garden. And I could hear the not un- 
 musical cry of the coster ' All a-growing 
 and a-blowing ! ' 
 
 A Cockney coster is a shrewd man of 
 business. Whatever his special line, he 
 always has an eye to the main chance. Yet 
 he, not less, but perhaps on the whole 
 rather more, than his millionaire brother who 
 deals in diamonds and gilt-edged stock, has 
 a soul sensitive to beauty, and by no means 
 strange to the virtue and poetry of palship.
 
 PALS 79 
 
 If the Leysian powers appointed me dictator- 
 in-chief over the arrangements connected 
 with public worship in the great Leysian 
 Hall which the Prince and Princess of 
 Wales so cheerfully opened, I would go 
 straight to the delightful buildings hard by, 
 where the costers dwell, and I would ask 
 the men and their wives to appoint a com- 
 mittee that week by week would make itself 
 responsible for the floral adornment of the 
 platform. They, probably, would appoint 
 a sub-committee of flower-girls to assist in 
 the business. If you want to know how the 
 work would be done, make a tour of London 
 streets, and examine the coster barrows with 
 flowers, fruit, garden food, or, if you like, 
 fish. They make pretty pictures, as my 
 camera has discovered. And I am 'fond 
 and foolish ' enough to believe that it is not 
 greed of gain, merely or chiefly, that 
 accounts for the gifts of order, taste in 
 colour, and sense of beauty that so largely 
 prevails among the lowlier denizens of these 
 deep places of London life. 
 
 Nor is the palship of coster life selfish.
 
 8o PALS 
 
 That it is helpful, here as everywhere else 
 in all worlds of creaturely life, no careful 
 observer can fail to see. But mutual help- 
 fulness does not destroy friendship, or even 
 lessen the possibilities of unselfish self- 
 sacrifice. It rather fosters an atmosphere 
 in which the noblest friendships may thrive. 
 Was Abraham less truly the friend of God 
 because at the call of the Most High God, 
 Possessor of heaven and earth, he promptly 
 came up to the help of the Lord, to the help 
 of the Lord against the mighty? You say 
 such a question, on the face of it, is absurd. 
 It was in a faithful discharge of duty to God 
 and duty to his neighbour that Abraham 
 graduated for the twin degrees surely the 
 highest honours ever conferred ' F. F.' and 
 1 F. G.' Father of the Faithful and Friend 
 of God. Is not this the noblest conceivable 
 development of fellowship ? 
 
 You say, Why mix up these high things 
 with such low, common, not to say vulgar 
 things as crabs, and jelly-fish, and gipsies, 
 and costers, and shall I go on climbing 
 the ladder? For it is a ladder, from the
 
 PALS 81 
 
 lowest up to the highest. Have you for- 
 gotten the lesson drilled into the soul of the 
 greatest of all fishermen at the outset of his 
 world-wide work ? Have you never stood 
 gazing into ' a certain vessel as if it were a 
 great sheet let down by four corners^ upon 
 the earth : wherein were all manner of four- 
 footed beasts and creeping things of the 
 earth and fowls of the heaven ' ? Did 
 Peter think of his old fishing-net and its 
 lessons when the voice came to him again 
 and again, ' What God hath cleansed, call 
 not thou common ' ? I cling lovingly to the 
 fact that the four-footed beasts and creeping 
 things belong not only to the earth, but also 
 to the heavens. They came to Peter from 
 thence, and they went back again. There is a 
 great cabinet, or museum, or zoological collec- 
 tion, or aquarium full of sea beasties, or some- 
 thing answering to these things somewhere up 
 in God's great heavens, which Theodora, and 
 all the rest of the boys, and girls, and men, 
 and women who have learnt to love Nature 
 and all the creatures of God will be able one 
 day to study more perfectly than they have 
 
 F
 
 82 PALS 
 
 ever been able to study them here on earth. 
 Does not the last book in the Bible put its 
 great seal upon the truth that the archetypal 
 creatures are as truly before the Throne of 
 God as are the four-and-twenty elders or 
 the innumerable company of redeemed souls ? 
 
 A friend of mine sallied forth one night to 
 march through slum streets, that at the end 
 of his journey he might proclaim the glad 
 tidings to the poor and the lost and the 
 lonely ones. As he slowly marched along 
 the busy street he felt a little hand creeping 
 into his hand, and presently, when he looked 
 down, he saw a dirty but eager little face 
 gazing up into his face. 
 
 ' Preacher ? ' 
 
 ' Yes ; what is it ? ' 
 
 ' You and me is pals, isn't we ? ' 
 
 And my friend gripped the little hand 
 more firmly. The slum child had touched 
 the deepest springs, the true philosophy of 
 the boundless success of the greatest Mission 
 to the lowest strata of human society known 
 in these modern times.
 
 THE MOUND 
 
 ON chill autumnal mornings the levels 
 are a white sea of mist, and the 
 Mound, rising out of the mimic sea, is 
 crowned with sunshine. 
 
 Who raised the Mound no man knows with 
 any certainty. It may have been Nature, or 
 Romans, or Ancient Britons, or races of a 
 remoter age races who, as we know from 
 their monuments elsewhere, wrought mightily 
 in stone and earth. Perhaps all played their 
 part and shared the glory. 
 
 There are deep trenches, and the fading 
 suspicion of a moat, and an old-world wind- 
 mill, and the remains of ancient woods and 
 gardens. One can easily imagine that, from 
 age to age in earlier times, the Essex moun- 
 tain was known and wholesomely feared as 
 a strongly fortified post dominating all the 
 plain down to the estuary of the Thames. 
 
 83
 
 84 THE MOUND 
 
 We climbed the Mound in the early 
 morning, before the world in general had 
 awoke, hoping to see those Military Man- 
 oeuvres concerning which every one in 
 Essex was talking. Boys and girls eagerly 
 scanned the newspapers for information. 
 Shopkeepers hoped that quite a burst of 
 trade might come to enrich the dull times 
 upon which they had fallen. Strains of 
 martial music echoing at nightfall among the 
 trees and cottages of our lane raised hopes 
 doomed to ignominious ending in the 
 peaceful town band. As we forced our way 
 through blackberry bushes and scrambled 
 up wet slopes in peril of involuntary to- 
 bogganing into a Roman trench, we cheered 
 the ascent with visions of battalions and 
 batteries ploughing their weary way through 
 Chelmsford mud, and wondered whether we 
 should see the clash of arms between Red 
 and Blue, or hear the thunder of Sir John 
 French's artillery. But the only manoeuvres 
 visible were our own exploits in negotiating 
 perilous heights, and the deploying of a 
 flock of black and brown pullets on the
 
 THE MOUND 85 
 
 ancient meadow where white mushrooms 
 grow. 
 
 Presently a rumble in the distance revived 
 our dying hopes. Out of the fog rolled an 
 early morning train. We were surely about 
 to witness the siege of our village station, 
 the capture of the railway communications, 
 the cutting of telegraph wires, the storming 
 of the Mound by a mountain battery. But, 
 alas ! the train was empty, and as it wheeled 
 and whistled its way through fields and 
 hedgerows towards the great city, nothing 
 more exciting was left than the village milk- 
 cart and a farmer's wagon. 
 
 The Boy was crestfallen because the 
 strategic manipulations of opposing forces, 
 which he had laboriously elaborated from 
 newspapers brought from town by indulgent 
 friends, remained unfulfilled. He had 
 hoped to lead his mother and sisters to 
 selected places in country lanes from which, 
 in perfect safety, over white gates or through 
 hedge gaps, they might see the marching of 
 khaki hosts, the planting of guns, and the 
 charging of cavalry. Alas ! his experience
 
 86 THE MOUND 
 
 of military manoeuvres had, perforce, to be 
 limited to the disinterment of more or less 
 complete battalions in red lead from a huge 
 playbox carefully stowed away under mis- 
 cellaneous household chattels in the garden 
 shed the survivors of mythical campaigns 
 in many lands. With these he instructed 
 his little sisters in the mystery of militarism, 
 and wiled away the wet hours of that woful 
 day during which soldiers Red and Blue 
 were tramping far away through the Essex 
 lanes. 
 
 The military history of the Mound not 
 proving satisfactory, and there being no 
 record that Wesley ever preached there, we 
 turned our attention to its natural history. 
 
 On a sunny morning we explored the 
 Mound, and held communion with its 
 earliest builder, who leaves her traces in 
 hedgerows and pools and grassy slopes. 
 The deepest trench on the windmill side has 
 at its western end a long pool, mostly, at 
 this time of the year, green with ivy-leaved 
 duckweed the beautiful Lemna trisulca, out 
 of which spring tufts of reeds and rushes.
 
 THE MOUND 87 
 
 We had brought an extemporized net, with 
 baskets for flowers and fruits, and bottles 
 for the wee beasties we hoped to capture. 
 When the first sweep of the net under the 
 floating duckweed brought up a tiny newt 
 with fringed gills and a flat tail that waved 
 in terror, the Boy was greatly elated, and 
 oracularly declared his determination to ' go 
 in for this.' My experience of him is that 
 he responds to every appeal of Nature, no 
 matter from what height or depth or remote 
 corner it may come. He has constructed 
 an elaborate dwelling-place for snakes, re- 
 moved beyond the reach of neighbours' cats, 
 and equally beyond the reach of baby fingers 
 that might investigate the glittering pets to 
 the alarm of mothers and to the still greater 
 alarm of the pets themselves. He will 
 tramp lonely miles to the banks underneath 
 the woods that crown Benfleet on the chance 
 of finding snakes. The workmen in brick- 
 fields hard by, if they chance to alight on an 
 abnormally big adder or grass snake or slow- 
 worm, religiously keep it for him. They are 
 mainly responsible for introducing him to
 
 88 THE MOUND 
 
 the delights of hedge bottoms and quaint 
 nesting-places for birds and reptiles. Hither- 
 to we have made no reptilian discoveries on 
 or under the Mound. But every time we 
 visit the place I dread the appearance of 
 an adder gliding through the undergrowth, 
 knowing that if the Boy once sets eyes upon 
 the creature there will be no peace until he 
 has captured it, and when it is safely lodged 
 in the new snake-house there will be no 
 peace among the women-folk of the establish- 
 ment until, like ' Joe/ it has passed to where, 
 beyond the love of boys and the protests of 
 mothers and maiden aunts, there is peace. 
 
 'Joe,' I may explain, was a visitor, quite 
 harmless, and, from all accounts, singularly 
 affectionate. He belonged to a lady who, 
 having spent many years in India, had 
 conceived an affection for snakes and beasts 
 and birds of prey. Being compelled to leave 
 home for awhile, and not daring to entrust 
 her pet to non-enthusiasts, she lent him to 
 the Boy, who watched over him day by day 
 with the tenderest solicitude, a solicitude to 
 which Joe responded, twining his glittering
 
 THE MOUND 89 
 
 coils around the long fingers of his friend, 
 and courteously making the best he could 
 of the unwonted food submitted for his 
 sustenance. Negotiations were in progress 
 for the supply, from Benfleet, of a wife to 
 cheer Joe's solitude. I deeply regret to say 
 that before the arrival of her ladyship, Joe 
 despairingly laid down his coils and ex- 
 changed mortality for what ? 
 
 Ah ! For what ? Who will solve the 
 problem ? Our pets, the comrades of our 
 loneliness, the creatures who have trusted 
 us and shared our confidences, and fed from 
 our hand ; whom we have loved and in- 
 vested with all manner of excellences and 
 rogueries ; whom we nursed in sickness 
 and buried with bitter lamentations. What 
 has become of them ? Shall we ever see 
 them again ? 
 
 Irene, who is not at all military in her 
 tastes, but peaceful, as befits her name, is 
 also fond of living creatures. But she draws 
 the line at snakes, doting, however, on frogs. 
 She is sitting on one of the Mound's lower 
 slopes, at a discreet distance from the Boy,
 
 90 THE MOUND 
 
 whose mind and hand are set on ' going in ' 
 for the exploration of this ancient pond. 
 Adventurings into the unknown do not 
 appeal to Irene, nor does she care to be 
 entangled in snake coils, or rushed into war- 
 like proceedings ancient or modern, real or 
 make-believe. 
 
 One evening, when the dew was falling on 
 the cropt grass, I found her a wee frog. 
 She carried it home in a white handkerchief, 
 and made for it a new home in a long 
 narrow tin that once, I believe, was stored 
 with Scotch shortbread. A sod procured 
 from our new lawn was supposed to illu- 
 sionize the creature as to its whereabouts, and 
 a saucerful of water provided a pond. An 
 old negative limited the flying leaps that 
 Froggie naturally desired to take, and 
 enabled his mistress to inspect his proceed- 
 ings. A whole entomological collection, 
 including, on the last fateful day, an earwig, 
 found its way into the palace of tin and 
 glass. But whether it was that the sun 
 boiled the water, or the earwig proved in- 
 digestible, or a wasp joined the collection,
 
 THE MOUND 91 
 
 or loneliness produced a melancholy, I know 
 not, but Irene's pet passed over to the 
 majority, leaving his mistress inconsolable. 
 In vain did I bring home a small toad and 
 throw in the Mound newt. She refused to 
 be comforted. Boys lose their first loves 
 and love again. Not so girls, or not so 
 readily. 
 
 Who stocked this long narrow pool with 
 greenery and life ? Who, from age to age, 
 have fished in its waters ? Did black-haired, 
 Iberic boys and girls, scantily clad in sun- 
 tanned skins, catch sticklebacks here ? Did 
 they weave belts and coronets of reeds, and 
 with brown fingers deftly link daisy chains ? 
 Did they also gather blackberries and mush- 
 rooms on dewy autumnal mornings ? Did 
 they strip the blackthorns of their fishhooks, 
 and in the bark of prehistoric trees find 
 lines to which their mothers fastened the 
 hooks ? Think of the times that have gone 
 over these slopes and yonder plain down to 
 the Estuary, where the ships now go by, 
 and where once coracles flitted hither and 
 thither, and then Roman triremes brought
 
 92 THE MOUND 
 
 armed men, and later vast yellow-haired 
 Norsemen came and went, and Saxon, 
 Dane, and Norman followed, with Dutch 
 dyke-builders in plenty ? Have they not 
 all, in the procession of the centuries, 
 climbed these same slopes and gazed with 
 hungry eyes on fertile woods and corn lands 
 and green pastures ? 
 
 And think of the birds from over-seas, 
 on their flight inland, up the rich valley of 
 the Thames, deploying on a vast scale over 
 the rich lands, and alighting to drink and 
 wash their feet and preen their tired wings 
 on the margins of this same venerable pool ! 
 Did they not stock the water with seeds and 
 spores and germs of microscopic life, just 
 as their descendants of many generations 
 are restocking it to-day or would do so if 
 we, with our guns and snares and remorse- 
 less warfare against Nature, would permit 
 them ? 
 
 What there is in this old pond doth not 
 yet appear. We must go home with our 
 water-bottles and delicate ^prays of trisulca, 
 and set up the microscope, which will make
 
 THE MOUND 93 
 
 it plain to children's eyes that God's infinitely 
 little is as wonderful in its way as the story 
 of His dealing with races and nations. 
 
 Irene tells me that she does not like 
 history. Perhaps it is because history, like 
 the Bible and natural history and sums, is 
 not as well and truly taught as might be. 
 Or is it that her heart has not yet become 
 indurated to the tales of rapine and blood 
 with which history, like this pond and even 
 these fair woods and fields, is rife ? But she 
 likes geography, and she knows her Bible 
 right well, so far as it has been taught her, 
 and she loves flowers and sweets and all 
 living things (except spiders and earwigs), 
 so there is hope that some day she will be 
 fired with a passion to learn all that can be 
 learnt about the great past, and about the 
 mighty races whom God trained at divers 
 times and in divers ways for His own 
 purposes. 
 
 And in that day Irene will learn, as the 
 Boy is learning, that all things work together, 
 and are of and for God all national history 
 and natural history, all Bible history and
 
 94 THE MOUND 
 
 day-by-day history of our seemingly common- 
 place lives. This Mound, the old pond, the 
 blackberry bushes on which children tear 
 their hands and pinnies, the races whose 
 bones rest in cinerary urns beneath the 
 Mound, the armed hosts who have fought 
 and died century after century on the plains 
 far as the eye can see, the battleships the 
 thunder of whose guns, ten or twenty miles 
 away, breaks the silence of our night, the 
 rattle of the milk-cart down the lane, the slow 
 rumble of the farmer's wagon, the snakes 
 and birds of Benfleet, the frogs and newts 
 and rotifers we carry home from the pond, 
 together with the stars in their courses and 
 the angel encamping round us by night, and 
 leading us by unseen ministries of the day 
 they are all of One, and He is our Father 
 over all the ages, and over all living things, 
 God blessed for evermore.
 
 LIONS 
 
 AT times friends ask me to suggest 
 texts for sermons. Experience proves 
 that compliance with such requests is 
 rarely helpful. A text, to be of any real 
 use to a sermon-maker, must be in tune 
 with his mind. If a man asks me to advise 
 him in his love affairs, I respectfully decline, 
 knowing that the advice, no matter how 
 perfect it may be in wisdom and disin- 
 terestedness, will prove a waste product. 
 So also the texts you give will almost 
 certainly return to you without sermons. 
 
 The finding of texts is like the finding 
 of wells. Of what use, unless those to 
 whom they are given have something to 
 draw with? A text that sings or howls, 
 whispers, or thunders to him who finds it, 
 may have nothing to say to his friend, and 
 in that case how can he make a sermon ? 
 
 95
 
 96 LIONS 
 
 Rules for the making of sermons are worth- 
 less worse than worthless because they 
 are apt to beguile those who study them 
 into the belief that the process is like the 
 building of a house, whereas it is the grow- 
 ing of a tree, or the dreaming of a vision, 
 or the hearing of a great voice as of a 
 trumpet. 
 
 But sometimes a friend unwittingly gives 
 you a text a text from which you cannot 
 escape, that buzzes in the centre of your 
 brain and plays on your heart-strings, 
 making strange melody, and, if you give 
 good heed, stranger harmony. Then you 
 have to preach. The congregation may 
 be one or one thousand, the pulpit of stone 
 or wood, the day sacred or common ; but 
 preach you must, though it be only to your 
 own soul. 
 
 Yesterday, over a teacup, not knowing 
 what he did, a friend gave me a text. It 
 was borne in upon me winged by a story 
 surpassingly strange and curious. Should 
 he write asserting that he did not give me 
 a text at all, please do not believe what
 
 LIONS 97 
 
 he says. Here, at the head of this paper, 
 is the text ' Lions.' 
 
 You object to the brevity of the text ? 
 The difficulty is in discovering exactly 
 where the text in its fullest form begins 
 and where it ends. But that I may not 
 be chargeable with unreasoning perversity 
 I will make a beginning. Let it be thus 
 
 The angel of the Lord encampeth round about them 
 
 that fear Him. 
 And delivereth them. 
 O taste and see that the Lord is good : 
 Blessed is the man that trusteth in Him. 
 O fear the Lord, ye His saints: 
 For there is no want to them that fear Him. 
 
 And now, having read and, to some extent, 
 pondered the beginning, the Alpha, let us 
 read the end, the Omega 
 
 The young lions do lack, and suffer hunger : 
 But they that seek the Lord shall not want any good 
 thing. 
 
 The text has comforted you in many 
 times of straitness and sorrow. May it 
 again speak comfortably to you in regard 
 to those personal tribulations which are 
 usually and quite justifiably associated with 
 
 G
 
 98 LIONS 
 
 it. But, like many other texts, its meaning 
 is not exhausted by one interpretation. 
 True in personal or family experience, it is 
 true also in its relation to public interests. 
 It preaches to communities to nations, and 
 especially to Churches. 
 
 Many and grievous are the anxieties of 
 Christian Churches as they essay to do 
 their Master's work. It is, alas ! but too 
 true that over large portions of the field 
 into which He sends us men are 'plowing 
 iniquity' and 'sowing wickedness.' Do we 
 not hear the roaring of the lion, and the 
 voice of the fierce lion, and the grinding 
 of the teeth of young lions ? Churches 
 'lack and suffer hunger.' How often do 
 the tasks set seem to be impossible ! How 
 many and threatening are the troubles that 
 infest the paths of duty as we set foot 
 within them ! Surely at this time, if ever, 
 the Churches of God in this and other lands 
 need the inspiration of hope and strengthening 
 with might. 
 
