UC-NRLF 
 
 '::/$ 
 
THE LIBRARY 
 
 OF 
 
 THE UNIVERSITY 
 OF CALIFORNIA 
 
 PRESENTED BY 
 
 PROF. CHARLES A. KOFOID AND 
 MRS. PRUDENCE W. KOFOID 
 
HELPS TO MAKE 
 IDEALS REAL 
 
'AH, BUT A MAN S REACH SHOULD EXCEED HIS GRASP, 
 
 OR WHAT'S A HEAVEN FOR?" 
 
HELPS TO MAKE 
 IDEALS REAL 
 
 BY 
 
 MRS. A. R. SIMPSON 
 
 AUTHOR OF 
 
 "THE SCOTTISH SONGSTRESS" 
 "FRIENDS AND FRIENDSHIP" ETC. 
 
 " Teacher ; I find that since I have imbibed the teachings of 
 the JVeiv Testament I can look beyond the mean gains of this 
 life. I suppose the reason ivhy English artists put so much 
 perspective into their drawings is because Christianity has 
 given them a Future, and the reason ivhy Oriental artists 
 fail to do so is because Buddha and Confucius do not raise 
 the eye above the present" JAPANESE ART STUDENT. 
 
 EDINBURGH & LONDON 
 
 OLIPHANT ANDERSON & FERRIER 
 
 1896 
 
 u 
 
SECOND EDITION 
 Completing Fottrth Thousand 
 
 PRINTED BY MORRISON AND GIBB LIMITED, EDINBURGH 
 
TO 
 
 THE WORLD'S 
 STUDENT CHRISTIAN FEDERATION 
 
CONTENTS 
 
 CHAP. PAGE 
 
 I. THE VISION OF THE IDEAL .... 9 
 
 II. THE ASCENT BEGUN . . . . .12 
 
 III. HELPS AND HINDRANCES . . . . T 5 
 
 IV. THE IDEAL OF THE PILGRIM SPIRIT . . .20 
 V. AN IDEAL REALISED FRANCES RIDLEY HAVERGAL . 26 
 
 VI. ,, ,, REGINALD RADCLIFFE . . 31 
 
 VII. THE QUEST OF THE IDEAL IN MEMORY . . 39 
 
 VIII. ,, ,, ,, IN MONEY . . 45 
 
 IX. ,, ,, ,, IN TIME . . 52 
 
 X. ,, ,, IN BOOKS . . 58 
 
 XI. THE MISSIONARY IDEAL . . . . -67 
 
 XII. THE IDEAL IN FELLOWSHIP . . . 76 
 
 XIII. THE IDEAL IN SUFFERING . . . . 8l 
 
 XIV. BEHOLDING OUR IDEAL . . . . .86 
 XV. THE IDEAL LIFE . . . . . 9 1 
 
CHAPTER I 
 
 THE VISION OF THE IDEAL 
 
 "Still, through our paltry stir and strife, 
 
 Glows down the wished Ideal, 
 And Long-ing- moulds in clay what Life 
 Carves in the marble Real ! " 
 
 "The true ideal is not opposed to the real, nor is it any 
 artificial heightening thereof, but lies in it, and blessed are the 
 eyes that find it." LOWELL. 
 
 NOT long .ago we read this sentence in a letter of a 
 friend from Florence, " I can see sunshine gilding the 
 distant heights, but I am standing at the very foot." 
 The same winter, when walking in the outskirts of 
 our city, an errand - boy passed us, basket on arm. 
 He ran on in front, and every now and then rested 
 his notebook on the wall to draw pictures. He also 
 had an ideal. Bishop Westcott says : " The vision 
 of the Ideal guards monotony of work from be- 
 coming monotony of life." We may smile at our 
 children on the nursery floor enacting the scenes of 
 daily life, the buying and selling, the borrowing and 
 lending ; but were our thoughts laid open, how many 
 of our castles in the air have also as yet " no ladders 
 to earth." We are in our turn seeking to imitate the 
 great and the good, whose inspiration we have caught. 
 