 Last Sunday was Holbeck Feast. Thou- 
 sands were gathered on the Moor. The
 
 LIONS 99 
 
 description of the scene reminded us of 
 Bunyan's picture of Vanity Fair. Are not 
 the multitudes seen at a West Riding Feast 
 or at any race-meeting precisely the gather- 
 ings of the people that Wesley bravely faced 
 times without number ? Here are the men 
 and women who need us most, who utterly 
 and obstinately refuse to sit in church pews, 
 who, if we really believe our Bibles, are in 
 danger of outer darkness. Has Methodism 
 Yorkshire Methodism, wealthy, cultured, 
 well-clad and fed and housed has Methodism 
 no message for such a crowd ? Has the 
 God of our forefathers no messengers who 
 will go with His Evangel to the people ? 
 From the old chapel that still bears Wesley's 
 name they went last Sunday. The minister, 
 espying the steps of a huge caravan, inter- 
 viewed the proprietor, spake kindly to the 
 man, hired the use and enjoyment to quote 
 the Deed Poll of his uplifted steps. Then 
 rose the voice of the old Methodist ringing. 
 It drew the people. But within the caravan 
 were lions. They too lifted up their voices. 
 When the first speaker opened his parable
 
 ioo LIONS 
 
 the lions roared. He thought to pacify 
 them by change of subject. But really, 
 from all accounts, the lions helped rather 
 than hindered. For the more they roared 
 the more eagerly the people drew near, 
 until at last there was a congregation of 
 two thousand souls listening to the message 
 of God's mercy and the deep roar of God's 
 lions. And the people knew how to sing 
 the hymns. 
 
 So once more it became true, that the 
 angel of the Lord encamped round about 
 them that feared Him.
 
 'AS A CHILD' 
 
 THEY sat in a sympathetic and not 
 undignified row at the foot of the 
 Child's bed, she regarding them with 
 eyes of content and gratitude. 
 
 Had I marched them to their box in the 
 nursery her wrath, now slumbering as in a 
 toy-volcano, would have broken forth. She 
 likes to see her dolls, Vicky always In the 
 place of honour, sitting on the eiderdown 
 quilt and gazing with wide-open eyes at 
 their sick baby-mother. 
 
 Thinking to pleasure the little lady, I 
 gently lifted Vicky, with whom I have long 
 lived on terms of friendship, and re-seated 
 her on the white pillow, close to the white 
 baby face. But Marjorie insisted on the 
 original position. I tried a similar experi- 
 ment with Lady Maria, and then with Lady 
 Betsey and the Lady Noname, but the Child 
 
 IOI
 
 102 'AS A CHILD' 
 
 would have none of them. She maintains 
 discipline in her little world. Her subjects 
 must keep their proper stations. Dolls are 
 not the only friends whom she loves best in 
 a certain perspective. 
 
 If you desire to know Marjorie in her true 
 
 self, see her with the dolls. They are of all 
 
 sizes, complexions, and modes of attire. 
 
 She never wearies of them, and is never 
 
 deceived as to their realities and unrealities. 
 
 One can see that they are educating her. 
 
 Under their influence she is developing 
 
 dainty ways and humour and a certain 
 
 pathetic tenderness. You may know how 
 
 her mother or her aunts have been treating 
 
 her by the way she treats her dolls. The 
 
 transfer of her own experience to Vicky or 
 
 Lady Maria would be comic if it were not, 
 
 on Marjorie's part, so real and purposeful. 
 
 Her illness, with its physic and ' Hush thee, 
 
 my baby,' is but a rehearsal of the dreadful 
 
 sickness through which the Lady Noname 
 
 youngest of the sisterhood must pass as 
 
 soon as her ladyship's baby-mother is restored 
 
 to her wonted vigour.
 
 'AS A CHILD' 103 
 
 The thoughts of children ! How often do 
 we strive to imagine what they are ! Now 
 and then a question or an unlooked-for 
 answer rends the white cloud, and we see, 
 for a moment, into their 'great heaven of 
 blue.' But, as a rule, the mystery of child- 
 thought remains hidden, save to Him who 
 knows us all from the least even unto the 
 greatest, and who Himself once 'thought as 
 a child.' 
 
 Some love to think of the Day of Judge- 
 ment, not because of the terrible things in 
 righteousness which will then be done, but 
 because of the unveiling, the revelation of 
 thought and motive and conduct, and 
 especially because of the revelation of God 
 as He really is. The ' small ' as well as the 
 'great' are to stand before Him. They will 
 see Jesus, and will not be afraid to hear His 
 voice, nor will they fear to let His eyes see 
 into their souls. As children He who was 
 once a child will judge them, yes, and judge 
 also those who, in manhood and woman- 
 hood, have been content to be as little 
 children.
 
 104 'AS A CHILD' 
 
 Being a boy my mother never gave me a 
 doll to play with. She would have thought 
 such treatment of her son and heir absurd, 
 unnatural, dangerous. My father who, in 
 some respects, lived on a different plane of 
 thought had no such scruples. He gave 
 me dolls in plenty, but they were heathen 
 gods, and in their very dumbness and dead- 
 ness and ugliness they produced a certain 
 impression that has never entirely worn 
 away. Some of them I have still. Their 
 great merit is that they have raised much 
 money for Missions, and, oddly enough, 
 have helped, with other things still more 
 hideous, in the making of Missionaries. 
 My own children have not played with these 
 dolls of their father's childhood. They (the 
 idol-dolls) are to me, now, a little prophetic. 
 They recall vanished hands that once held 
 them up before the astonished eyes of 
 children in thousands. Further, they re- 
 mind me that once, long ago for some of 
 them are very old they were held in 
 sincere, if mistaken, reverence. They re- 
 present a strange stage in the development
 
 'AS A CHILD' 105 
 
 of tribes and races. To them they were not 
 dolls or idols, but ideals ! 
 
 I had another doll a man-doll. But he 
 was wholly idealistic, and of that mystic 
 inner child-life that we grown-up people 
 know so little about. Who gave it to me 
 I know not. It certainly was not my mother, 
 she was much too sober-minded to indulge 
 either herself or her small son in fantastic 
 dreams. Nor was it my father, for he was 
 much too spiritual and dramatic. The nurse 
 was a sound Methodist versed in Scripture, 
 but not given to exposition. To tell all the 
 story would be wearisome. In brief, it is 
 this : My earliest creation of the imagina- 
 tion was a figure of pure clay moulded by 
 divine hands outside the garden of Eden 
 the beginning of the vision was always out- 
 side, never inside the garden. I can see 
 the figure now, upraised, beautiful but life- 
 less ; then breathed into, transfigured, mov- 
 ing, passing into the garden the beautiful 
 garden where God lived. No doubt the 
 chapters read at family prayers, pictures on 
 Sunday evenings, hymns sung, the talk of
 
 106 'AS A CHILD' 
 
 a preacher's home, all helped the child's 
 imagination. As time passed the creature 
 changed, became less distinct, more dimly 
 distant. Yet he was always real. 
 
 I had no doubts, and I never remember 
 to have been terrified by awful thoughts of 
 the God who made the creature, at least not 
 so long as I remained at home. The one 
 remembrance of my childhood concerning 
 God is wholly simple, devout, joyous. I 
 can hear the children now singing in the 
 Bolton and York chapels ; and their voices 
 are in unison with the thousands around the 
 throne of God in heaven, and all are sing- 
 ing, 'Glory, glory, glory.' The two lessons 
 taught to my earliest childhood were the 
 lessons that the great Father of all so 
 effectually taught the race in its childhood, 
 the lessons that sing refrain-like through 
 every part of that first and, in some re- 
 spects, greatest of all poems, the Bible story 
 of Creation the lessons of the two key- 
 words of Genesis ' God ' and ' good.' 
 
 Backward into those days when I began 
 to hear and think and wonder I now look,
 
 'AS A CHILD' 107 
 
 and have nothing of any real moment to 
 unlearn. Not the fact that God made man, 
 or that He made him good and to be good ; 
 not that He made him out of the dust of 
 the earth. It is only the how only the 
 immaterial materialism of a little child's 
 imagination. 
 
 I have always had a vivid recollection of 
 the morning when, for the first time, my 
 mother allowed me to read out of the Bible. 
 She opened the book at the first chapter of 
 St. John's Gospel. In teaching, my mother, 
 and especially my father, treated me as a 
 child. They knew nothing of criticism, and 
 science then as compared with now was 
 scarcely born. But they followed the critical, 
 the scientific method. My father taught 
 me, as he taught thousands of Methodist 
 children, and very much in the same way 
 as God inspired the unknown poets and 
 sages of the Book of Genesis to teach the 
 people in the centuries of the world's 
 childhood. 
 
 How I love the old-world beginning of all 
 poetry and history and religion ! And love
 
 io8 'AS A CHILD' 
 
 it all the more, and drink all the more joy- 
 fully of its fountains of water of life, because 
 I have never been dragooned into any soul- 
 less literalism of interpretation and now 
 never can be.
 
 BRICKS 
 
 GROWN-UP people, even those who 
 are elderly, recall the bricks of their 
 childhood. A box of bricks figures 
 in my own very early memories. 
 
 The earliest of those memories are a bird, 
 a pulpit, and a brick wall. They all three 
 belong to Bolton, in Lancashire. Shadowy 
 though they may now be, each contributed 
 something towards those tendencies which 
 begin their mystic work in childhood's dawn, 
 and are rarely, if ever, wholly destroyed. 
 The bird and the pulpit stand out distinctly, 
 with their environment complete the bird 
 as the first creature of God, apart from 
 father and mother, whom I loved and 
 mourned, for its life, alas, ended in death 
 and a grave in the minister's back garden ; 
 the pulpit as a throne from which, with 
 clenched fist, I hurled defiance at the 
 
 109
 
 no BRICKS 
 
 galleryful of children who, with full-throated 
 Lancashire zeal, were answering my father's 
 questions. I fancy it must have been the 
 very pulpit in which, long before, John 
 Wesley preached to the ' lovely boys and 
 girls/ and heard them sing. 
 
 But the brick wall is a mystery, and 
 always has been. I know exactly where 
 it was, but what it surrounded, or whether 
 it surrounded anything, I do not know. 
 It may have been quite ancient or a wall 
 of yesterday, ill built or well built, of 
 the utmost importance to its owner and 
 the public or a mere excrescence on the 
 landscape. 
 
 But, in truth, it was not the wall itself 
 that interested me, or the bricks of which 
 it was built, or its owner, or the purpose 
 it served, but simply the circumstance, to 
 me at the time most notable, that it stood 
 by the roadside as a landmark to Peter 
 Rothwell's house and that was heaven. 
 My first and fairest conceptions of heaven 
 were borrowed, not from the Bible, not 
 from my father's sermons, but from chorus-
 
 BRICKS in 
 
 hymns sung by the ' Ranters,' as they were 
 then called, and from the Methodist ' many 
 mansions' in Lancashire and Yorkshire 
 which kept open doors, not only for the 
 preachers, but also for their children. It 
 was a long, dree walk for a small boy up 
 to Peter Rothwell's heaven-upon-earth, but 
 when we came to the long brick wall, 
 the hot cobble foot-path, under its grimy 
 redness, became a Beulah Land within sight 
 of heaven. 
 
 It must have been this brick wall, with 
 its rapturous associations, that led me to 
 hail the acquisition of bricks. My great 
 delight was to build steps and towers. I 
 may at times have attempted houses and 
 rudimentary chapels, and other architectural 
 monstrosities. If so, they were quickly 
 blotted out from my memory. But the 
 steps and towers abide, and are as distinct 
 in the vision of the past as the brick wall. 
 Long afterwards, I learned that steps and 
 towers figured largely in the building dreams 
 and achievements of ancient peoples, whose 
 knowledge was infantile. The great things
 
 H2 BRICKS 
 
 of history are not without their shadows or 
 foreshadows among the little things of child 
 life. The high uplifted temple with its 
 ascent ' steps unto heaven ' and the tower 
 that might be built even unto heaven, are 
 the embodiment of thoughts, or, at all 
 events, of mysterious impulses and imagin- 
 ings, that are represented in the nurseries 
 and playgrounds of twentieth-century child- 
 hood. It is said that on the Eastern 
 old-world monuments revealed by modern 
 exploration toys have been discovered, and 
 among the toys bricks for child-building. 
 Truly, there is nothing new under the sun. 
 In the Westminster Gazette one night I 
 read that the newspapers of to-day, in a 
 mad rush racing into halfpenny popularity, 
 are really reverting to a type so ancient 
 that one begins to wonder whether the 
 Victorian age was not, after all, the age 
 of decay rather than advance. 'The news 
 sheets of Venice in the sixteenth century 
 were sold for a gazetta (^d.) A halfpenny 
 was also the price of the first English 
 journals.' It will, indeed, be marvellous
 
 BRICKS 113 
 
 if somebody does not discover a whole 
 competitive series of halfpenny morning 
 and evening news-cylinders in baked clay 
 among the cuneiform records of a Chaldaic 
 museum library! 
 
 To return to this present century. It was 
 Marjorie wee Marjorie, white and wasted, 
 but convalescent who set me thinking once 
 more about the bricks. It was Sunday 
 afternoon. The child, in her high chair, 
 with a round table all to herself, sat in 
 the draught-proof chimney corner, playing 
 with a new toy a box of four-square picture 
 bricks. Lady Lulu, youngest and smallest 
 of her dolls, in Sunday dress, shared the 
 game. The little Lord Lulu ! alas, like 
 Mephibosheth, concerning whom Theodora 
 is being instructed, had met with a disaster 
 to one of his legs, and had gone to Mother's 
 hospital to be cured. What a boon to 
 Christian mothers are Sunday picture-books 
 and Sunday toys ! So enamoured of her 
 bricks was Marjorie she is still monosyllabic 
 in speech that last evening, when I called 
 to see how she fared, the bricks, I found, 
 
 H
 
 H4 BRICKS 
 
 had overflowed from the Sunday into the 
 week-day, and were sharing, with Lady 
 Noname and Lord and Lady Lulu (happily 
 reunited), the vigorous attentions of my 
 rapidly recovering little friend. 
 
 This I noted : That, whereas on Sunday 
 the baby-child would insist on the building 
 of a tower up and up, and ever higher, 
 until with a mighty crash it fell into Daddy's 
 outstretched hand on Monday the bricks 
 were transformed, first into munitions of 
 war, and then into a comedy of hide-and- 
 seek that filled the bedroom with shrieks 
 of laughter. It was the Russo-Japanese 
 war on a mimic stage, and I pray you to 
 note this entirely on the child's own initia- 
 tive. Suddenly, like the flash in the night 
 of the first torpedo at Port Arthur, the 
 dainty little baby-girl hurled the first brick 
 at the picture-screen sheltering her bed. 
 Her father played the game, I observing 
 a strict neutrality. With shouts of triumph 
 the bricks flew. The Russians, dodging 
 behind the screen, collapsed utterly. The 
 'Father of all his people/ perspiring and
 
 BRICKS 115 
 
 amazed, capitulated. The tragedy ended 
 in comedy, and shall I confess it ? in a 
 dance most comical. On the empty brick- 
 box, little Lord and Lady Lulu were made 
 to display their agility, to the imminent 
 peril of his lordship's restored limb. Finally, 
 they kissed, and so to sleep. For so, alike 
 on Sundays and on week-days, now by this 
 means and now by that, ' He giveth His 
 beloved sleep.'
 
 BOOKS 
 
 IN days gone by Methodist Preachers, as 
 they were then called, and their wives, 
 and all the best teachers in schools of 
 every kind, were scrupulously particular 
 about books. Perhaps they were too parti- 
 cular. They believed in driving and riding 
 with a tight rein. In that respect, both 
 literally and metaphorically, they departed 
 from the deliberately chosen habit of the 
 father of Methodism. He did not believe 
 in a tight rein. He had broad sympathies. 
 'Perhaps they would not be considered 
 broad now, especially in relation to children. 
 Nevertheless, relatively they were broad 
 relatively to the times in which the good 
 man lived. We have also to remember that 
 John Wesley was a growing man. He never 
 ceased to grow. Even in extreme old age 
 he lived and learned, and therefore grew, 
 
 116
 
 BOOKS 117 
 
 developing himself and developing the whole 
 system of religious and intellectual life over 
 which, in the providence of God, he was 
 called to preside. Remembering the main 
 features in his career from youth to old age, 
 I cannot doubt that he would have a little 
 slackened the overtight reins held in the 
 hands of preachers and teachers and saintly 
 parents fifty or sixty years ago. 
 
 But if he were with us to-day he would 
 tighten the reins. For have we not gone 
 to an opposite extreme ? and is not that 
 extreme perilous to mind, and home, and 
 heart, and Church ? 
 
 Many good people whose opinion one 
 would regard with profound respect are full 
 of anxiety with reference to the amusements, 
 in which boys and girls of all ages indulge 
 at the present day. I freely confess that, so 
 far as my outlook is concerned, a greater 
 peril threatens from a very different source. 
 On the whole, perhaps, the recreations of 
 to-day tend towards improvement. There 
 is much to be said for the bracing and 
 correcting, and therefore ennobling, influence
 
 ii8 BOOKS 
 
 of amusements that demand for their exercise 
 fresh air, self-control, and the development 
 of the higher physical and intellectual 
 qualities. Within the last week I have seen 
 it noted that cycling, cricket, football, tennis, 
 and the like are ' hitting the publican 
 heavily' also, I may add, the tobacconist. 
 Of course, there is danger of excess. There 
 is no good thing on the face of God's earth, 
 no matter how pure and beautiful and 
 healthful it may be, that is not capable of 
 misuse and abuse, chiefly through excess. 
 You may drink too much pure water, too 
 much milk, tea, coffee ; you may eat too much 
 whole-meal bread, fruit, and other excellent 
 forms of food ; you may go mad on cricket 
 and have a craze for tennis, and turn a boat 
 into a god, and literally sacrifice to your own 
 net, or gun, or fishing-rod. In all this sphere 
 of life we need to remember constantly 
 and I who love young people and love their 
 sports, their fun and frolic, their joy and 
 song, would plead with all my might for 
 good heed to the words we need, I say, to 
 remember the wise words of the man to
 
 BOOKS 119 
 
 whom as families we owe so much, ' Let 
 your forbearance be known to all men.' My 
 friend, be you boy or girl, man or woman, 
 when you are going to play a game, take 
 Jesus Christ with you, and don't forget what 
 Paul the Apostle said, and said so wisely, 
 ' The Lord is at hand.' Then will play, like 
 work and sorrow and the joyful friendships 
 of life, be a means of grace to you. No, I 
 am not afraid of the amusements of the day, 
 provided we cultivate 'pure religion and 
 undefiled.' But I am horribly afraid con- 
 cerning the reading of the day. 
 
 Books have a subtle influence a tre- 
 mendous fascination. They are as leaven. 
 They work silently, and therefore the more 
 mightily. It is said that secret drinking is 
 one of the curses of the present day. So 
 also is secret reading, and also the secret 
 influence of public reading. Let any wise 
 man try an experiment. Let him go through 
 the streets and stations of any large town 
 and buy up a collection of cheap books, penny 
 novelettes, halfpenny illustrated papers, and 
 study them. Who buy these things ? Who
 
 120 BOOKS 
 
 read them ? If you could search the boxes 
 of servant-girls and the secret hoards of 
 school-boys and school-girls, especially in 
 holiday time ; if you could turn out all the 
 possessions of errand boys and apprentices, 
 of factory hands, of girls employed in shops 
 and bars and warehouses, you would very 
 soon arrive at the solution of the problem 
 as to how it comes to pass that this sort of 
 literary trash pays publishers and bookstall 
 keepers. If you want to make a fortune out 
 of the damnation of bright young minds, 
 you do not need to rent a public-house, or 
 a singing or dancing saloon. You can effect 
 your purpose much more easily and cheaply, 
 by embarking a small capital in the publish- 
 ing trade. 
 
 Take one class of young people as an 
 example. And let us not forget that with 
 them rests an inconceivably tremendous 
 responsibility. I refer to the nurse-girls of 
 England. They have charge not only of 
 babies, but of little boys and girls at the 
 most impressionable period of their lives. 
 By thousands they are, for a while, wielding
 
 BOOKS 121 
 
 a more powerful influence than the fathers, 
 or even than the mothers. They have it in 
 their power to preserve the unsullied purity, 
 or to taint with deadliest poison, the spring- 
 heads of young life. The boys and girls 
 who are to be the men and women of the 
 next generation are to a large extent under 
 the influence of the nurse-girls of England. 
 What are the nurse-girls reading ? Along 
 what lines are their thoughts running ? 
 What influences are affecting their outlook 
 and their habits ? Many, as we are thank- 
 ful to know, are pure and true and wholly 
 devoted to Christ and to all that is good. 
 But how many are quite otherwise, and 
 largely as the result of the books and papers 
 they read ? 
 
 But there are not only bad books, and 
 books of doubtful tendency, and books that 
 are slowly but most effectually insinuating 
 doubt, and books that enfold the holiest 
 things of life in an atmosphere of contempt 
 or derision ; there are also floods, deluges 
 of books not in themselves bad, not by 
 any means irreligious or immoral in their
 
 122 BOOKS 
 
 immediate tendencies, but sickly and sicken- 
 ing. Books of the sort I am thinking about 
 ought only to be stored and sold in sweet- 
 shops ; and at the door of every sweet-shop 
 the State ought to plant a Martha-like police- 
 woman, who should severely limit the sale 
 of chocolates and toffee and the reading of 
 love tales and adventure stones. 
 
 Alas, how many among those who read 
 much read absolutely nothing except novels, 
 romances, and storyettes! They do not 
 touch history, travel, popular science, bio- 
 graphy, or even the higher forms of im- 
 aginative literature. With what result ? 
 It makes one shudder. 
 
 Now I write in the early autumn is the 
 time to help in that which surely is a dire 
 emergency. Every Reading Circle, if wisely 
 conducted, may be a fountain of intellectual 
 life and of most helpful morale in a circuit. 
 The Wesley Guild, with its winter reading 
 course, may turn a pure language into scores 
 of Christian homes. The gift of a good book, 
 a quotation in a sermon, a word fitly spoken 
 in the class-meeting, hints by the way, turns
 
 BOOKS 123 
 
 given to conversation in the social circle, 
 and, above all, an open door and a hearty 
 welcome to the minister's library, will all 
 help. As in early Methodist days, books 
 may become in our homes and societies 
 God's own instruments of blessing.
 
 A KISS 
 
 HER father had met with a slight 
 accident. Climbing up to the new 
 sea-wall from the shore his foot 
 slipped, and his chin caught the edge of a 
 concrete block. The person most concerned 
 in the result revealed in her presence was 
 Marjorie. She forgot her tea, which had 
 just reached the sweet cake stage, tumbled 
 down from her chair, and laid a tiny soft 
 hand soothingly on the hot place. Then, 
 with an eager, resolute movement, she sud- 
 denly bent her little head and ' kissed the 
 wound to make it well.' 
 
 I do not remember to have seen greater 
 joy on a baby face than when Marjorie's 
 father, briskly putting his foot to the ground, 
 cried out, ' It will be all right now. Marjorie 
 has kissed the place to make it well.' And 
 I quite think the child's father was right. 
 124
 
 A KISS 125 
 
 Only the actual healing power was in him- 
 self in his never-wavering faith in the 
 ' virtue,' the healing, uplifting, saving virtue 
 of love. Many a mother with a kiss lessens 
 pain, sometimes destroying it Her love 
 works a wee miracle, which I would have 
 you understand is none the less of the 
 nature and true essence of a miracle because 
 its working may be explained on reasonable 
 and scientific principles. Her love has 
 brought into play a higher law which, for 
 the time being, suspends the lower law, and, 
 it may be, to use a big word, contravenes it. 
 She has done on a very small scale and in a 
 lower sphere that which Jesus Christ does 
 when the law of the spirit of life in Him 
 makes us free, through His great love, from 
 the law of sin and death. 
 
 ' Do you, then, believe in faith-healing ? ' 
 Yes, within certain limits. In Christian 
 life, and especially in the life of Churches, 
 more marvellous things which is only 
 another way of saying miracles are wrought 
 by faith and prayer than we ordinarily 
 imagine. Only a few weeks ago I heard, at
 
 126 A KISS 
 
 first hand, a complete series of answers to 
 prayer, direct, obvious, not to be accounted 
 for apart from the supernatural, and, both 
 in broad outline and minute detail, fulfilling 
 those New Testament conditions of prayer 
 that are so little understood. 
 
 You may retort upon me that such things 
 are ' signs in the heights/ among the sub- 
 limities, having to do with the mighty king- 
 dom of God on earth, and that what I began 
 to write about a few paragraphs back was 
 something infinitesimally small a passing 
 episode in a baby's life, a trifling wound 
 laughed at in an unknown domestic circle. 
 What ! Have we not yet learnt that no eye 
 or mind of man has ever discerned the line 
 separating between the infinitely small and 
 the immeasurably great ? Both are to stand 
 before the white throne in the Judgement; 
 and in the simple, current, common-place 
 life of the unnumbered multitudes, the two 
 stand side by side, and threads of influence 
 too subtle for human vision but saturated 
 with vital force run from the great into the 
 small, and from the small into the great, being
 
 A KISS 127 
 
 interwoven, as we in our blindness and folly 
 say, 'accidentally.' Have you ever tried to 
 measure a bacillus ? Or to weigh it ? Or to 
 estimate its possibilities ? 
 
 You believe, do you not, in God's signs in 
 the heights ? Why should you not believe 
 also that His signs are to be seen in the 
 depths the simple, everyday depths that are 
 about you or at your very feet ? The heights 
 you cannot scale. You can dream about them, 
 see them afar off, wonder at their magnifi- 
 cence, but they are beyond your touch 
 
 Infinite lengths beyond the bounds 
 Where stars revolve their little rounds. 
 
 But the depths, where also, and just as 
 truly, God is, are within your ken. If 
 you can do His will on earth as the angels 
 do it in heaven, why should you not also 
 know His will ? 
 
 There is at least one Psalm in which the 
 music is first about the great and then about 
 the small. You begin with your eye at the 
 telescope, and suddenly the instrument is 
 changed and your eye is at the microscope. 
 All the drums and cymbals of heaven, with
 
 128 A KISS 
 
 myriads of chorus voices, roll forth the 
 music of the spheres; and in the silence 
 following you hear the cry of a baby that has 
 fallen, and the twittering prayer of hungry 
 sparrows on the house-top. You want me 
 to tell you where to find a Psalm so wonder- 
 ful ? I will not tell you. Read the Psalter 
 straight through from beginning to end, and 
 when you think you have found it go on 
 reading, until you are quite sure you have 
 discovered the finest gold, the sweetest 
 honey, the rarest gem. 
 
 Have you ever asked yourself, or, better 
 still, asked Jesus Himself, why He made the 
 central petition of the Lord's prayer so com- 
 monplace, thrusting in among the greatest 
 things the smallest ? ' Thy name,' ' Thy 
 kingdom,' 'Thy will/ And then 'our 
 daily bread ; ' and then the mystery of 
 mercy and the triumph of God and man 
 over the devil of evil. 
 
 Last Sunday in our little class-meeting 
 Phyllis asked for a Gospel text beginning 
 with the letter K. She and her sister 
 wanted it for their school teacher. I,
 
 A KISS 129 
 
 thinking instantly of the Hallelujah Chorus, 
 given by Sir Frederick Bridge's orchestra 
 and choir on Good Friday in the Albert Hall, 
 found the great word ' King of kings, and 
 Lord of lords.' But Irene said, ' Knock, 
 and it shall be opened unto you.' In the 
 end we took both texts my great one and 
 Irene's small one and wrote them in red 
 and blue on tinted paper, to the great 
 wonderment and delight of Kathleen, who, 
 being very small and only ' a stranger 
 within our gates,' sat on the leader's knee, 
 and learned Irene's little text, and found out 
 its meaning ; for she whispered, ' I always 
 ask God to bless Daddy,' which partly 
 accounts for the blessing that rests on the 
 great work of ' Daddy's ' present life. I 
 wonder how many of those who are great 
 before God and in the work they do are 
 indebted not a little to the love and faith 
 and prayers of those little ones who believe 
 that God loves those whom they love, and 
 that when children knock at God's door He 
 Himself opens the door unto them ? The 
 next day little Kathleen fell into a riot of 
 
 i
 
 1 30 A KISS 
 
 Bank Holiday revelry. But at nightfall, 
 chancing to see her, I asked if she re- 
 membered the text. Her hands came to- 
 gether, and in a hushed voice she said, 
 ' Knock, and it shall be opened unto you.' I 
 concluded, therefore, that, as of old, ' God 
 had called the child.' 
 
 Love is the salvation of prayer, and the 
 motive force of faith. It saves prayer from 
 selfishness and weariness, and gives it in- 
 tensity. Faith works by love, and repays 
 the service of Love by making it all- 
 victorious. It was the love in Marjorie's 
 kiss that kindled the faith that helped the 
 healing. 
 
 Years ago I heard two doctors discuss a 
 subject closely allied to this. They both 
 had had wide experience, one of them in 
 ordinary family practice, the other as one of 
 the greatest brain and nerve specialists of 
 his day. They both unhesitatingly declared 
 their belief in faith-healing within certain 
 limits, each contributing to the discussion 
 illustrative facts from his own experience. 
 But this they insisted on as the result of
 
 A KISS 131 
 
 prolonged observation, that such healings 
 were as truly controlled by law as are those 
 which are brought about by medical skill. 
 The power of mind over matter is a fact 
 of daily experience, and already the laws 
 under which the working may be set up, 
 and, being set up, may be directed and 
 limited, are revealing themselves. The 
 highest art in surgery is directed to the safe- 
 guarding of Nature, that she may be free 
 and unhindered in doing her own work. 
 This is true of the simplest domestic 
 surgery, and of the loftiest exercise of 
 trained skill in the army surgeon's field 
 hospital. It is Nature, not the surgeon, not 
 the nurses, not Mother with her simple little 
 appliances, but Nature who does the actual 
 work. She is the great Healer. In tree 
 and bird, and fish and beast, and also in 
 these wonderful bodies of ours, she is ever 
 working and working according to the 
 great ' designs ' of her Sovereign Lord, who, 
 as the great Hallelujah text tell us, is Lord 
 of lords, and Lord of Kingsley's Madam 
 How and Lady Why, as well as King of
 
 132 A KISS 
 
 kings. Are we the friends of Nature ? 
 Then are we friends, to that extent, of 
 Nature's Lord. And those hidden, subtle, 
 all-potent forces of Faith, Hope, Love, are 
 ours, because they are His. He lends them 
 to us, teaches us how to use them, silently 
 influences our minds in their use, and so, on 
 the lower slopes of the mountain of God, 
 and in a multitude of small ministries, we, 
 unconsciously, do works that are near akin 
 to the miracles of Jesus. Sometimes we 
 venture so far as to call the healing, the 
 restoring deeds of men and women who are 
 saturated with faith and hope and love, 
 ' miracles of grace.' But how rarely do we 
 realize that in so labelling them we are 
 giving the generic, severely scientific, strictly 
 theological description ! 
 
 Will any one have the temerity, at this 
 time of day, to deny that Hope plays a great 
 part in the life-work of doctors and nurses ? 
 And Faith also ? But the chief attendant 
 and noblest friend and collaborates of these 
 companions of Jesus, as St. Paul has long 
 ago taught us, is Love. And what is a
 
 A KISS 133 
 
 1 kiss ' but the outward and visible sign of 
 that inward and spiritual grace, so divine, 
 and at the same time so human, which we 
 call Love ? 
 
 I remember once seeing a baby child who 
 had never been kissed. It was, indeed, a 
 pitiful sight. Let me commend to your 
 study the place occupied by a kiss in the 
 Holy Book. Was it without a purpose that 
 Jesus Christ, in telling His greatest story, 
 made the very centre and soul and climax 
 of the prodigal's return the father's kiss ? 
 Why, again and again, in the New Testa- 
 ment Letters, are Christian people told to 
 greet one another with a holy kiss or with 
 the kiss of peace ? If you had a little child 
 who needed the teaching and influence of 
 a Sunday-school class, would you care to 
 entrust that child to a teacher who was 
 ashamed to be seen kissing father or mother ? 
 Is there anything, in all her work of recovery 
 and restoration, of soul-healing and com- 
 forting, that the Church of Jesus Christ to- 
 day more needs than the power to ' kiss the 
 place and make it well,' than the power to
 
 134 A KISS 
 
 'lay it on His shoulders rejoicing/ than the 
 power to ' run and fall on His neck and kiss 
 Him' ? How many women are waiting 
 outside the crowd, until they are permitted 
 to draw near in whelming sorrow and love 
 to kiss the Master's feet ! I hear the cry in 
 the desolate wilderness 
 
 O let me kiss His bleeding feet, 
 
 And bathe and wash them with my tears.
 
 BUDS 
 
 THE tops of the fruit-trees are touched 
 with white. The leaf buds, too, are 
 showing the delicate inner greenness, 
 hidden through the weeks of winter within 
 the brown protecting bracts. 
 
 The road beyond the garden wall is 
 bordered by woodland trees. They are 
 tell-tale trees in these early days of spring. 
 You might accurately measure the sunshine 
 on this side and that side of the street by 
 the length of the pale green infolded buds 
 of the chestnut-trees. Or am I to infer 
 from the differences that there is special 
 store of virtue in the early morning sun- 
 shine ? Certain it is that the afternoon sun, 
 working upon the chestnut-buds on this 
 side, has been out-rivalled by the morning 
 sun on that side. 
 
 The plum-trees and even the pears in 
 135
 
 136 BUDS 
 
 our garden are racing the almond-tree that 
 grows in a sheltered corner. Yesterday the 
 plums bade fair to win. But this morning 
 a dainty flower in pink and white peeped 
 over the garden wall, as though to bid me 
 God-speed. To-night, returning from the 
 city, I saw the sister almond-tree, that 
 stands full in the eye of the sunrising in 
 another garden on the sea front, and, lo, 
 all her branches were a glory of rosy white 
 shining in the twilight. 
 
 Of old in Eastern lands they called the 
 almond the ' Watch Tree.' It stood in the 
 gateway of the year, the first of all the trees 
 to blossom into promise of fruitfulness. It 
 watched for God's sunshine, for the warm 
 south wind, for those mystic forces of nature 
 that make for new life, new hope, new 
 power to bless man and bird and every 
 living thing. 
 
 In English gardens almond-trees seldom 
 bear fruit. Though I know a minister 
 who once had quite a crop of almonds on 
 a fine tree in the Thames Valley. But do 
 we not love it, as we love snowdrops and
 
 BUDS 137 
 
 violets and primroses? It was on a lonely 
 spot, named at first after the Watch Tree, 
 that Jacob dreamed the loveliest of all 
 dreams the dream that in the end helped 
 to make him an Israelite indeed, changing 
 him from a contemptible cheat into a prince. 
 How much we owe to that dream to the 
 Luz that became Bethel, to the vision of 
 angels and the ladder up into heaven, and 
 God ever watching whether we wake or 
 sleep watching through the dreary winter, 
 and still watching when, in the stirring 
 springtime, the buds ' by green leaf sealed ' 
 break into beautiful life ! It is not in the 
 tempestuous winter alone that we need 
 God, but even more in the joyful spring- 
 time. 
 
 All the young life in our garden is in 
 more peril now than at any other time of 
 the year. When you are saying your prayers 
 night and morning, or in church and school, 
 you ought to remember the market gardeners 
 and fruit growers. Many a small farmer 
 who depends on his orchards or strawberry- 
 fields for the rent goes to bed night by
 
 138 BUDS 
 
 night wondering, fearing, dreading for the 
 buds that timidly, during these spring days, 
 are casting away their warm winter clothing. 
 What will happen ? Will the wind change 
 in the night ? Will a frost blast the hope 
 of spring ? I have at this moment a vision 
 of a cluster of Methodist villages in the 
 South country where, to a large extent, 
 the people are dependent upon the cherry 
 orchards that this very week will be tinted 
 with the loveliness of a bright hope, and 
 that by one sharp blast might wither in an 
 hour. Shall we not remember the fruit 
 farmers in Berkshire and Kent, in Devon 
 and Herefordshire, and other parts of this 
 fair England, asking God in our prayers to 
 spare the buds, and to prosper the trees and 
 flowers, upon the fate of which so much of 
 human comfort and well-being depends ? 
 
 All the Wesleys loved a garden. John, 
 as we know from his recently discovered 
 diaries, was quite an experienced gardener, 
 working at Epworth and Wroot and in 
 Savannah with his own hands among the 
 flowers and fruits. Even in the midst of
 
 BUDS 139 
 
 the furious excitements and the swift travel- 
 ling of the Evangelical Revival one country 
 house with a garden claimed his notice. 
 Upon that garden he must have bestowed 
 not a little thought and personal care. He 
 planted fruit-trees, and so laid out his Kings- 
 wood plot of ground as to reproduce the 
 memory of the charming Rectory garden at 
 Wroot the garden with a summer-house 
 and a shaded walk, in which he used to 
 write sermons for his father in summer 
 days, and gather roses for his mother and 
 sisters. There is one hymn, written by his 
 brother Samuel, who lived for so many years 
 at Westminster, under the shadow of the 
 great Abbey, that recalls the garden at 
 Epworth : 
 
 The morning flowers display their sweets, 
 And gay their silken leaves unfold, 
 
 As careless of the noontide heat, 
 As fearless of the evening cold. 
 
 Nipt by the wind's untimely blast, 
 Parched by the sun's directer ray, 
 
 The momentary glories waste, 
 The short-lived beauties die away, 
 
 How much of personal reminiscence and
 
 140 BUDS 
 
 family sorrow are woven into the texture 
 of this pathetic hymn ! 
 
 So blooms the human face divine, 
 When youth its pride of beauty shows ; 
 
 Fairer than spring the colours shine, 
 And sweeter than the virgin rose. 
 
 But no Wesley could long permit his 
 thoughts to linger amongst the withered 
 flowers. There were wells of deep joy, 
 because springs of quenchless hope, in every 
 one of the Wesleys. Nor could any one 
 of them allow personal joy or sorrow so 
 to absorb thought as to shut out the wider 
 interests of the kingdom of God upon earth. 
 The hymn sings of another springtime in 
 which the lustre will be brighter and the 
 bloom ever-enduring, in which the beautiful 
 life rescued from wintry blasts will be for 
 ever ' safe from diseases and decline.' You 
 remember how the hymn closes, with what 
 a note of triumph, in what defiance of evil : 
 
 Let sickness blast, let death devour, 
 If heaven must recompense our pains ; 
 
 Perish the grass, and fade the flower, 
 If firm the word of God remains.
 
 BUDS 141 
 
 The Bible teaches us one of the simplest 
 and yet greatest of all lessons. Our personal 
 hopes and fears are interwoven with those 
 which belong to all the realms of God, in 
 nature, in providence, in the great kingdom 
 of His grace. The budding fruit-trees in 
 your little garden, for which just now you 
 have so much tender concern, are God's 
 trees. He cares for them and for all the 
 life around them. Your children, if they 
 have been brought up to love gardens, and 
 woods, and fields, and hedgerows, will not 
 think it unseemly if at family prayer they 
 hear father remembering the budding fruit- 
 trees and the cornfields. 
 
 Is it possible to think of the buds and 
 their history without also thinking of the 
 little ones in our homes, and of all the 
 unseen influences to which they are exposed 
 as the years of their childhood pass ? 
 
 And our circuit, with its chapels and 
 schools and guilds ; with its scattered village 
 societies, some of them quite ancient and 
 others of yesterday, and its newly enclosed 
 garden plots are not similar laws governing
 
 142 BUDS 
 
 it, and may it not, in all its variety of 
 life and interest, be interwoven with the 
 budding orchards and the bonnie bairns 
 in our prayers ? 
 
 I have heard men of large experience in 
 Mission work say that the fisherman's craft 
 has been helpful to them in the work that 
 Jesus Christ has given them to do. Surely 
 garden lore and fruit craft are even more 
 helpful, both in the home and in the Church. 
 Why did God plant a garden eastward in 
 Eden, and why did He assign to man, as 
 his first duty on this fair earth, the task 
 of dressing and keeping the garden ? And 
 why, in the vision of the great Hereafter, 
 has He replanted the garden, with its river 
 of water of life, and its tree of life bearing 
 twelve manner of fruits, and leaves that are 
 for the healing of the nations ?
 
 SONG 
 
 MAY is the singing time. In woods 
 and gardens, and by the rivers of 
 water Nature herself says, ' Let every- 
 thing that hath breath praise the Lord.' 
 And many things that prosy folk would say 
 have neither voice nor breath find ways to 
 join the concert. In our little front garden 
 tulips, despite dogs and cats and errand 
 boys, stand erect. They are radiant with 
 colour, except those that are white as the 
 driven snow. Like singers in church, they 
 stand up before the Lord, for those who 
 have ears to hear singing and making a 
 joyful noise unto Him. 
 
 Why should tulips set one thinking of 
 * trumpets also and shawms ' ? Ever since 
 I was a wee bairn ' shawms ' have been a 
 splendid mystery in my Sunday thoughts. 
 To this day I have not the most remote 
 
 H3
 
 144 SONG 
 
 idea what they are or were, nor have I any 
 knowledge of tulips beyond that which 
 comes of the sight of my eyes. I pray you 
 do not trouble to look up shawms, or tulips 
 either, in your dictionaries. I very much 
 prefer to have them, as they have always 
 been in my thoughts, invested in aureoles 
 of mystery. Dictionaries spoil the romance 
 and silence the music. Terrible disillu- 
 sionists are dictionaries. Three rows of them 
 at this moment are glaring upon me from 
 the bookshelves necessary evils, strong, 
 solid, aggressive, eminently instructive, con- 
 taining much information concerning poetry 
 and music, birds and flowers, including, no 
 doubt, shawms and tulips, but without either 
 song or singing, and utterly destructive to 
 dreams, fairies, and idealism. I never look 
 upon a dictionary without recalling a vision 
 of a dear old tutor of mine on whom I once 
 called. The dinner table was laid, flowers 
 were blooming in the College gardens, birds 
 were singing in the shrubberies and in the 
 orchard down the lane. But he sat bolt up- 
 right in a straight-backed chair, nursing, not
 
 SONG 145 
 
 the baby, but a huge Greek Lexicon. I am 
 sure Nature meant him to be an artist, or a 
 pcot, or a musican, or a writer of bairns' fairy 
 tales. Lexicons transformed him into a 
 monument of learning. Since then he has 
 joined the choir and learnt to sing. 
 
 On this morning of sunshine everything 
 that hath breath is singing a new song. I 
 walk down the garden path towards the 
 fruit-trees, white and pink with blossom, and 
 every flower sings its message of triumphant 
 life and radiant hope. The trees are literally 
 humming with the music of the bees. The 
 atmosphere is full of harmony. One has 
 difficulty in restraining the gladness that 
 would shout aloud. 
 
 Why is it that in the garden on this May- 
 day morning this Sun-day morning I hear 
 everywhere choruses of joy and praise ? 
 Suffer me to confess. I have come from a 
 missionary meeting. Every year for more 
 than twenty years past I have never failed 
 to attend all the meetings and hear all the 
 sermons of our own Missionary May Festival. 
 This year a very madness of song has kept 
 
 K
 
 146 SONG 
 
 me away from all the meetings except one, 
 and that one, from start to finish, was song, 
 and nothing but song. 
 
 Climbing the Alpine staircases of Exeter 
 Hall I heard, far up the heights, the Ex- 
 celsior of children's voices. They were 
 singing like full-throated thrushes, and 
 blackbirds, and linnets, and skylarks sing- 
 ing a song of gladness, making that joyful 
 melody that John and Charles Wesley 
 taught children in schools and the people in 
 market-places and village greens, and on the 
 moorsides of Lancashire and Yorkshire. No 
 more tuneful missionary meeting have I 
 ever attended. I laughed and cried all the 
 time, and forgot the days and years of my 
 pilgrimage, and dreamed that I was once 
 more a child in my father's house waiting 
 for the circuit phaeton, keeping guard over 
 clubs, and gods, and heathen dresses, and 
 missionary boxes, proud of the paraphernalia 
 that used to belong in those olden times to 
 village Methodism in its missionary passion. 
 It was a wonderful meeting. The Chairman 
 set the children cheering, and the faces ot
 
 SONG 147 
 
 the people lit up with joy. I saw a dear 
 old grannie a dozen forms away hemmed 
 in by bairns, and verily I could almost 
 have counted the wrinkles on her beau- 
 tiful face by reason of the light that shone 
 there. 
 
 No speaker was out of tune, nor out of 
 time. Every one did exactly what he was 
 told to do, and said what he ought to have 
 said. It was rather a dreary day outside. 
 The rain fell fitfully, and the streets were a 
 wee bit dree. Nevertheless, the Hall was 
 almost filled. In coming years, if the Metho- 
 dists of London do not forget the gladness 
 of that Saturday afternoon, they will crowd 
 the Hall, and cry out for a new Hall, 
 bigger, their very own, and without Alpine 
 heights. 
 
 The centre of each speech was a song. 
 One speaker, Mr. Bone, who is on the wing 
 again for Canton, reminded me of the tulips 
 and shawms. He wore the festival dress 
 of a Buddhist priest brilliant robes of rose- 
 coloured silk and white and gold, and the 
 robes sang like the tulips. So did the act
 
 148 SONG 
 
 of unrobing, and even the hanging of the 
 discarded raiment over the front of the plat- 
 form. But most of all sang the face of the 
 disrobed missionary and the very intonations 
 of his voice. It was singing all the time 
 queer, quaint, pathetic, Oriental singing. 
 He himself thought his singing poor. The 
 children did not think so. 
 
 The last speaker, all the way from Mata- 
 beleland, with all manner of show-things on 
 the chairs behind him, sang also. He knew 
 how to make the children see the kraals, 
 and the people dwelling therein, and the 
 children to whom Methodism has carried 
 the message of God's great joy. In a 
 strange tongue with plaintive voice he sang 
 a hymn. It was an imitation of the singing 
 of Matabele children, who, at a moment 
 when his own inner spirit was bowed down 
 with sorrow and loneliness and despair, sang 
 in the native Christian schoolhouse, and, like 
 the wind of God, drove away the mists. 
 Surely the voices of children are as God's 
 south wind thatjmakes the spices flow and 
 the fruit-trees bloom, and that sets the
 
 SONG 149 
 
 nest-building birds a-song with springtide 
 gladness. 
 
 There was not only a first and last speaker, 
 but also one in the midst of the meeting. 
 He, too, made a speech that from beginning 
 to end was a poem, a symphony, a wonder- 
 ful song. We have all heard of Mr. Bateson 
 and his work for soldiers and for Temperance 
 in the Army. He told a simple story, like 
 the rest of the speakers, giving the children 
 of their best without waste of words, naturally, 
 and in joyful speech. He told stories about 
 soldiers' songs that, as Christian passwords, 
 have rung out on many a South African 
 battlefield, and in the Soudan, and among 
 the frontier mountains of India. How the 
 singing of the Methodist soldiers is ringing 
 round the world ! How it breaks out at 
 unexpected times and in unlikely places ! 
 Walking along the Strand, he heard, from 
 the top of an omnibus, the conductor shout- 
 ing to him ' 494,' the password dear to 
 British Christian soldiers ' God be with 
 you till we meet again.' How the story 
 recalled the past ! I heard the soldiers
 
 150 SONG 
 
 singing at Aldershot and Shorncliffe, and 
 the Marines in Mr. Kelly's services long 
 years ago in Chatham. 
 
 In the springtime we think of awakening 
 life, and singing that can be heard, and 
 fragrances that fill all the air with a sense of 
 joy and fruitfulness and beauty. But the 
 spring also has its darkness and sleeping- 
 time. Have you never watched the daisies 
 at nightfall go to 'by-bye'? On Saturday 
 night one of my children brought to her 
 mother a pot of marguerites. The next 
 morning the white flowers with open face 
 beheld the glory of the sunshine, and 'glad 
 drank in the solar ray.' But on Sunday 
 evening, when the people were singing 
 ' Abide with me, fast falls the eventide/ the 
 daisies drooped their heads and fell fast 
 asleep. Outside in the little front garden 
 the tulips, open through the day, gently 
 closed their doors, and slept in peace. Is 
 there no song in the sleep of the flowers ? Is 
 there no mystic message of God for mis- 
 sionaries in their loneliness, and missionaries' 
 wives, and waiting native churches, when
 
 SONG 151 
 
 darkness falls, and there is no appearance 
 of life, and no sound breaking the silence, 
 and nothing visible to human eyes or audible 
 to human ears to tell where God's Hand is 
 or what His power may be secretly doing ? 
 His flowers sleep, and the birds, and, one 
 way or another, all living things. And 
 resting-times are good. There is blessing 
 even in darkness and silence. God takes 
 care that it shall be so. He never slumbers, 
 never sleeps, but is ever watching, and ever 
 giving to His beloved whilst they sleep.
 
 KNOTS 
 
 MY friend who on rare occasions graces 
 by his presence a corner of the 
 restaurant table at which a few 
 choice souls dine day by day, produced a 
 little packet of coloured cards which he 
 insinuatingly unwrapped and exposed for 
 sale. We all fell victims to his blandish- 
 ments, and bought the cards, more indeed 
 than we needed, and in turn used them as 
 means of persuasion, desiring to induce 
 those to whom we gave them to attend the 
 Bazaar. There may have been that week 
 bazaars in all parts of the country, but for 
 my enthusiastic friend, and therefore for a 
 great many other people, there was only 
 one Bazaar in all the world. 
 
 It was his hypnotic suggestion that left 
 me without choice when he further in- 
 sinuated the thought that I might address a 
 152
 
 KNOTS 153 
 
 few remarks to the Bazaar. As a protection 
 against imaginary peril, I prevailed upon 
 one of my daughters to accompany me. At 
 the door of the saleroom we saw flags 
 fluttering in the street breeze, and two 
 stalwart policemen guarding the entrance. 
 1 Ticket,' said No. 666, and then it fell upon 
 me in terror that I had forgotten my ticket. 
 Would the policeman deal with me as the 
 steward dealt with Jabez Bunting when he 
 went to the Lovefeast ? What humiliation 
 if I were driven from the door or compelled 
 to pay over again ! The wisdom of parental 
 dependence upon daughters happily justified 
 the precaution I had taken. Like a flash of 
 lightning came the retort of the girl behind 
 me, 'Oh, he's part of the show.' The 
 policeman roared, and, under cover of his 
 roar, we passed through the door and 
 climbed the staircase. 
 
 It was an iron staircase, worn with the 
 traffic of years, narrow, winding, suggestive 
 of economies in space, and not in the least 
 of the kind the County Council School 
 Authority would to-day approve. The room
 
 154 KNOTS 
 
 aloft also bore many signs of long use and 
 of old-fashioned ways. There were not 
 many persons present, for the hour, though 
 late for a bazaar, was still too early for the 
 greater number of the people belonging to 
 it. They are all hard workers, and I do not 
 suppose there is to be found in all the con- 
 gregation a single person of leisure. I 
 mounted a platform, flanked on the right by 
 a bell-tent with straw peeping from under- 
 neath the curtain, and containing 'a tiger 
 cat,' which all the while I was hankering to 
 see, but never really did see, being appre- 
 hensive that zoological predilection might 
 suffer a shock. It may be that the tiger cat 
 had not arrived for the day, or that he slept 
 after a heavy meal. I listened for his voice, 
 but neither roar nor purr broke the silence of 
 the room. 
 
 There were six parsons on the platform, 
 and a doctor, and a member of Parliament, 
 and a lady mayoress who had come to open 
 the bazaar. My indomitable and enthusi- 
 astic friend inflicted upon me the duty of 
 speech-making. Now, if there is one thing
 
 KNOTS 155 
 
 that I dislike more than another, it is the 
 making of speeches at Bazaars. One never 
 knows what to say, nor how to say it, nor 
 what the result will be when it is said. I 
 constantly envy the aptitude of some men 
 for speech-making. They always know the 
 right thing to say, and are fertile in humours 
 that make folk laugh, and in nonentities that 
 do no harm. Whilst my predecessors were 
 pouring out rivulets of eloquence, I was 
 looking around in moral desperation for 
 some peg on which to hang a topic. But 
 neither peg nor topic appeared. In front of 
 me was a little ice hut, that is to say, a place 
 in which ices were to be sold, and a vast 
 bran tub, and at one end of the room a 
 flower stall, and at the other end a refresh- 
 ment marquee, and here and there stalls 
 with Oriental trimmings, good women in 
 pretty gowns, and a little girl, daintily dressed, 
 sitting on a form right under my eyes, busily 
 plying a needle on a piece of embroidery. 
 
 At the very last moment, on the eve of 
 the doom for which there was no escape, my 
 good angel came to the rescue and bade me
 
 156 KNOTS 
 
 look not up, or around, but down upon the 
 bare floor, and there I found a speech on 
 which, in the joy of the moment, I felt that 
 any man with a tongue in his head might 
 have discoursed for an hour. 
 
 The speech was written in pine-knots 
 scattered all over the old floor of that 
 ancient schoolroom a floor well and truly 
 laid by carpenters long, long years ago, and 
 all the timbers, as far as I could see and 
 judge, were of the soundest and best. But 
 the children's feet through many generations, 
 tramping the boards day by day, had worn 
 away the soft tissue of white pine, leaving 
 the knots like little hillocks scattered up and 
 down, with tiny markings running around 
 them in patterns. I would like, were it 
 possible, to have the floor polished just as it 
 lies ; and then the pine-knots, to those who 
 have eyes to see and ears to hear, would tell 
 their tale of little feet, and of the old master 
 one of the most famous day-school masters 
 in England and of the generations of pupil 
 teachers, and other teachers who have come 
 and gone. These old churches and school
 
 KNOTS 157 
 
 houses and classrooms, how sacred their 
 memories, how precious the influence they 
 have wielded in family circles, and how 
 tenderly should we tread the ways now 
 deserted of the people who raised them ! 
 
 These knots in the pine planks, what 
 tales they tell, what songs they sing ! The 
 pine woods in the spring of the year when 
 the sap rises, and especially at nightfall and 
 after a shower of rain and days of sunshine 
 what fragrance ! How healing, refreshing, 
 life-restoring ! Is anything more soothing or 
 solemn than the silent pine woods, or more 
 beautiful than the stately coroneted trees 
 when the westering sun touches their trunks, 
 and brings out the radiancy of colour, and 
 casts shadows on the brown carpet at 
 their feet and on the masses of bracken 
 uncurling through the red ruins of bygone 
 autumns ? 
 
 Life, and health, and peace 
 
 that is what comes to one in thought and 
 dream, and not infrequently in sober fact, in 
 these pine woods. I never wonder that
 
 158 KNOTS 
 
 ancient peoples, having access to mountain- 
 sides clothed with these trees of the Lord, 
 should have conventionalized all their wealth 
 of joy and hope into a ' tree of life,' or that 
 the earliest and latest of the Bible writers 
 should have borrowed the mystic tree to 
 serve as a symbol of all that life and health 
 and peace that comes to us through Him in 
 whom was life and the life was the light of 
 men. 
 
 The knots are a silent witness of life 
 more abundant life living force possi- 
 bilities of the present, hope for the future. 
 Each knot suggests a branch, and each 
 branch means the gathering of more and 
 more energy from sun and rain and atmo- 
 sphere, from the changes that come through- 
 out the year, month by month ; yes, and 
 even from winter storms, and from the 
 unseen but all-potent alchemy of Mother 
 Earth. And each branch and branchlet means 
 more shade and beauty and fruitfulness* 
 more girth and strength also fro that parent 
 trunk that will one day build school-houses 
 for the children, with desks, and forms, and
 
 KNOTS 159 
 
 doors, and window-sashes ; and masts for 
 merchant ships, and scaffold-poles for the 
 building of palaces, and beams for the 
 roofing of churches, and shingles for the 
 cottage homes of empire-builders far hence. 
 
 Do you desire access to the joy of the pine 
 woods ? Make friends with the squirrels ! 
 They know. So, also, do the birds, and all 
 the creatures of God to whom He has given 
 the trees that they may not only feed and 
 nest, but sing in the branches thereof. 
 
 This bazaar to come back to everyday, 
 matter-of-fact realities what does it mean ? 
 It stands for a church of God planted in the 
 midst of a desolate place where the people 
 need God only knows how sorely life and 
 health and peace. 
 
 See ! a woman rises on the platform. 
 Who is she ? What does she represent ? 
 Why is she here ? She is the wife of the 
 mayor of the borough, and represents all 
 that ministry of municipal government that 
 is, or should be, a tree of life. The member 
 of Parliament by her side rises. To some 
 he is simply Whig or Tory, as the case may
 
 160 KNOTS 
 
 be. But to God, to his own inner conscience 
 and purpose and hope, and to the children 
 in all the schools planted in the midst of 
 privation and suffering, he also stands for a 
 tree of life, the leaves of which may be for 
 the healing of the nation. And next, the 
 doctor rises, who, also, is a minister of God, 
 and a fighter against the work of the devil, 
 as, in truth, is every pine-tree. And, last 
 of all, the parsons, who are what they are 
 and where they are that they may in still 
 loftier ways carry on the same work. 
 
 It matters little what all these persons may 
 say with their lips ; or what judgement you 
 may pronounce upon the pine-knots in the 
 old school [flooring ; or what may be your 
 opinion concerning women who toil night 
 and day with busy fingers that they may 
 help God's great tree of life in the only wav, 
 perhaps, possible to them ; or what you may 
 think of this little maid plying her needle 
 and silks as for dear life whilst we platform 
 folk are speech-making all this matters 
 little. What God hears is the song of the 
 pine woods, the song of all true childhood
 
 KNOTS 161 
 
 and manhood and womanhood, the song of 
 Methodism in the glory of its youth 
 
 Life, and health, and peace. 
 
 Shall we not say, also, the song of the 
 Methodism that is to be, in this and every 
 other place where, in the renewal of her 
 youth, she is shaking herself from the dust, 
 and in all her leafy bowers is putting on a 
 new array ?
 
 A GARDEN 
 
 THE race began its work of life in a 
 garden ; it died and rose again in a 
 garden ; it will attain its fullest glory 
 in a garden. 
 
 ' And the Lord God planted a garden 
 eastward, in Eden ; and there He put the 
 man whom He had formed.' 
 
 * Now in the place where He was crucified 
 there was a garden ; and in the garden a 
 new tomb wherein was never man yet laid.' 
 
 ' And on this side of the river and on that 
 was the tree of life, bearing twelve manner 
 of fruits, yielding its fruit every month ; and 
 the leaves of the tree were for the healing of 
 the nations.' 
 
 How many thoughts fragrant of Mother 
 
 Earth and growing trees and herbs and 
 
 flowers one might cull from the holiest of all 
 
 books a book in which nature shines with 
 
 162
 
 A GARDEN 163 
 
 the purest light, and, all things considered, 
 with the kindliest light ! And how much 
 garden lore one might quote from the stories 
 of great men and women of note, and nations 
 that have reached celebrity and left their im- 
 print upon the history of the world ! For in 
 all the evolution of art, and science, and 
 literature, and nationality, gardens have 
 played the part which God designed them 
 to play when He Himself planted the first 
 garden, and stocked it with fruit-trees, and 
 made provision for its nourishment and 
 husbandry, and for its power to bless the 
 surrounding lands. 
 
 Years ago, when it fell to my lot frequently 
 to tramp through the lanes and fields that lie 
 on either side of the Avon and its tributaries, 
 I used to wonder whether, in the very nature 
 of things, Shakespeare could have been the 
 man he was but for the education he received 
 among the elms and oak-trees of Warwick- 
 shire, and from the gardens that everywhere 
 in those days abounded around the place 
 of his birth. In that same land, where 
 every field and woodland and river bank
 
 1 64 A GARDEN 
 
 blossoms into a garden, a woman of wealth 
 desired to build a house to the glory of God. 
 She sent the greatest architect England then 
 possessed to do her bidding, and gave him 
 freedom to build and carve as he listed, 
 sparing no cost and imposing no fetters on 
 the play of human fancy. All the garden 
 in the midst of which the builders wrought 
 became a studio. Men skilled in the carving 
 of wood or stone went forth to study nature 
 as they found her, in her simplest and 
 homeliest garb. They brought fruits and 
 flowers from cottage gardens, and nests 
 from the woods, and trailing leaves, and all 
 that was most characteristic of the country- 
 side for which they were preparing a house 
 of God. And the church to this day is 
 a dream of beauty a church in a garden, 
 reflecting in all its adornment the beauty 
 in the midst of which it is enshrined. 
 
 Was not that the intention of the Lord 
 God when He began the upbuilding of the 
 race in a garden ? 
 
 I recall a square garden plot outside the 
 gates of an ancient city. It may really have
 
 A GARDEN 165 
 
 been a small garden, but in my memory it 
 has always lived as the largest garden I 
 have ever seen in the possession of a Metho- 
 dist preacher. Like the garden city in the 
 Revelation, it lay foursquare, with walls 
 great and high old walls, with stone cop- 
 ings, over the face of which fruit-trees were 
 trained. In one corner stood a summer 
 house, also foursquare a sort of Tower of 
 Babel, that, to my childish imagination, had 
 been built defiantly heavenward. I could 
 vow it had at least three storys. What 
 endless delight there was in climbing the 
 tower and pretending Bible stories or times 
 of war ! I lived in those days a secluded 
 life, not being permitted to take walks 
 abroad, save on rare occasions. My out- 
 door life was spent, for the most part, in 
 the high-walled garden. To this day the 
 influence of its scented herbs and trees and 
 flowers abides with me ; so also does one 
 curious memory the memory of a little 
 girl who must have lived in a house near 
 by. On summer days her face would appear 
 above the garden wall, which I had no
 
 1 66 A GARDEN 
 
 means of climbing. She must have had a 
 name, but I never dared to ask it, and I 
 cannot remember to have seen her any- 
 where else, except above the garden wall. 
 She figured in my thoughts as a fairy. In 
 some undefined way she transformed the 
 garden, which she only overlooked, into a 
 paradise, and under the spell of the fairy 
 vision I learned to commune with all the 
 living things of that mystic garden world. 
 
 Last Saturday the Boy and I visited a 
 house five hundred years old. There were 
 many gardens, in odd corners, curiously 
 laid out, with turf springy to the tread, 
 and beds neatly kept, and old-fashioned 
 flowers, and ancient shrubs, and a summer 
 house that reminded me of the house that 
 John Wesley built in the Rectory garden 
 at Wroot. Would that some fairy would 
 give me that ghostly house and fair garden ! 
 
 Coming home, I found a new book in sage 
 green and coral pink, that had come to the 
 house in my absence ; its title Every Man 
 his own Gardener, by John Halsham, author 
 of Idlehurst ; with pictures, some roughly
 
 A GARDEN 167 
 
 drawn to illustrate such matters as the tying 
 of standard trees, or the pruning of roses, 
 or the framing of a hotbed, and others 
 painted by the sun through a lens in dainty 
 tints. I became enamoured with the book, 
 and the more so because I found it to be 
 primarily designed for those who, with little 
 or no experience, are possessors of just as 
 much garden as they can manage single- 
 handed. The following appeals to me. 
 Transcribing, I translate, as you also, in 
 reading, may do, into terms that belong to 
 your own life 
 
 ' If there be one pursuit that can be com- 
 mended as a general recreation, a hobby 
 good for all temperaments, ranks, and employ- 
 ments, it is gardening. It is a stand-by 
 that will come in with its solid results to 
 fill any hiatus in the progress of our loftier 
 concerns. If a party go into the cold shade 
 of opposition, or a company into liquidation ; 
 if a book, a picture, a play be damned, it 
 is good to be able to shut one's gate on 
 the mad world, and find one's marrowfats 
 podding, one's nectarines reddening, faithful
 
 i68 A GARDEN 
 
 to their master's hand, heartening him to 
 survive the earthquakes, even as they have 
 done. There is no vote of censure, no 
 critical cat-o'-nine-tails, which can touch 
 that part of his work ; and if he cares to 
 try the popular suffrage again, he may find 
 that people who have trodden on his pearls 
 are not by any means incapable of relishing 
 his peaches.' 
 
 There are briers besetting every path, 
 And a cross in every lot. 
 
 No one better knows the trials, or the 
 uses, of adversity than an amateur gardener. 
 And, perhaps, if we take them aright, there 
 is no occupation so fraught with beneficent 
 lessons lessons humbling to human pride 
 and encouraging to the grace of patience. 
 John Wesley was a great gardener, and to 
 that I attribute in large measure the fact 
 that, in all the spiritual husbandry of his 
 later life, he never lost patience. Hope 
 sprang everlasting and immortal in the little 
 evangelist's great soul. And one reason 
 why he achieved success on the whole was
 
 A GARDEN 169 
 
 that he never recognized the hopelessness of 
 failure in detail. I quite think the Apostle 
 James must have been a gardener. He was 
 much given to observation : ' Behold, the 
 husbandman waiteth for the precious fruit 
 of the earth, being patient over it, until it 
 receive the early and the latter rain.' My 
 new book, though given wholly to practical 
 things of daily gardening, has glints and 
 drifts of sacred philosophy that may well 
 engage our admiration and set us thinking. 
 For instance 
 
 'Only those who have fought their way 
 through adversities, and have made their 
 mistakes and lost their ventures, know the 
 times of refreshing which come after a good 
 day's work fairly put through some ten 
 minutes' idleness when one sits on the 
 wheelbarrow handle (a thing in itself a gift 
 of the expert, not to topple the machine 
 over) before the tea-bell rings, in a November 
 twilight when the weed-fire smoke drifts 
 ghostly about the dark brown plots of the 
 trim-finished garden, or when the sunset 
 catches the daffodils in an afternoon of
 
 170 A GARDEN 
 
 March. Then it is that all the old failures 
 and crosses, work done in vain, the needless 
 cares, the groundless fears, all the seeds 
 that never came up, all the frosted blossoms 
 and grub-gnawed fruit, all the droughts and 
 floods slip, as by a silent enchantment, into 
 their places in the puzzle, and we know 
 wherein lies the true good of gardening, 
 and, perhaps, of the common businesses of 
 life besides.'
 
 ' GOOD ' 
 
 COINCIDENCES things happening 
 together are often curious and some- 
 times startling. One such befell last 
 week. A friend in the North country, 
 writing on another subject, incidentally told 
 me that on the previous Sunday evening his 
 enjoyment of the hymn they sang at home 
 was marred by the feebleness of a single 
 line, or rather of one word which, in a hymn 
 otherwise beautiful, always jarred upon his 
 innate sense of poetical fitness. It was the 
 word ' good ' ; and the line which, had he 
 been a poet, he would fain have changed, 
 giving it a turn of expression nobler and 
 more befitting the awful grandeur of the 
 subject, was this 
 
 He died to make us good. 
 
 Now it so happened that on that same 
 171
 
 172 'GOOD' 
 
 Sunday evening, the breadth of many 
 counties apart, another little family group 
 stood or knelt around the piano, while 
 mother played children's hymns according 
 to her wont. Each child has the privilege 
 of selecting his or her favourite hymn, which 
 is always sung without question. Phyllis, 
 for I know not how many Sunday nights in 
 succession, has invariably chosen the very 
 hymn that my friend sang 
 
 There is a green hill far away, 
 
 Without a city wall, 
 Where the dear Lord was crucified, 
 
 Who died to save us all. 
 
 How differently, with what mystic response 
 to personal temperament, and to the daily 
 history of our spiritual struggle, do the 
 words of hymns strike us ! We cannot 
 always understand why it is that certain 
 words touch some minds as with the potency 
 of a magic wand, whilst on other hearts 
 they either produce no impression whatever, 
 or an effect precisely contrary, and, it may 
 be, irritating.
 
 'GOOD' 173 
 
 Why this hymn of the ' green hill far 
 away ' has for me so strange a charm, I do 
 not know. But thinking on the matter and 
 my friend's letter has brought it home to me 
 with realistic force I have come to the con- 
 clusion that of all the hymns in the English 
 language ancient or modern there is no one 
 which so appeals to my own conscience and 
 inner consciousness. That any one should 
 dream of touching a single word is some- 
 thing unthinkable, near akin to a proposal to 
 change a detail in the ornamentation of the 
 altar of incense or the Ark of the Covenant 
 with its overshadowing cherubim. However 
 frequently the hymn is sung, it never fails, 
 in its every line and word, to tug at my 
 heart-strings. I think that one reason why 
 the hymn, just as it stands on the page, 
 speaks with peculiar pathos and tenderness 
 to many persons, is the fact that it gives the 
 main truths of our redemption in Christ Jesus 
 in words so simple, and doctrinally so true, 
 that even the very little children in our 
 homes cannot help understanding what they 
 mean.
 
 174 'GOOD' 
 
 We may not know, we cannot tell 
 What pains He had to bear ; 
 
 But we believe it was for us 
 He hung and suffered there. 
 
 He died that we might be forgiven, 
 He died to make us good, 
 
 That we might go at last to heaven, 
 Saved by His precious blood. 
 
 As I write the words there comes back 
 a vivid remembrance of the awe that fell 
 upon us whilst we were singing them on 
 that same Sunday evening. The reason 
 why with special force the hymn at this 
 line, ' He died to make us good/ wrapt the 
 whole of the little family group in unspoken 
 sympathy had to do mainly with the word 
 'good.' It is just now the central word in 
 a small child's life. Day by day, at home 
 and at school, in her work and in her play, 
 the battle she is fighting and it is some- 
 times a furious battle rages around this 
 word 'good.' She wants to be good; she 
 understands what goodness is ; the deepest 
 desire of her little heart, especially when at 
 nightfall she kneels down to say her prayers,
 
 'GOOD' 175 
 
 is that she may be ' good.' No grown-up 
 man or woman in all the circle of my ac- 
 quaintance is just now making a harder or a 
 braver fight for goodness than this child of 
 seven years. There is in her, as in so many 
 of the little boys and girls we all know, exu- 
 berance of life, passion, frolic, self-will, and, 
 alas ! as in all of us, underlying selfishness. 
 She knows that this and that are wrong ; 
 that to disobey, to think about herself first 
 and foremost, to strive after her own way in 
 every little thing as well as in everything 
 that is greater, is bad. Little by little she 
 is winning the victory, though she does not 
 know it. And however much she may at 
 times revel in naughtiness, she, in the deep 
 places of her heart, hates it all, and many 
 a time says to herself ' Oh, how nice it 
 would be if only I could be, always, good!' 
 It all circles around this one word 'good/ 
 And it so happens that on that Sunday night 
 we could none of us help thinking of the 
 child, and silently praying for her and for 
 ourselves as with quivering voices we once 
 more sang the words
 
 1 76 'GOOD' 
 
 He died that we might be forgiven, 
 He died to make us good. 
 
 No, my friend, not for all the gold of all 
 the Indies, would I part with that little 
 Saxon word from the great hymn. 
 
 There was no other good enough 
 
 To pay the price of sin ; 
 He only could unlock the gate 
 
 Of heaven, and let us in. 
 
 Is there not a far-away sense in which it is 
 true of us who would like to be Christian, 
 that is to say, Christlike, in our fatherhood 
 and motherhood, in the teaching and helping 
 of children true, that in proportion as we 
 are personally 'good' we have it in our 
 power, in any sense and to any extent, to 
 'pay the price of sin'? If a child does 
 wrong and is punished, say by naturally and 
 inevitably reaping the result of its wrong- 
 doing, and not merely by endurance of 
 inflicted strokes of chastisement, who suffers 
 most keenly ? Who is it that shares the 
 weight of the little cross that Nature herself 
 compels the child to carry ? Is it not the 
 mother ? And will not the tooth of pain be
 
 'GOOD' 177 
 
 the sharper, and the pressure of the cross- 
 sorrow the heavier, just so far as the mother 
 has the mind of Christ and a heart that 
 throbs to the heart-beats of her dear Lord, 
 who ' hung and suffered there ' ? And is it 
 not in proportion as the mother thus suffers 
 that she has it in her power to help the child 
 by influencing her for good ? She knows 
 by the instinct of her own heart, to some 
 extent at least, what it meant for Him to 
 ' pay the price of sin.' And every such 
 mother will sing, with a depth of meaning 
 and emotion impossible to describe, the in- 
 finitely precious words with which this great 
 child's hymn closes 
 
 Oh, dearly, dearly, has He loved, 
 
 And we must love Him too, 
 And trust in His redeeming blood, 
 
 And try His works to do.
 
 RAIN 
 
 IT fell, a gracious rain, hour by hour 
 through the after-part of the day, and, if 
 one may judge from roadways and 
 gardens, all night. Everybody, I fear, 
 would not think it gracious, for morning 
 brought thousands of Lancashire folk to 
 London in quest of that yearly open-air frolic 
 known as the ' Cup Tie/ and one could not 
 help picturing the woebegone condition of 
 men and women after a weary night journey 
 turned out into the wet streets and pitilessly 
 pelted. It must' indeed, for the many 
 thousands of visitors, and for the players 
 themselves, have been football under diffi- 
 culties, until the April sun, ever fighting for 
 victory, conquered the clouds and shone 
 forth on the beautiful gardens of the Crystal 
 Palace. 
 
 It so happened that last Sunday week, 
 178
 
 RAIN 179 
 
 among the notices given by the stewards to 
 the preacher in the vestry, one concerned 
 1 The Recreation Society.' 
 
 In reading it to the congregation I 
 thought it just and wise to remind the 
 people that this Society was one of many 
 good things that came a few years ago as 
 the result of a revival of religion. Many 
 young men and young women were con- 
 verted at that time under the preaching of 
 one of the Connexional Evangelists. They 
 forthwith began to follow in the footsteps 
 of Jesus Christ, going out into the wilder- 
 ness to seek and to save the lost. Open- 
 air preaching, with prayer-meetings, and a 
 nobler pattern of Wesley Guild meetings, 
 and many other fruits of personal religion, 
 were harvested from the seed of that 
 memorable sowing-time. The Recreation 
 Society was an indirect result. In announc- 
 ing the meeting, I recalled its history, and 
 said that in a very true sense Jesus Christ 
 was the President of the Society, and that if 
 He was permitted to watch over the play, 
 as well as the work and the fight and the
 
 180 RAIN 
 
 sorrow of life, no harm could come, but 
 untold good. At the close of the service a 
 man met me at the road-corner and found 
 grave fault with what I had said. He 
 seemed to think that football and cricket 
 were wholly and hopelessly bad. 
 
 Will the time come when in all the great 
 organizations for English play Jesus Christ 
 will be allowed to hold an honoured place ? 
 If at the gates when the turnstiles swing the 
 people one by one into the field, Jesus 
 Christ in visible form came One amongst 
 them once more would the keepers of the 
 gate let Him in with joyful words of 
 welcome ? Or would they in terror try to 
 keep Him out ? There is nothing more 
 needed in England to-day than the atmo- 
 sphere of Christian manliness and woman- 
 liness to pervade all the business and all the 
 play of daily life. 
 
 This Recreation Society of ours, child 
 though it is of a revival of religion, and rich 
 in Church membership, is not quite as 
 perfect as it might be. I am afraid that 
 sometimes not so much in the actual play
 
 RAIN 181 
 
 as in the transaction of committee business 
 we fail to remember the Unseen Presence of 
 our Lord, and say things that we would 
 never dream of saying if the veil were rent, 
 and our eyes were opened, and we saw Him 
 in our midst. Is it not thus also in all our 
 Church meetings, notably so in Quarterly 
 Meetings ? The other night I heard one of 
 the Common Councilmen of the world's 
 greatest city say that in the meetings of the 
 City Council there was less bickering, and 
 more Christian courtesy and consideration 
 one for another, than in many of our 
 Church Courts. Is it true that the world can 
 set an example to the Church ? Is it true 
 that the bottom reason why the work of God 
 does not ceaselessly thrive in some circuits is 
 because they who are members of one 
 household are not of one mind, or, worse 
 still, not of one heart ? We ought never to 
 complain concerning differences of opinion : 
 they are natural, and therefore healthy. 
 Life would be dull without them, and 
 might become fruitless. But when people 
 differ, and do not agree to differ, when they
 
 182 RAIN 
 
 speak angry words and impute unchristian 
 motives, the Christ is driven far away and 
 the blessing of God's sunshine and of His 
 gracious rain is withheld. 
 
 Many questions in daily life are very 
 difficult to answer ; and such questions, it 
 seems to me, are plentiful in proportion as 
 we lead lives full of springtide vitality. 
 When the people were trooping into the wet 
 streets of London from the railway trains 
 early in the morning, I chanced to be on a 
 semi-country road, hurrying through the 
 pelting rain to catch a train. On a new 
 stone pavement washed clean by the rain, I 
 suddenly saw a snail, house on back, stretch- 
 ing the full length of its clean, soft body 
 joyfully on the wet stone. I halted and 
 looked at him. 
 
 ' Where have you come from, my friend ? 
 What are you doing here on this hard 
 paving-stone ? Your proper place is in the 
 garden on the other side of this wooden 
 fence, where there is good food and shelter, 
 and cool retreat from the burning sun, and 
 safety from the heels of ruthless wayfarers.'
 
 RAIN 183 
 
 I stooped down, and gently lifting the 
 snail, popped him over the oak paling into 
 his garden. Now the question is whether in 
 so doing I did right or wrong. You see it 
 was a conflict of duty duty to the snail 
 who also is a creature of God, and duty to 
 my neighbour whose garden lay under the 
 rain-showers on the other side of the fence. 
 My neighbour, happily, was still an unrisen 
 man, and knew not what had been done. 
 All the way down the hill I thought, not of 
 the neighbour, but of the neighbour's snail, 
 and pictured him eating a succulent break- 
 fast among the young plants of the garden 
 plots. The deed was done on the impulse 
 of the moment. Was it right or wrong ? 
 In this case a test and a ray of light are 
 available. Suppose the fence had been my 
 own garden wall, behind which is a spring 
 lettuce-bed. If you ask for the ray of light, 
 see ! it is here ' Do unto others as ye 
 would they should do unto you.' Are you 
 in the habit of asking the Bible, and asking 
 in prayer, for great answers to the little 
 questions of daily life ? Because, if so, when
 
 1 84 RAIN 
 
 the great difficulties come you will know 
 how to face them. 
 
 Permit me to tell another small story. 
 There is a great spaniel whose home is a 
 house set in a beautiful garden. He is too 
 old and fat to leap the iron railing that 
 guards the garden, or to force his way 
 through the iron gate. I fancy that, like 
 some other dog-friends of mine, he has 
 formed incurable habits of wandering. At 
 all events, now and then in the early morn- 
 ing, as I pass, he is a melancholy object 
 outside the gate. He knows me quite well, 
 and looks up into my face pitifully, beseech- 
 ingly. His speech is silent, but eloquent 
 and unmistakeable. He asks that the gate 
 may be opened. Then it is that there comes 
 the conflict of duties the duty I owe to the 
 dog who knows me, and is so friendly, and 
 so forlorn after his night wandering, and so 
 liable to be stolen by his brother tramp ; and 
 the duty I owe to the neighbours who own 
 the dog and the garden, and are fast asleep 
 behind the drawn window-blinds. This 
 pathetic little comedy has happened once
 
 RAIN 185 
 
 and again. How it ends I dare not tell you. 
 It is only named here as an illustration of 
 that casuistical difficulty which so often 
 occurs in human life a difficulty affecting 
 smallest duties, and sometimes very momen- 
 tous duties. 
 
 It is in the time of April rainfall and 
 sunshine, when life is astir, when snails 
 and other creeping things innumerable, and 
 creatures that fly, and beasts of the forest, 
 and human creatures also, are under the 
 potent influences of springtide life, that all 
 sorts of questions arise concerning which 
 we need to think, and for the solution of 
 which there is often no remedy save that 
 which is suggested by the Apostle who, 
 through all his life, more, perhaps, than any 
 other disciple of Jesus, if we may judge 
 from his letter, was harassed by spiritual 
 difficulties. ' If any of you lack wisdom, 
 let him ask of God, that giveth to all men 
 liberally, and upbraideth not.' 
 
 One Sunday afternoon I went to a little 
 schoolhouse that belongs to the Society of 
 Friends. My friends who conduct the
 
 1 86 RAIN 
 
 children's service had planned something 
 special and very important. But just before 
 the time of meeting the windows of heaven 
 opened and the rain fell, not in a gentle 
 shower, but in a drenching deluge. And 
 it lasted long enough to spoil the attendance, 
 and to make the singing that had been 
 planned quite impossible. It was a grievous 
 disappointment ; but instead of murmuring 
 at this dispensation of the heavens, we 
 considered the wonderful ways of God, who 
 makes all things, even those that are most 
 contrary to our desires, and apparently to 
 the very necessities of our life, work together 
 for good. And there came to my recollection 
 a passage from the Life of Mr. Gladstone, 
 which only a week or so before had been 
 published. Mr. John Morley, in telling the 
 story of the Repeal of the Corn Laws, 
 describes how, at the critical moment when 
 every one in England was wondering what 
 would be the outcome of the great discussion 
 in Parliament, the heavens opened, and the 
 rain began to fall upon the fields white 
 unto harvest, and for one whole fortnight
 
 RAIN 187 
 
 it rained without ceasing. The farmers 
 were in despair about their crops, and the 
 people, hungry for bread, were filled with 
 terror lest the spoilt harvest should mean a 
 still further rise in the already high price 
 of corn. But it was this flood of rain which, 
 in the good providence of God, settled the 
 great question once for all, making it possible 
 for Cobden and John Bright and Sir Robert 
 Peel to carry the Repeal of the Corn Laws, 
 which gave to the people of England cheap 
 bread. The farmers did not think so at 
 the time ; but was not that, for all the people 
 of England, a gracious rain ?
 
 ICE 
 
 FRANKLY, I confess cowardice. Heights 
 and depths, ice, and all ' slippery places,' 
 are a terror. It has seemed to me that 
 only those with a vocation should venture 
 limbs and lives on the high places of the 
 earth. 
 
 But always the facing of terrors is the 
 way of victory, and it is wonderful how 
 much a person who is all nerves may endure 
 and do on dizzy heights, down fearsome 
 depths, and over ice-clad rocks. 
 
 There are nerves and nerves. The 
 muscles brought most into play in climbing 
 upwards are said to differ from those which 
 come into greatest use when descending 
 mountain paths. So also the nerves that 
 play among the common places of life 
 belong to one set, and those needed in 
 exceptional places and perils are apparently 
 
 1 88
 
 ICE 189 
 
 of a different order. A person may be 
 distressingly nervous at home, and bold as 
 a lion abroad. Perhaps there is kindly 
 intercourse between the two sets of nerves, 
 and this may account for the bracing effect 
 of wild holidays spent at the antipodes of 
 pier bands and Punch and Judy shows. 
 
 A party of ten, including four ladies and 
 an Irish doctor, set out in the early morning 
 with two guides, two ropes, and two ice- 
 axes. No one was allowed to take personal 
 impedimenta, not even a hand camera. 
 Across the Liitschine, up through the gorge, 
 along a steep, narrow, winding path we 
 came, through wildernesses of pines and 
 flowers, to a hut, where we rested after the 
 long climb, and refreshed ourselves with 
 coffee, bread, butter, and bilberry jam 
 wholesome faring for mountain climbing. 
 
 Around the shoulder of the Mettenberg 
 we trod, or crawled, on awful pathways, 
 above steep banks where the guides found 
 edelweiss growing. Below the banks lay 
 the great glacier that feeds the Ltitschine. 
 Presently we came to dizzy ladders, from
 
 igo ICE 
 
 which one of our company turned back, 
 as she had fully intended doing from the 
 beginning. For once, some years ago, these 
 same ladders struck her with fright, and she 
 has never since been able to face a ladder. 
 Yet really they are not so terrible as the 
 ladders in Dolcoath Mine, the difference 
 being that at Dolcoath you do not see the 
 depths into which you are going, whereas 
 here you step down and down in a perfect 
 blaze of sunshine, and all the imaginary 
 perilousness of the descent is visible every 
 step. Strange to say, the most nervous 
 person of the company, at this and every 
 other point of special peril, had the nerve 
 of a mountaineer. She took the most 
 dangerous places like a chamois, as did 
 her husband, and their courage helped my 
 cowardice. Afterwards I discovered that 
 the guides, like my friends, were afraid for 
 the elderly coward. They marked his halt- 
 ing footsteps, and not unreasonably doubted 
 his power to cross Alpine difficulties. But 
 when we came to the really dangerous part 
 of the journey, one of the guides was asked
 
 ICE 191 
 
 to take charge of him, and it was he 
 Hans Burgener who taught him the art 
 of mountaineering, and made it possible for 
 ' the greatest coward of the company ' to 
 live to tell the story. He held his hand ; 
 he taught him where to tread, and how to 
 use to the best advantage the alpenstock 
 with one hand and the rope or the guide's 
 hand, as the case might be, with the other. 
 Eventually he drove away terror and trans- 
 formed that which at the outset bade fair to 
 be a prolonged agony into pure enjoyment. 
 But, to be quite candid, in the earlier stages 
 it was an awful experience. 
 
 We walked miles upon miles over tumbled 
 ice, leaping crevasses hundreds of feet deep 
 narrow slits through pure blue depths, 
 with waters roaring far below. And all the 
 while, at intervals, avalanches thundered 
 down the mountains. Not a cloud flecked 
 the sky. And the blue I Never have I 
 seen a blue so intense. Thin sheets of ice 
 on little pools formed only the night before 
 showed how low would be the temperature 
 but for the sun.
 
 192 ICE 
 
 No one can imagine what ice really is, 
 or, indeed, pure water, until he has tramped 
 a glacier seamed with rivulets, dotted with 
 insetted crystal goblets, the banks of the 
 rivulets and the rims of the chalices glowing 
 with prismatic colours in the blaze of sun- 
 shine. There is no life nothing but ice 
 and snow and water, and rocks ground to 
 gravel and scattered over the surface. This 
 gravel, together with the nails in your boots 
 and the great alpenstock, iron shod, in your 
 hand, make it comparatively easy to walk 
 over the sea of ice. Only, at every step 
 you must have a care. Suddenly you are 
 on the edge of a crevasse, the sides of which 
 may be fringed with overhanging snow, 
 apparently solid and safe, in reality 
 treacherous. 
 
 Madame had been studying guide-books, 
 and had discovered a tale concerning a girl 
 who long ago went with her young husband 
 to an Alpine glacier. Not taking heed to 
 his steps, the bridegroom trod upon one of 
 these crevasse snow fringes, and fell down 
 between the blue crystal walls, and vanished
 
 ICE 193 
 
 out of the sight of his bride. Forty years 
 later she went with a new husband, and was 
 drawn by some irresistible fascination to this 
 same glacier. And, lo, the bridegroom of 
 her early youth reappeared at the foot of the 
 glacier frozen in ice and preserved in the 
 bloom of his youth ! This gruesome tale 
 Madame told for our encouragement. So 
 I took heed to my steps, or, rather, to the 
 steps of Hans, who to me, more and more 
 as dangers increased, was in very deed a 
 man of God, gentle, kind, cheerful, confident. 
 He made it quite impossible even for the 
 most nervous to be alarmed. He told me 
 to tread where he trod, and assured me that, 
 if I did so, the way would be quite safe. 
 And all the while, as I followed on firmly and 
 with zealous obedience, I thought about my 
 wife and children at home, and about many 
 things in that blessed Word of God which 
 these many years has been a light the 
 light of great example to my steps. And 
 all these thoughts and memories were, some- 
 how, woven up with Hans' great legs and 
 mighty hands, and with the Hands of God, 
 
 N
 
 194 ICE 
 
 and with His storehouse of snow and ice, 
 from which flow rivers of living waters for 
 the refreshment of half Europe. I could 
 have written sermons by the dozen con- 
 cerning the thoughts that came unbidden 
 as we passed from point to point over this 
 sea of ice surrounded by gorgeous heights 
 and canopied by the great blue of heaven. 
 You could not help thinking, and wondering, 
 and hearing voices from the past, and mystic 
 whispers of God's great power and His ever- 
 lasting love. 
 
 We found one crevasse into the depths of 
 which the sun shone. It was mid-day and 
 midsummer, so that we could see deep into 
 the crystal walls glowing with ruby and 
 amethyst tints. Into the far end of this 
 crevasse rushed a cascade of water a little 
 river of water of life, clear as crystal, flowing 
 from underneath the enthroned and everlast- 
 ing snows that seemed to be so near at hand ; 
 and the river tumbled joyfully over hum- 
 mocks of clear ice, and all around tiny rivu- 
 lets, running the same way through narrow 
 ice beds, came to join the brimming river,
 
 ICE 195 
 
 until at last all found their bourne in the 
 wide crevasse. 
 
 One of the crevasses was still more 
 wonderful. You looked straight down a 
 well, square-sided, but with rounded corners 
 a well a thousand feet deep, with walls of 
 absolutely clear ice, reaching down to the 
 bottom of the glacier, where it rested on 
 the bare rock of the mountain. On one 
 side of this well the perpendicular wall was 
 indented something like the rifling of a 
 cannon. Sheer down, a thousand feet, with 
 a roar like thunder, fell a broad stream 
 without speck or fleck, so pure that it could 
 not produce a single bubble ; and as it fell 
 I thought of it going at God's bidding to 
 gladden the thirsty souls of men toiling in 
 the burning sunshine under a cloudless 
 heaven of steel blue. 
 
 As we crept along, with feet in Arctic cold 
 and heads in tropical heat, I was as much 
 overmastered, through sheer foolishness of 
 ignorance, as any drunkard. I could not 
 pass the inlet chalices of water in the ice or 
 the tiny rivulets without stooping to take a
 
 196 ICE 
 
 sup in the hollow of my hand. Delicious ! 
 It is not the word for it. I never knew till 
 then the exquisite luxury of pure cold water, 
 and, may I add, never knew the temptation 
 that assails the drunkard. If once you begin 
 to sip the water or to taste the ice you are 
 lost. A burning thirst seizes you. Every 
 stream, every cup of cold water, becomes a 
 public-house. You drink and cannot help 
 drinking. The more you drink the more 
 you want to drink. And a madness of ex- 
 hilaration is upon you. Up unto the hills 
 you lift your eyes, and long to shout to the 
 thunder of the avalanche, and long to climb 
 higher and ever higher. 
 
 In front and to the right of us rose the 
 vast amphitheatre which I could see from 
 my bedroom window. The top was curved, 
 here and there, into peaks or horns of bare 
 rock, and corniced with frozen snow, hollow 
 underneath, scooped out by myriad sun-rays 
 beating upon it all day. The cornice of 
 frozen snow to this inconceivably vast 
 temple may be one or two hundred feet 
 in depth. You cannot tell. No guide or
 
 ICE 197 
 
 member of the Alpine Club would be mad 
 enough to explore so perilous a height. The 
 yellow rock on which the temple-cornice is 
 bedded and the blue sky overhead unite 
 to tint it delicate pale green. It is a 
 long, curved mountain crest above a vast 
 amphitheatrical temple of snow and rock. 
 Some day the cornice will break, and the 
 thunder of the fall will shake the mountains, 
 and, likely enough, shatter the up-piled 
 rocks below ; and the huge masses of snow 
 shivering out of their places will descend 
 upon the Eismeer glacier an avalanche 
 transforming the whole appearance of things. 
 For the amphitheatre under the green snow 
 cornice holds countless millions of tons of 
 frozen snow heaped in masses, from which 
 great flakes ever and anon break away. We 
 saw one of these curious operations from 
 start to finish at a moment when we chanced 
 to be comparatively near and were looking 
 upon the scene. A slice of the snow-mass 
 had loosened. It came away bodily, fell, 
 and rolled into white billows, exactly like 
 the waves of the sea, which on a stormy day
 
 198 ICE 
 
 tumble one over another until they break 
 into surf and spray on the shore ; only this 
 happened on a precipitous mountain-side, 
 and it ended in sheets of snow-spray sweep- 
 ing downwards with reverberating thunder 
 towards the glacier. In the middle of the 
 amphitheatre is a great square upstanding 
 rock. The guides say the rock is hot, and 
 that snow is never seen to rest upon it. 
 But no one dare imperil his life by climbing 
 and laying a hand upon the mystic rock. 
 On the right of the rock lay the incon- 
 ceivably great masses that provided ava- 
 lanches at intervals all day. 
 
 To complete the scene, imagine an en- 
 vironment of mountains, here snow-clad, 
 there pine-clad, and here again bare rock ; 
 and always overhead the blue of the sky, 
 and below, running down the twisted valley, 
 a broad glacier riven by fissures, seamed 
 with streams, and dusted over all its surface 
 with rocks, slate, gravel, earth, the results of 
 blinding winterstorms and small avalanches 
 that have come down from the steep slopes 
 right and left.
 
 ICE 199 
 
 At last we came to a point on the glacier 
 beyond which we could not have travelled 
 without risk of being caught in an avalanche. 
 Should we return the way we came ? Or 
 would we like to climb over snow ridges 
 and softly-rounded mounds on the left, and 
 up a steep ascent of loose shale to the 
 mountain-side flanking the valley ? 
 
 The two guides, Christien Bohrn and Hans 
 Burgener, held a council. 
 
 Let us picture the two men. They are 
 bronzed, sturdy, not tall, but strong, the per- 
 fection of health and fearlessness. They 
 wear thick brown serge-like cloth coats and 
 trousers, and felt hats. Each man carries a 
 coil of rope over his left shoulder and an ice- 
 axe in his right hand. The latter is a short 
 alpenstock, iron-shod at one end and armed 
 at the other with a sharp, short pick, and a 
 narrow axe opposite. Pick and axe form a 
 handle when the staff is in use as an alpen- 
 stock ; reversed, the pick, driven into a wall 
 of ice or rock, gives a hold to the climber, or 
 the axe cuts steps in the ice. 
 
 The guides consulted in German, glancing
 
 2oo ICE 
 
 from time to time in the direction of the 
 greatest coward of the party not the 
 women, though one of them, heedless of 
 all counsel, had come out in low brown 
 shoes instead of hobnailed boots. Finally 
 the guides arrived at a definite conclusion, 
 and proceeded to rope us into two parties. 
 Christien Bohrn, one of the most experienced 
 guides in the valley, went ahead, exploring, 
 hewing his way with ice-axe, and returning 
 with a good report. To my anxious inquiry 
 he replied, ' There is no great difficulty. It 
 is quite safe. You'll manage it. Hold on to 
 the rope with your left hand, and drive your 
 alpenstock well into the ice.' 
 
 So on we went, Christien and his little 
 company in front and Hans Burgener follow- 
 ing. I was roped next to him. He had 
 proposed roping as number three a stalwart 
 young man, but, at my special request, 
 Madame, in whose nerve and sure-footed- 
 ness I had perfect confidence, was roped 
 next, then the Chancellor, who, in climbing, 
 was scarcely less reliable than his wife, and, 
 finally, the young fellow. How helpful it is
 
 ICE 201 
 
 in all the pilgrimage of life, and most of all 
 in moments of peril, to feel that your friends 
 are close at hand ! And these comrades of 
 mine were friends indeed. They did not 
 say much, but just dropped a cheery word 
 now and then. Only, as I told them, my 
 greatest friend in the world as we passed in 
 slow procession over the ridges of ice and 
 snow was Hans. It begat confidence to 
 gaze upon him. What legs he had ! What 
 a shoulder to lean upon at critical times ! 
 What a grip ! Once, when we were in 
 comparative safety on a level snow plateau, 
 I told Madame to steal up close, and I 
 would whisper an observation which she 
 could whisper to her husband behind. Up 
 she came along the rope. Hans was in 
 front, and at the moment in no anxiety 
 about his company. ' When I go home,' 
 I whispered, ' I mean to run my red 
 pencil through one sentence in the Bible.' 
 ' What is it ? ' she whispered back, horror- 
 stricken at so strange a proposal. ' This : 
 "He taketh not pleasure in the legs of a 
 man," ' and I pointed to Hans.
 
 202 ICE 
 
 For some time nearly every step had to 
 be cut in the ice. Hans re-cut extra deep 
 tracks for us, and, of course, our heavily- 
 nailed boots (without which no traveller 
 ought ever to attempt this mountain climb- 
 ing) drove deep into the ice, and each person 
 passing made the foothold safer. Ah ! you 
 Sunday-school teachers, and preachers of 
 all kinds, can you not understand how many 
 thoughts were suggested by these footsteps 
 in slippery places ? 
 
 We were never, I suppose, in any real 
 peril, though we should have been if a 
 cloud had swept down from the mountain 
 heights. We were then seven thousand feet 
 above sea level, and as we climbed ever 
 higher the cold became so intense that even 
 the midsummer sun only succeeded in thaw- 
 ing slenderest rivulets in the ice. But above 
 us rose still loftier mountains that only 
 members of the Alpine Club would venture 
 to climb. 
 
 The mode of progression is quite simple, 
 and when you have got into the way of it, 
 and experience has created confidence in the
 
 ICE 203 
 
 guide, fear passes away. What happens is 
 this : You drive the alpenstock into the 
 right side of the ridge along which you are 
 climbing, and hold on to the rope by the 
 left hand, it forming a kind of rail ; then you 
 ponder the path of your feet, going step by 
 step solidly without a quaver, and when you 
 come to a wide crevasse you leap, and the 
 guide seizes your hand. 
 
 And so we passed from ridge to ridge 
 until we came to the far end of the ice and 
 snow, when we had to scale a small shale 
 mountain which, because of the stones slip- 
 ping under our feet, was desperately hard 
 work. And, lo ! at the top forget-me-nots 
 blue as heaven greeted us, growing in little 
 clumps among the deep grey shale. On a 
 grassy bank we rested while the guides rolled 
 up the ropes and lit their pipes. And all the 
 rest of the way was on pleasant paths radiant 
 with flowers, save when we climbed the 
 ladders or glissaded down a snow bank.
 
 THE PASTOR 
 
 HIS name ? I do not know it, and 
 although thrice I saw him, and many 
 times heard his fame, it never crossed 
 my mind to ask the name. Once see the 
 man and you would never forget him. Meet 
 him anywhere, in any quarter of the globe or 
 in any attire, and you would recognize him, 
 even though it might be a day of battle 
 or the Day of Judgement. He is a Swiss 
 Pastor. 
 
 My first sight of him was casual, uncon- 
 ventional, and highly instructive. A choral 
 society, apparently from a neighbouring 
 mountain parish, came for a week-end visit, 
 and was entertained in the assembly room of 
 our hotel. It was Saturday night. Elders 
 of the Kirche in sober-suited brown were 
 present, and stalwart young men and comely 
 maidens. They sat at three tables planted 
 204
 
 THE PASTOR 205 
 
 at the lower end of the hall, leaving the 
 upper end and the platform clear. Red 
 wine of the country in small quaint de- 
 canters, and ice-cold water, and, for the men, 
 cigarettes. At intervals there was much 
 clinking of glasses, and occasionally an 
 uprising and uplifting, with cries of ' Hoch ! 
 Hoch I ' Conversation flowed freely, with 
 laughter and song and dancing. (I tell 
 what happened without either approval or 
 disapproval.) The proprietor of the hotel, 
 with his wife and kinsman, head waiter, 
 manager, and two waitresses class dis- 
 tinctions being ignored in this free land sat 
 as spectators in a side gallery, to which 
 coign of vantage a few visitors were also 
 admitted. 
 
 In dreary streets of London I have heard 
 a far-away reminiscence of the quaint Swiss 
 song that rolled in waves of harmony 
 through the hall and stole through open 
 windows as I climbed the stairway. But how 
 very far away ! When next I hear it in 
 court or alley, I shall better understand the 
 ancient plaint 'How shall we sing the
 
 2o6 THE PASTOR 
 
 Lord's song in a strange land ! ' You can- 
 not realize how truly it is the Lord's song 
 until you hear it in the roar of the Liitschine, 
 or where the wind sighs among mountain 
 pinewoods and goat-bells tinkle in rock- 
 fenced pastures. Then you understand its 
 genesis, the origin and meaning of its wail, 
 its turns of melody that no lowland voice 
 can imitate, its bird-like trills. 
 
 There seemed to be no programme, or 
 chairmanship, or preconcerted plan of enter- 
 tainment. Two or three girls rising from 
 their places would go to the platform, men 
 following. One of the latter conducted. 
 The glees mostly songs with choruses 
 were unaccompanied and charming. The 
 voices, all carefully trained, were in several 
 instances singularly rich in quality. The lead- 
 ing soprano voice rang out from behind the 
 choir a voice of faultless beauty that all 
 delighted to honour, and that fascinated the 
 English visitors. We all hoped to hear it 
 alone, but this was not permitted. The girl 
 1 played the game,' and so sang as to bring 
 out the quality of her comrades.
 
 THE PASTOR 207 
 
 For reasons not difficult to guess, this one 
 voice was chosen to receive the honours of 
 the evening. The Pastor left the hall, 
 returning with a large cardboard box. 
 Presently he rose to speak. They heard 
 him in solemn silence for awhile. Suddenly 
 his mood changed. Loud laughter filled the 
 hall. The box was opened. A wreath of 
 Alpine roses appeared. Crossing to the 
 place where she sat, the Pastor put the 
 wreath over the fair head of the girl, con- 
 tinuing his speech. An elderly man, pro- 
 bably her father, rose to reply, maintaining 
 a ripple of humour with lapses into Alpine 
 solemnity so characteristic of old and young 
 in this land of mystery and splendour. 
 Thereupon followed a stately clinking of 
 glasses and more songs and graceful dances, 
 and everything was homely and becoming 
 an object lesson in simple courtesy and 
 artistic frolic. It all gathered round the 
 Pastor (who neither sang nor danced), the 
 young fellow with shaggy auburn hair who 
 led the music, and the comely girl with 
 laughing face wreathed in mountain roses,
 
 208 THE PASTOR 
 
 whose voice was the joy and pride of the 
 valley. I did not wonder greatly what the 
 Lord of Cana at His coming would say if 
 He found His servants so doing. 
 
 The Wetterhorn in sunlight, snow, and 
 white cloud. The Pastor's parish church, 
 with radiant garden graves in the foreground. 
 Swiss peasants and a few white-costumed 
 visitors strolling churchwards; also little 
 groups from mountain chalets. Little wonder 
 that Madame, lured by such sights, and 
 still under the spells of Saturday evening's 
 music, turned her back on the English 
 Church and the eminently practical Chan- 
 cellor, and turned her face towards the, as 
 yet, unravelled mysteries of the Zwinglian 
 parish church. Besides, she had heard that 
 a baby was to be christened. The baby, 
 who, I regret to say, proved to be wholly 
 mythical, was the determining factor in the 
 business. Madame's ' reasons why ' were 
 invincible. I drummed on the doors of 
 memory for Zwinglian Reformation lore, 
 and for such fragments of schoolboy German
 
 THE PASTOR 209 
 
 as might have survived the rush of 
 numerous years. We crept noiselessly into 
 the church, and sat afar off, discovering 
 to our dismay that, unwittingly, we had 
 done violence to the old Methodist custom 
 prevailing men to the right, women to 
 the left. The blunder was past repair, 
 except at the cost of an unseemly dis- 
 turbance. 
 
 The church is severely plain. In the 
 west gallery worship the guides bronzed 
 and muscular men, who take their lives in 
 their hands, and, as I had reason to know, 
 are gentle as they are strong. Some reach 
 old age and a peaceful retirement. But 
 some are stricken by lightning on lonely 
 peaks, or are swept down rocky slopes by 
 thundering avalanches, or are ice-buried in 
 fearsome crevasses. Memorials of them 
 may be seen in the garden ground outside 
 the church. 
 
 The people stand to pray and sit to sing. 
 The pews are hewn tree-trunks curiously 
 mounted and backed. An organ fills a 
 large space at the eastern end of the church. 
 
 o
 
 2io THE PASTOR 
 
 It is mounted on a narrow platform with a 
 plain rail and a few severely square stalls 
 below for the seating of elders. In front is 
 a massive baptismal font, the cover of which 
 plain deal serves also as a book-board 
 when the Pastor descends from his pulpit. 
 The latter is surely unique among the world's 
 pulpits. It is perched high and against the 
 church's south wall. Imagine a huge, six- 
 sided funnel cut in half and sloped, point 
 down, against a plain wall and surmounted 
 by a spacious box, the whole being painted 
 a dull light green. Above the rim of this 
 quaint pulpit rose the stalwart form of the 
 Pastor arrayed in a gown and bands. The 
 men listened far below with faces turned all 
 ways faces of immovable gravity. The 
 women, who filled the northern half of the 
 church, being farther removed from the pulpit, 
 could see the preacher's face. Three or four 
 modern pews at the eastern end of the 
 women's section faced the pulpit. In the 
 first of these sat, in all dignity and matronly 
 comeliness, the Pastor's wife, also her children 
 or guests.
 
 THE PASTOR 211 
 
 After the experience of Saturday night 
 we fully expected to see a large choir and 
 to hear hymns and anthems in abundance. 
 In this we were disappointed. Two men 
 organist and organ-blower shared the male 
 side of the orchestra platform, and three 
 girls the female side. One hymn only was 
 sung number 227 in the ' Gesangbuch.' 
 It followed the sermon. The tune was 
 reminiscent of stately German chorales. 
 Everybody sang, including the Pastor. His 
 rich baritone voice rolled through the church, 
 drawing to itself all other voices, and making 
 one feel that organ and choir were mere 
 superfluities. 
 
 The service began and closed with prayer. 
 Hoping still to see the christening of a 
 baby we lingered, and won a rich reward, 
 though not of the kind hoped for. For 
 one hour we saw the Pastor among his 
 boys and girls. He came down from the 
 uplifted pulpit, and slowly marched to and 
 fro. The grown-up people went their way, 
 and the children trooped in and filled the 
 massive tree-trunk pews, boys to the right,
 
 212 THE PASTOR 
 
 for the most part dressed to match their 
 brown hands and faces, and girls in neat 
 frocks and pretty hats to the left. The 
 Pastor was among them as a nurse that 
 cherisheth her children. He laid his hand 
 on a curly head here, and halted to ask 
 a question there. He knew every boy in 
 the place, and every girl. You did not 
 need to ask whether they loved him. They 
 looked up into his handsome face as into 
 the face of a father. He talked to them, 
 prayed, catechized, led them with his glorious 
 voice in the singing of another stately 
 German chorale, and, finally, as a reward 
 for good behaviour, offered to read them 
 a poem probably of his own composing 
 at which there was a rustle of approval all 
 over the church, and the children sat up, 
 listening intently. 
 
 We went forth from the Church of the 
 living to the Church of the sainted dead. 
 In that fair God's Acre, under the eternal 
 snows of the Wetterhorn, every grave is 
 a little garden. English and Swiss, guides 
 and visitors, French and Germans, lie side
 
 THE PASTOR 213 
 
 by side, or in the same grave. The solemn 
 mountain and the spired church share the 
 silent watch over the dead. One grave 
 every visitor goes to with reverent foot- 
 step and tears of sympathy. Its marble 
 has a sculptured cross and crown with the 
 inscription ' May Jesu's Cross be Miriam's 
 Crown ! ' A chair stands among the flowers 
 in the iron enclosure. Every evening an 
 old lady is led to the grave, where she 
 sits in lonely sorrow. She has wept herself 
 blind. 
 
 An hour later we saw the Pastor for 
 the third and last time. We were in 
 the verandah that overlooks the highway. 
 From the church came the Pastor, his wife, 
 and their children following. He was 
 dressed in uniform and strode through the 
 village the observed of all observers. We 
 were told that he was on his way to join 
 the colours of his regiment and take the 
 week of service which every Swiss citizen 
 proudly gives to his country a country 
 that has no standing army, and needs none.
 
 2i 4 THE PASTOR 
 
 We were told further, that the sobriety and 
 thrift and prosperity of the village were in 
 no small degree the result of the personal 
 influence and teaching of this Pastor of 
 the Zwinglian Church.
 
 BLUE-EYES 
 
 IN her mother's arms, far up on the 
 lower slopes of the Faulhorn, I first 
 saw her. 
 
 The chalet is almost on the frontier 
 between the meadow-land, where Alpine 
 wild flowers rival Alpine grasses in riotous 
 profusion, and the broad belt of pinewoods, 
 where the bed-rock first appears on which 
 the Faulhorn rests. 
 
 All the mountain names mean something, 
 and often the meaning is a picturesque 
 description of actual facts. ' Faulhorn ' geo- 
 logically indicates the prevailing character 
 of the vast mass that confronts the Wetter- 
 horn, the Mettenberg, and the Eiger, and 
 that overlooks the Grindelwald Valley. It 
 is mainly a mountain of shale, of rotten 
 rocks, in one section revealing, in its tilted 
 and contorted strata precipitous, bare, black, 
 215
 
 216 BLUE-EYES 
 
 scaly descending into horrid depths the 
 terrific forces which, millenniums ago, up- 
 lifted it from a ruined world to become in 
 after ages a fertile land, a reserve of wood 
 and water, a sunny height from which men 
 might see as in a vast panorama the snow- 
 clad peaks of the Bernese Oberland ; and 
 see also the sapphire glaciers mantled and 
 coroneted with everlasting snow ; and strands, 
 lace-like, of living water seaming the moun- 
 tains, as they fall into green valleys ; and 
 rivers, roaring over boulders ; and lakes, like 
 the glaciers that feed them, blue as heaven. 
 Alpine climbers think little of the Faulhorn, 
 because anybody able to tramp ever upwards 
 for five or six or seven hours can take the 
 journey, and no guides or ropes or ice-axes 
 are needed ; and there is no danger, unless, 
 indeed, you leave the well-defined path and 
 wander away among treacherous snow-drifts 
 and shaly precipices. But for people who 
 cannot qualify for the Alpine Club nor so 
 much as leap a crevasse, the Faulhorn is a 
 joy and wonder. From the Wetterhorn, 
 the Eiger, or the Jungfrau you may probably
 
 BLUE-EYES 217 
 
 see as much, but scarcely more. And here 
 you see it without risk to life or limb, and 
 without cost save for cafe complet at the 
 Halfway House, and the best pea-soup in 
 Europe when you reach the summit. And 
 the flowers ! A lady sitting next to me at 
 dinner insisted that no gentian could possibly 
 excel, in depth and brilliance of blue, the 
 gentians cultivated in her own Berkshire 
 greenhouse. But she had never then seen 
 the gentians seven or eight thousand feet 
 above sea level on the Faulhorn, where 
 rock in solution feeds them, and the bluest 
 of blue heavens is their summer canopy, and 
 their roots or seeds are sheltered through 
 winter months under blankets whiter than 
 Witney ever turned out from its wonderful 
 factories. 
 
 Flowers, Madame ! Do you not dream 
 of them by night ? Think of the gold of 
 the rock roses, and the red of Alpine 
 rnododendrons, and the pink of tiny azaleas ; 
 of white ranunculus and grass of Parnassus ; 
 of forget-me-nots and saxifrages and butter- 
 worts ; of buttercups and daisies, pansies,
 
 218 BLUE-EYES 
 
 and hare-bells and orchids ! They are 
 nothing thought of in the glory of this 
 garden of God. Only, I pray you, earnestly, 
 do not, through all the years that lie before 
 you, forget this and make your sisters and 
 children and brothers understand its inner- 
 most meaning, this that the nearer you 
 come to the whiteness of driven snow and 
 the blue of heaven, the richer the colours 
 of the flowers that God Himself has made 
 to grow in this watered garden. 
 
 And the tiny sweetheart lying in her 
 quaint little chalet cradle is it any wonder 
 that her face is as the face of a mediaeval 
 saint, and her eyes of heavenly blue ? 
 
 My introduction to the child was in this 
 wise. My friend the Chancellor of our 
 Exchequer and I had gone forth that Sunday 
 afternoon to breathe the mountain air and 
 bask in the sunshine. Strolling an hour 
 ever upwards we came to a chalet, the side 
 balcony of which flanked the mountain 
 bridle-path. 
 
 A Swiss peasant's chalet is built for com- 
 fort in all seasons, and with an eye to
 
 BLUE-EYES 219 
 
 economy of space and usefulness. It almost 
 invariably has at least one sheltered gallery 
 outside, with cosy corners partly open to 
 the sun and wind, and partly (in the better 
 class of houses) closed in with window frames, 
 thus making cubby-houses or conservatories. 
 In these galleries, on summer evenings, 
 women and young girls sit knitting or 
 making pillow-lace. In the early morning 
 you may see the bedding of the family 
 sweetening in the sunshine, while under- 
 clothing is washing itself in the long out- 
 hewn tree-trunk that forms a water-trough 
 through which a mountain stream of ice- 
 cold water is always running. Here neigh- 
 bours discuss affairs, and flowers bloom, and 
 children play in safety. 
 
 It was here, in the chalet side-gallery or 
 balcony, that a mother sat in the shade (for 
 the sun had gone round to the west). She 
 was meditatively watching the strangers as 
 they slowly climbed the bridle-path. She 
 was nursing her baby, and the peace of God 
 lay upon her bronzed face. The child's eyes 
 shone as shines the great heaven of blue
 
 220 BLUE-EYES 
 
 above the mer-de-glace under the Shrecken- 
 horns. When I pointed from baby's eyes to 
 God's heaven, the mother's strong face 
 broke into smiles, and I saw that she was 
 beautiful with the beauty that lasts far on 
 into old age a beauty that never fades, but 
 grows lovelier, like the Alpine flowers, the 
 nearer it comes to the stainless snow and the 
 everlasting heavens. And the child, gazing 
 intently into the face of the English stranger, 
 blessed him with laughter, and we made 
 friends. The next morning, when Madame, 
 the Chancellor, and the Professor climbed 
 the Faulhorn, little Blue-Eyes was brought 
 from her bed to greet the three ; and when 
 they returned late in the afternoon, she 
 greeted them again. By this time we were 
 fast friends. 
 
 Next to the mountains and the glaciers 
 nothing in Switzerland more impressed me 
 than the homes of the people and the 
 people themselves. I saw neither beggar, 
 lord, drunkard, nor unmannerly child. In 
 vain I searched for an uncomely dwelling- 
 house for man or beast, or for an untidy
 
 BLUE-EYES 221 
 
 garden. Standing alone one day on a 
 green mountain plateau under the Jungfrau 
 and the Silverhorns, I saw the Liitschine 
 winding like a silver thread through the 
 Grindelwald Valley. And as in the hollow 
 of God's hand nestled the homes of the 
 people hundreds of chalets built of red 
 pine, without paint or plaster, with wide- 
 eaved roofs and outside stairways and 
 galleries, with picturesquely planted gardens, 
 and patches of rye and barley, with rich 
 meadow-lands and copses and pinewoods a 
 land of fountains and brooks springing out 
 of valleys and hills, with one church (for the 
 English church did not count) and one 
 school the home of a free people who, 
 while empires have risen and fallen, have 
 remained unconquered and unconquerable, a 
 people simple, frugal, laborious, fearless. 
 No waste land. Every square foot, even in 
 heights that we should call inaccessible, 
 diligently cultivated. No squandering of 
 Nature's forces. Mountain torrents saw the 
 pine-logs for chalet-building and winter fuel. 
 The people need no candle or light of lamp,
 
 222 BLUE-EYES 
 
 or will need none a few years hence. They 
 lift up their eyes unto the hills whence 
 cometh their help, and God lightens their 
 darkness, and wings their words from height 
 to height, and carries their guests on moun- 
 tain railways that know no accident lines 
 that climb dizzy gradients and rush impossible 
 ledges, and are slowly making a way 
 through rock and ice to stupendous mountain 
 peaks. For much of this now, and for all of 
 it in a little while, not one ounce of coal is 
 burnt. Far down in the lovely valley you 
 see a chalet-built power-house, and instead 
 of a trail of black smoke defiling the scene, 
 there is a streak of silver down the mountain 
 slope. 
 
 Nor is God's great gift of beauty ignored or 
 belittled. Instinctively the people so built as 
 to enhance, not destroy, the loveliness of the 
 scenery. Even their barns are beautiful, so 
 are their goat-sheds and hewn water-troughs, 
 and the piling of logs for winter fires, and 
 their beehives. Sometimes the hives rest 
 on shelves under broad eaves, and some- 
 times are like toy-chalets in sheltered garden
 
 BLUE-EYES 223 
 
 nooks. Because of its exceeding comeliness 
 I one day photographed that which by all 
 English law and custom ought to have been 
 an example of sheer ugliness a laundry. 
 In Grindelwald village, where are the 
 butchers' shops ? I could not find one. So 
 surpassingly lovely was the churchyard that 
 I went again and bestowed upon it twelve 
 dry plates, or more. The shops are a 
 dream, and the restaurants corners of para- 
 dise. Hush ! A young girl is singing. On 
 a grassy bank that fences in her mother's 
 garden she is arranging mountain roses. 
 Her voice is like the trilling of birds and 
 the splashing of waterbrooks. The first 
 night of our visit the rain fell pitilessly, and 
 a string band played under the verandah. 
 By the space of one hour, out on the wet 
 road, stood matronly women and sober- 
 suited girls, not flirting and giggling, but 
 patiently listening to the music that came 
 only at long intervals. Music they love, as 
 well as beauty and freedom. 
 
 Artistic cottages are not always clean or 
 commonly decent. Wandering among the
 
 224 BLUE-EYES 
 
 homelier mountain chalets I desired greatly 
 to see the inside of one. Madame, I 
 humbly suggested, was the proper person to 
 negotiate an inspection. She professed 
 shyness and she a woman who leaped 
 crevasses, and trod with fearless step along 
 snow ridges, and swept round rocky ledges 
 as around her dining-table at home ! She 
 feared to face an irate Swiss house- wife. 
 The Chancellor, when I appealed to him, 
 took refuge in the plea that strangers, 
 English though they might be, had no right 
 to intrude. ' How would you like a party 
 of Swiss peasants,' said he, ' to knock at 
 your door and crave permission to see your 
 family at home ? ' But Miss Coote at 
 Dr. Lunn's request our friend and adviser- 
 in-chief took an entirely different view. 
 She has lived in the valley ten years, and 
 knows the people. ' They will like to show 
 you their homes,' she said. Therefore I 
 determined to be courageous. Besides, I 
 was pining to see little Blue-Eyes again. 
 
 So, on the last morning, rising early and 
 leaving my shy friends to wrestle with bills
 
 BLUE-EYES 225 
 
 and baggage, I sallied forth with my little 
 Dallmeyer camera, and again climbed the 
 foothills of the Faulhorn. It was a faultless 
 morning. On the Wetterhorn, above the 
 Peak of Tempests, one last white cloudlet 
 was folding its tent like the Arabs and 
 silently stealing away. The Upper Glacier 
 with its tumbled masses of frozen snow 
 glowed in the early sunshine. Already nut- 
 brown men and women were going forth to 
 their labour in the hayfields. Most of the 
 meadow-lands had lost their wealth of 
 summer flowers and grasses. Even fringes 
 of greenery on either side of the steep bridle- 
 path had paid tribute to the thrifty peasant- 
 farmers. The goats milked were away in 
 the upper pastures ringing their square little 
 bells a treble tintinnabulation of the deep 
 diapason of the great cow-bells. Past chalets, 
 sheds, and water-troughs, turning at every 
 turn in the winding path to catch new 
 glimpses of the mountain panorama behind, 
 I climbed, higher and ever higher towards 
 the dark belt of pinewoods, until, close to 
 the pathside, I saw the last of the chalets, 
 
 p
 
 226 BLUE-EYES 
 
 and a little brown maiden in red and grey 
 busy on the house front. Up the steps I 
 climbed into the side gallery. Before I 
 knocked at the open door, the mother greeted 
 me. She knew why I had come. One 
 word on the threshold told me that. Baby 
 Blue- Eyes was still sleeping in her cradle. 
 The eldest girl, who learns English in the 
 school, as do most of the children, helped 
 out our fragmentary conversation. 'Might I 
 come in ? Might I see the baby asleep in her 
 bed ? ' ' Certainly. Come, and welcome/ 
 
 From the house-place where I imagine 
 most of the indoor domestic work is done, we 
 passed into an inner chamber, large and 
 fair. In the centre, midway between two 
 beds, stood a quaint old cradle swung as 
 between two trees. In that dainty little cot 
 one could believe that many generations of 
 blue-eyed mountain babies had slept. As I 
 noiselessly stole to the cradle-side, the child 
 opened her eyes and laughed. 
 
 Whilst I was setting up the camera near 
 the water-trough, the mother with incredible 
 rapidity transformed the baby, herself, and
 
 BLUE-EYES 227 
 
 the two girls, presenting a family group. 
 And very bonnie they all looked in Sunday 
 attire, the mother with beautiful braided 
 hair. After the picturing, in which she was 
 solemnly interested, little Blue- Eyes came to 
 me, and would not go away, no, not even to 
 her mother, who was greatly amused, as 
 were the baby's sisters. But to me, a 
 stranger in a strange land, the confidence of 
 Blue-Eyes was a great honour, and a sign 
 not easily forgotten. The very birds trust 
 Englishmen, also the great St. Bernard 
 dogs, and the goats, usually so shy. A 
 sheep one of the few we saw followed us 
 some distance through the Mettenberg 
 woods, and boys and girls with the manners 
 of gentle breeding came to us without fear. 
 Surely there is no greater honour that a 
 man can win than the love and confidence of 
 a little child. 
 
 We shook hands. I raised my hat, and 
 she, like the lady of Shunem, ' bowed herself 
 to the ground.'
 
 BALANCE 
 
 MY maiden aunts, of whom I have a 
 large collection, adopted and other- 
 wise, desire a discourse on ' balance/ 
 it being the determining force, or lack of 
 force, in their lives, and, I deeply regret to 
 add, a minus quantity in the lives of many 
 friends, theirs and mine. 
 
 Aunt Marjorie, who has been visiting her 
 kinsfolk, the other day announced the date 
 of her return home. ' You will come again 
 in the autumn,' I remarked wistfully. ' No,' 
 she replied martyr-like, and added, ' I have 
 this morning been counting my balance.' 
 This same tyrannical consideration limits her 
 otherwise limitless outgoings towards bereft 
 and distraught friends, also towards ' causes ' 
 numberless. You watch the play of 
 * balance ' in this one life, now with laughter 
 and now, it may be, with secret tears, for 
 228
 
 BALANCE 229 
 
 there are within its compass tragedies small 
 but real, as well as comedies and simple joys ; 
 and they all more or less have affinity with 
 the little bank-book, with the dainty purse 
 that will never be worn out by pressure from 
 within, and with tiny sums more subtrac- 
 tion than addition that are conscientiously 
 pencilled every week. Aunt Marjorie 
 knows that in expenditure she can go so far 
 and no farther. She is for ever being 
 tugged by heart-strings and other invisible 
 cords tugged whither the purse-strings will 
 not let her go. ' Very sad,' say her large- 
 minded younger relatives. 'Why cannot 
 Aunt Majorie, who has no atom of selfish- 
 ness in her heart, have countless thousands ? 
 Think of the good she would do if God 
 made her a millionaire ! ' Yes ; perhaps so. 
 But possibly not ; and, after all, He knows 
 best. 
 
 Just now Aunt Marjorie and her sisters 
 and cousins and comrades of all degrees 
 for they are a large clan, and closely knit in 
 Scotch fashion are working with tireless 
 fingers. They grudge themselves any
 
 2 3 o BALANCE 
 
 pleasure, save the pleasure of for ever doing. 
 I call, pastorally, now and again, and gaze 
 silently in philosophical wonder at the cease- 
 less toil. If only the balance might weigh 
 heavily on the other side, would Aunt 
 Majorie be sitting here evening after evening, 
 no day duty in the household neglected, with 
 fingers that never weary and eyes that gleam 
 with every addition to the big box that 
 stores the fruit of her industry ? I picture 
 her in idealistic freedom, sauntering grace- 
 fully to the electric bell. She orders the 
 carriage for eleven, gives a list of West End 
 shops to 'James,' and returns to lunch, 
 having accomplished in two hours, and with 
 sub-royal splendour and munificence, what 
 my maiden aunt of actual life, limited by 
 'balance/ will accomplish with slow eager- 
 ness in two months of winter evenings. 
 But the account does not begin and end in 
 the bank-book, or Regent Street bills, or in 
 stall-holders' balancings. There are grains 
 of pure gold in other scales, sacred and 
 secret, and pearls of price, and things that 
 eye hath not seen nor ear heard.
 
 BALANCE 231 
 
 Her sister, Aunt Miriam, is richer in years 
 and health and other powers of ministration, 
 but she also is often compelled to touch the 
 finger-lever that lifts her fateful balance. It 
 and the conscience within will not suffer her 
 to do all that is in her kindly will, nor to go 
 recklessly train and tram riding among sick 
 babes and worried mothers. We murmur 
 sometimes in our family circle, wondering 
 why the Fates are not kinder. Yet, possibly, 
 it is the very unkindness of limitation that is 
 partly accountable for qualities and sym- 
 pathies and deeds that make Aunt Miriam 
 the woman she is. A big balance at the 
 bank might unravel the fine lace, and then 
 there would be no 'Aunt Miriam,' whom 
 everybody loves, at Christmas parties and 
 especially when the shadows fall. 
 
 With moments to spare I was on my 
 way to Farringdon Street station, when, at 
 the end of a row of coster merchants, I 
 espied in the gutter a whisht man with a 
 small tressel tray. As a draw for his 
 merchandise he was deftly manipulating a
 
 232 BALANCE 
 
 wine cork, two forks, a needle, a threepenny 
 bit, and a glass tumbler filled with water. 
 With incredible dexterity he constructed a 
 kind of windmill, and not only balanced it 
 on the edge of the tumbler, but set it 
 slowly revolving. A man of such ingenuity 
 and patience and control surely, thought 
 I, his place is not the gutter ! Under other 
 circumstances, what part might he not have 
 played in the world's history, balancing 
 empire against empire, and compelling all 
 manner of incongruities to do his bidding ? 
 Alas, in him, as in thousands more, an 
 unbalanced mind, an uncontrolled body, or 
 a soul without equipoise, has spoilt life and 
 left the broken shadow of a man, with 
 nothing save a toy and the power to 
 balance it. 
 
 Read any history of the eighteenth and 
 the early nineteenth centuries. The high- 
 way through Europe is thronged. There 
 is much traffic, a mighty uproar of mer- 
 chants, a gutter with not a little mud, and 
 a continuous spectacle only on a vast scale 
 of jugglery and balancing, with empires,
 
 BALANCE 233 
 
 electorships, kings' daughters, dowries, 
 navies and armies, popes and prelates, and 
 'souls of men* to play with. What rivers 
 of blood, what national debt, what travail 
 of nations, and all to secure the balance of 
 power ! 
 
 I read to-day's newspapers (it is the 
 month of June, in the year of grace 1905), 
 and lo, the play, ancient yet ever new, is 
 still on the stage. My wan-faced gutter- 
 merchant with japanned tea-tray and para- 
 phernalia of the old juggleries is striving 
 for mastery among forces which, con- 
 trolled, make for balance, and uncontrolled 
 end in bankruptcy, revolution, and hopeless 
 ruin. 
 
 My maiden aunts must not imagine that 
 theirs are the only balance problems in the 
 universe of God. Look where you will, 
 into the curtained back parlour of the 
 village grocer's shop, through a telescope 
 into boundless space where twin stars and 
 constellations of stars revolve their little 
 rounds, or into cabinets where statesmen 
 and kings and Tsars and Mikados play
 
 234 BALANCE 
 
 their game with royalties, and religions, and 
 mounted knights, and armed castles, and 
 ' souls of men ' for pawns and wherever 
 you look, from the infinitely little to the 
 infinitely great, the dominant force is 
 'balance.' It has always been so, and 
 always must be so. Did not Isaiah the 
 great statesman-prophet of Israel see it? 
 Only he saw that which we are so slow 
 to see the Balance in the Hand of the 
 Lord of Hosts. 
 
 There comes to my recollection, out of 
 the long ago, a maiden-aunt story that ran 
 riot among the fancies of childhood, some- 
 times drawing tears of compassion and 
 sometimes kindling fires of indignation. 
 
 Aunt Keziah had a lover. They must 
 have fallen in love long before any of 
 us children were born. And they went 
 on loving until I, the eldest of the next 
 generation, had grown almost to man- 
 hood. 
 
 It was all balance ; or, shall I say, lack 
 of balance ?
 
 BALANCE 235 
 
 Aunt Keziah was plump and most com- 
 fortable. I remember as though it were 
 yesterday her round, chubby face, that she 
 used to compose into a sternness befitting 
 a maiden aunt at war with a cruel world, 
 but which, in spite of the tragedy of her 
 lot, was evermore lit with love and laughter. 
 Our love for Aunt Keziah was the great 
 unselfishness in our little lives. We never 
 got anything out of it, and never hoped to 
 get anything no sweets, or toys, or pennies, 
 nothing but love-confidences, over which we 
 wept and laughed and raged, and at night 
 dreamt great epics of tragic heroisms. The 
 whole business from beginning to end and 
 the wedding day did not come until thirty 
 years had passed resolved itself into a 
 question of balance. He had no ' balance ' 
 at all, except the uncertainty of a clerkly 
 salary ; she had a ' balance/ but how small, 
 though sure, she never revealed, and it, 
 like her own dear chubby self, was at the 
 mercy of kinsfolk, whom we for her sake 
 hated, but whom she perversely loved and 
 feared and superstitiously revered. The
 
 236 BALANCE 
 
 truth is that when Aunt Keziah was made, 
 the power to hate was left out, and there- 
 fore to that extent she was an unbalanced 
 maiden aunt. 
 
 As for her lover, we entertained for him 
 emotions of unmitigated contempt. Why 
 did not the man raise a rebellion, or murder 
 somebody, or storm a bank, or, at the very 
 least, bring a coach and four prancing steeds 
 at the dead of night and carry off Aunt 
 Keziah to Gretna Green in triumph? We 
 should then have got wedding-cake or 
 shouting or something else out of the 
 business, and they would have been happy 
 ever after. 
 
 But again it was all a question of balance, 
 a fact which brings me face to face with the 
 essential duplicity, if not triplicity, of this 
 great word. He, happily for him, being a 
 clerk on small salary I never heard the 
 amount, for it is a singular characteristic, 
 common so far as my experience goes, to 
 maiden aunts generally, that whilst often 
 approaching the confines of a full financial 
 statement they never make an actual
 
 BALANCE 237 
 
 disclosure of their affairs : balance, like the 
 number of their hats and gowns, being 
 sacredly guarded against the prying eyes of 
 nephews; still less will they ever disclose 
 the state of a lover's balance, unless indeed 
 it should partake of millionaire qualities. 
 Therefore, as I was remarking, Aunt Keziah's 
 lover had a balance far too slender to permit 
 the hire of a coach or the purchase of imple- 
 ments needed for burglary or murder. Such 
 methods of escape from the imprisoning 
 environments of thirty years were not to be 
 thought of. 
 
 Moreover, there was that second kind of 
 balance, in which the man was rich beyond 
 the dreams of moral avarice. He had a 
 balanced mind. Now that Time has 
 advanced our education, we, the children of 
 that long ago, are able to appreciate the 
 worth of this second balance. In his youth, 
 when indeed little more than a boy, he fell 
 in love with Aunt Keziah, who must have 
 been a pretty girl ; and through all the 
 years, notwithstanding the family flouts and 
 jeers that persistently greeted his suit, he
 
 238 BALANCE 
 
 patiently loved, and never resented opposi- 
 tion, or returned railing for railing, or 
 waxed angry when severe remarks were 
 made concerning the smallness of his 
 salary, or upon the ridiculous way (as we 
 thought it) in which City bankers ignored 
 his existence. 
 
 The dear man was ' gone ' on Aunt 
 Keziah. All the cousins of all the families 
 concerned used to laugh (in secret) at the 
 forlorn spectacle of this elderly, love-lorn 
 man, with coming baldness concealed by a 
 wisp of hair, sitting, as he had done in boy- 
 hood, by Aunt Keziah's side she touched 
 with grey surreptitiously fondling her hand. 
 He never once through all the years 
 wavered in his love. And long after they 
 were married, when she through divers 
 sorrows and torments had lost her good 
 looks, I went to see her, and found him 
 absolutely unchanged, still poor, and still 
 rich : poor in siller, but rich in that which is 
 beyond price the unchanging loyalty of a 
 good man's first and only love. And Aunt 
 Keziah, breathless and not far from the end
 
 BALANCE 239 
 
 of her journey, had only one joy left his 
 love for her, and her love for him. 
 
 Once and this also is of long ago 
 there came to our plain little chapel a 
 family near akin to the King of Prussia. 
 They were members of the Dutch Reformed 
 Church, and Methodism, so they told me, 
 was the nearest to their own Church they 
 had so far discovered. They were homely 
 people and highly cultivated, so we bade 
 them welcome, and made friends with their 
 children. The latter, like their mother, 
 being fond of natural history, became 
 enamoured of an aquarium that stood in 
 the front window of our house. It was 
 a little world in which green water-weeds 
 and curious living creatures thrived in peace. 
 The fact that astonished our friends was 
 that this wee world, unlike the big world 
 outside, never grew noisome or unclean. 
 And yet we never changed the water. 
 Twice a day we made a kind of tidal or 
 stormful commotion, and every day a sani- 
 tary inspector went his rounds, removing
 
 240 BALANCE 
 
 the litter and adding just enough fresh water 
 to make amends for loss by evaporation. 
 But otherwise, nothing was done. Home 
 Rule prevailed. The water- world automati- 
 cally on true democratic principles governed 
 itself, and maintained health, wealth, and 
 beauty. It was again a question of ' balance/ 
 Two worlds, like twin stars, strove in friendly 
 rivalry, the result being a perfect balance 
 of life and power. 
 
 I sometimes wonder whether that bonnie 
 little prince and his bonnie little sister, now 
 come to years and honours, remember the 
 lessons taught by their English friend's 
 aquarium, and are themselves carrying them 
 out in their own greater world. For surely 
 it is one law, among wee water-weeds and 
 visible and invisible beasties, and Aunt 
 Miriam's greater world, and the world of 
 kingly and queenly rule, and also among 
 measureless suns in the star-depths the law 
 of ' balance,' God's law governing all things. 
 
 This I note, that whatever their faults 
 and doubtless they all fall short of perfection 
 somewhere and somehow maiden aunts are
 
 BALANCE 241 
 
 mindful of little things. People of large 
 importance, much occupied by their own 
 great selves, are irritated by what they 
 term ' their fidgety little ways.' Martha-like, 
 they are cumbered with much serving, and 
 troubled by a multiplicity of affairs, their 
 own and other persons. Or Mary-like, 
 they dwell among the aerial sublimities, and 
 think the more about the little things of 
 earth because they have to confess to them- 
 selves regretful limitations : from which it 
 follows that the romanceful Marys are not 
 less mindful of the little things of earth and 
 home because they lack the Martha-like 
 capacity for vigorously handling them. And 
 further, I note this, that their dear Lord in 
 His own wonderful way brings them into 
 high places of service, and perfects that 
 which is lacking in them. And this, very 
 often, He does by means of ' balance,' or, 
 as they would say, lack of balance. They 
 are driven, perforce, to think much of little 
 things, and so acquire a capacity for service 
 that sets them in His household side by 
 side with the Marthas. 
 
 Q
 
 242 BALANCE 
 
 Little things ! The poetry and usefulness 
 of little things, how wonderful ! Aunt 
 Miriam, for instance, is a perfect genius 
 among the little duties and unconsidered 
 trifles, as men call them (but God never so 
 calls them) of life. Her own estimate of 
 personal usefulness is quite a negligible 
 quantity, and therefore it is, in part, that 
 her voice and hands and even her eyes 
 minister so much, and, I will add, so tune- 
 fully, to our comfort and well-being all 
 round. Miriam could not do what her 
 brothers did. She held not the rod of 
 Moses, nor had she the speech-making gift 
 of Aaron. She could not write an epic 
 poem or even a lyric. She could not play 
 harp or viol. But she could and did com- 
 pose a chorus that is ringing down the ages. 
 She could teach her little maidens to dance, 
 and could herself set the measure, with a 
 lowly but useful instrument. ' And Miriam, 
 the prophetess, the sister of Aaron, took a 
 timbrel in her hand ; and all the women 
 went out after her with timbrels and with 
 dances. And Miriam answered them, Sing
 
 BALANCE 243 
 
 ye to the Lord, for He hath triumphed 
 gloriously ; the horse and his rider hath He 
 thrown into the sea.' Relatively Miriam's 
 part was small very small ; yet was it not 
 essential the one thing needful ? And it 
 abides, an imperishable fact in the world's 
 history. 
 
 I would like to bring Aunt Miriam and 
 Aunt Marjorie and the Prince and Princess 
 and Theodora, and all the other people con- 
 cerned in this true history of small and 
 common things, to the wee water-world, and 
 for this reason : it is a wellnigh perfect 
 example and illustration of balance. You 
 see it has glass walls, here and there green- 
 tinted, and miniature rocks also green with 
 colonies of minute plants, and a bed of fine 
 gravel out of which or out of the rock 
 crannies spring green water-weeds. It does 
 not matter whether the aquarium is marine 
 or freshwater the principle is the same. 
 At first there was some difficulty in keeping 
 the water clean and sweet. But little by 
 little the balance between plant-life and 
 animal-life adjusted itself, and all the
 
 244 BALANCE 
 
 processes of nature were carried on decently 
 and in order. Some of the processes you 
 can see ; and quite likely because they are 
 visible you think them supremely important. 
 But in reality they are not so great as the 
 altogether innumerable little affairs and forces 
 that ceaselessly are fulfilling the mightiest 
 and most mystical ministry of all. You can 
 watch the water-snail with rasp-like tongue 
 devouring green fields of confervae on glass 
 walls and smooth pebbles. And when the 
 sun shines, you can see silver globules of 
 pure oxygen fringing the delicate sprays of 
 green water-weed. But you cannot see the 
 cell division, and rotation of protoplasm, and 
 silent storing of chlorophyl in the plant 
 world, or the still more wonderful doings 
 among the infusoria and rotifers and bacteria 
 that by countless millions in infinitely little 
 ways are fulfilling their destiny and carrying 
 on God's great law of balanced life. 
 
 In the beginning of the Church's great 
 history the leader of apostolic bands was 
 taught in vision, by a sheet let down from 
 heaven full of four-footed creatures, to call
 
 BALANCE 245 
 
 nothing that God had cleansed common or 
 unclean ; and so may we learn the truth, 
 worth, and dignity of little things, and the 
 oneness of our world of daily life with all 
 the worlds of God in all places of His 
 dominion. 
 
 PRINTED BV WILLIAM CLOWES AND SONS, LIMITED, 
 LONDON AND BECCLBS.
 
 BY THE SAME AUTHOR. 
 
 Demy l6mo, Cloth Gilt, 120 pages. Large Type. Price //- net each. 
 Or, in Paste Grain Leather. Price 1/6 net each. 
 
 JESUS. 
 
 A BOOK FOR LITTLE CHILDREN. 
 With Twenty Coloured Plates. 
 
 SOME PRESS OPINIONS. 
 
 1 A delightful little volume.' Methodist Times. 
 
 'This charming book.' Teachers' Times. 
 
 1 An exquisite volume.' Christian Commonwealth. 
 
 ' A beautiful little book in every way.' Liverpool Courier. 
 
 DAVID. 
 
 A BOOK FOR LITTLE CHILDREN. 
 With Sixteen Coloured Plates. 
 
 Demy i6mo, Cloth, 128 faga. Price //- 
 Or, in Paste Grain Leather. Price 2\- 
 
 GOD AND NATURE. 
 
 ' Mr. Curnock is a thoughtful and poetical writer, and frequently 
 strikes out new and valuable thoughts.' Sword and Trowel. 
 
 LONDON: CHARLES H. KELLY, 
 2 CASTLE STREET, CITY ROAD, AND 26 PATERNOSTER Row, E.G. ; 
 
 AND OF ALL BOOKSELLERS.
 
 THE STORY OF HEDGEROW AND 
 POND. 
 
 By R. B. LODGE, Medallist Royal Photographic Society, etc. 
 Eight Coloured Plates by G. E. LODGE. In small medium 8vo, 
 306 pages, with Illustrations on nearly every page, and Eight full- 
 page Coloured Plates, elegantly bound in cloth with bevelled boards 
 and gilt edges, price 5s. net. 
 
 Will be warmly welcomed by boys and girls, who, while attracted 
 by the wonders of Nature, and the life of birds, beasts, and insects, 
 need some guide to point out and explain the beauties which can 
 only be seen by those who understand where, when, and how to 
 look for them. 
 
 LIFE AND ADVENTURE BEYOND 
 JORDAN. 
 
 By G. ROBINSON LEES, B.A., F.R.G.S., Author of Village Life in 
 Palestine, and Joint Author of ' Palestine ' in How to Visit the 
 Mediterranean. Eight Coloured Plates by LEONARD SKEATS. 
 Small medium 8vo, 304 pages, with 86 Illustrations from Photo- 
 graphs taken by the Author, and Eight full-page Coloured Plates, 
 elegantly bound in cloth with bevelled boards and gilt edges, price 
 5s. net. 
 
 The country and people Beyond Jordan have been brought into 
 less prominence than the more familiar portion of Palestine west of 
 the historic river. Explorers and travellers have from time to time 
 recorded their observations in different districts, but the whole of 
 the country has never before been portrayed by pen and picture in 
 one volume. 
 
 RAMBLES IN BIBLE LANDS. 
 
 Edited by C. LANG NEIL. Small medium 8vo, 284 pages. Hand- 
 somely bound in cloth gilt, gilt edges, and bevelled boards, with 
 about 100 Photographic Illustrations, specially taken, and Eight 
 full-page Coloured Plates. Price 5s. net. 
 
 'As has been remarked, the life of Palestine now is the same at 
 almost all points that Abraham saw and heard in his day. This is 
 the life which is set forth in a most attractive style in this volume, 
 which is written with accuracy, and gives the latest information." 
 Belfast News Letter. 
 
 ' A marvel of excellence and cheapness combined. A fresher, 
 more instructive, and more fascinating popular handbook to the 
 Holy Land I do not know.' Great Thoughts. 
 
 LONDON : CHARLES H. KELLY, 
 2 CASTLE STREET, CITY ROAD, AND 26 PATERNOSTER Row, E.G. ; 
 
 AND OF ALL BOOKSELLERS.
 
 AN IMPORTANT FULL-LENGTH NOVEL. 
 
 ITHURIEL'S SPEAR. 
 
 By W. H. FITCHETT, B.A., LL.D., Author of Deeds that Won 
 the Empire, The Unrealized Logic of Religion, etc. Large crown 
 8vo, cloth gilt, Eight Illustrations, 444 pages, price 6s. 
 
 Every part of the book is powerful ; but the fighting scenes of 
 the Boer War (in which Kit proves himself worthy of the Victoria 
 Cross) are the finest. Even the author of Fig, hts for the Flag has 
 done nothing that stirs one's blood more effectually. The story has 
 many thrilling incidents, and it is a powerful defence of Christian 
 life and character. 
 
 EVERYDAY LIFE IN BENGAL. 
 
 By W. H. HART. In large crown 8vo, cloth gilt, 360 pages, 
 Thirty-three Illustrations, price 3s, 6d. 
 
 These brief papers endeavour to tell something about common 
 life and familiar things in India, and they answer many of the 
 questions which are continually being asked of those who have 
 returned from that country. 
 
 THE SKIPPER PARSON 
 
 On the Bays and Barrens of Newfoundland. 
 
 By JAMES LUMSDEN. In large crown 8vo, cloth gilt, with Seventeen 
 Illustrations, price 2s. 6d. 
 
 An intensely interesting story of Newfoundland, its people, their 
 habits and customs, their daring life on the deep sea, wild scenery, 
 experiences of missionary life on land and water, adventure, comedy 
 and drama, the lights and shadows, the sorrows and joys of its 
 simple folk but little known to the world outside, are all set forth in 
 a style simple and charming from start to finish. 
 
 PADRI ELLIOTT OF FAIZABAD. 
 
 A Memorial (chiefly Autobiographical). 
 
 Edited by A. W. NEWBOULT. Large crown 8vo, cloth gilt, 350 
 pages, with Portrait and numerous Illustrations, price 3s. 6d. 
 
 'One of the best of Biographies, full of personality and force.' 
 Methodist Times. 
 
 ' The most romantic, the most thrilling, the most heart-stirring 
 story of missionary life and enterprise of recent years.' Foreign 
 Field. 
 
 LONDON: CHARLES H. KELLY, 
 2 CASTLE STREET, CITY ROAD, AND 26 PATERNOSTER Row, E.G. ; 
 
 AND OF ALL BOOKSELLERS.
 
 THE LIBRARY 
 UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA 
 
 Santa Barbara 
 
 THIS BOOK IS DUE ON THE LAST DATE 
 STAMPED BELOW.
 
 DC SOUTHERN REGIONAL LIBRARY FACILITY 
 
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