io HELPS TO MAKE IDEALS REAL 
 
 Prose and Poetry, Painting and Sculpture are full 
 of the thought of the ideal in the different stages of 
 growth ; and what makes us see and find the longing 
 for it everywhere, is that we feel the stirrings of it 
 in ourselves. Never war-horse pawed the ground 
 more restlessly, never bird beat against the bars of 
 its cage more ceaselessly, than does the spirit of man 
 strive within him. We cannot always analyse or 
 define this indefinable something, this ambition, 
 aspiration, longing, yearning of the spirit. Augustine 
 has said : " Thou madest us for Thyself, and our 
 hearts are not at rest, until they repose in Thee ; " 
 though some are led by slow stages to find this out. 
 The growth of the ideal is like a painting, which we 
 reproduce (p. 38), of an old woman with a bundle 
 on her back, climbing the stairs in an Edinburgh 
 " Close." The lowest steps may be duty, the love of 
 hard work, the blessing of the text, " In the sweat of 
 thy face shalt thou eat bread." The highest is surely 
 the vision of God through His Son : " We beheld 
 His glory." Some have gone through the pages of 
 Amiel's Journal, ascending and descending with that 
 idealist in his varying moods, of whom a critic says : 
 " I fear that his malady of the Ideal was a compound 
 of pride and sloth. He was so much afraid of doing 
 anything imperfectly, that he did nothing at all. 
 Moreover, his was the ideal of the imagination 
 chiefly; it had not in it that urgent sense of duty 
 which compels a man to do his best, even when the 
 poverty of his doings pains him." We come back 
 from his sometimes stimulating, sometimes saddening 
 pages, more thankful than ever for the old Scotch 
 Paraphrase which we heard sung in our youth in 
 
THE VISION OF THE IDEAL n 
 
 cottars' houses among the peatmoss on the heather- 
 moors, by godly souls, unlearned in Amiel, but 
 learned in this 
 
 "O may Thy Spirit seal our souls, 
 
 And mould them to Thy will, 
 That our weak hearts no more may stray, 
 But keep Thy precepts still ; 
 
 That to perfection's sacred height 
 
 We nearer still may rise, 
 And all we think, and all we do, 
 
 Be pleasing in Thine eyes." 
 
 For we like to think of this life being an ascent 
 toward the prize of the " upward calling." And even 
 though when one height is scaled it be but to find 
 another, it is ever better on before. The higher we 
 go, the air is clearer, the prospect is wider, the views 
 are more bewitching. Some one may say, We do 
 not want bright visions in the clouds, but footpaths 
 in our daily life. Yet the vision helps the climber. 
 One cannot do another's climbing, but one can help 
 some young mountaineer to take the start heaven- 
 ward. We would like to get the knapsack, the field- 
 glass, the alpenstock ready. We may be able to 
 clear away some hindrances because we have passed 
 that way ourselves. Some of our own experience, for 
 example, we try to throw into the following chapters. 
 " If we cannot realise our ideal, we can at anyrate 
 idealise our real;" and we give glimpses of two 
 champions whose ideal is now realised, for they have 
 reached the summit and entered the eternal Hospice. 
 On their staff we do not read the name of any 
 highest Alp, but "He led them forth by the right 
 way, that they might go to a city of habitation." 
 
12 HELPS TO MAKE IDEALS REAL 
 
 The vision of those who have attained lures us on, 
 and we feel that for those above also there is pro- 
 gress. Sometimes they seem so near that we are 
 almost within hearing of their call, within sight of 
 their beckoning, so great is the pressure of the spirit 
 world. 
 
 "A good man, and an angel! these between 
 How thin the barrier ! What divides their fate ? 
 Perhaps a moment, or perhaps a year. 
 Angels are men in lighter habit clad, 
 High o'er celestial mountains wing'd in flight ; 
 And men are angels, loaded for an hour, 
 Who wade this miry vale, and climb with pain 
 And slippery step, the bottom of the steep." 
 
 CHAPTER II 
 
 THE ASCENT BEGUN 
 
 "The situation that has not its Duty, its Ideal, was never yet 
 occupied by man. Yes, here in this miserable, despicable Actual, 
 wherein thou even now standest, here or nowhere is thy Ideal ! 
 Work it out therefrom ! . . . The Ideal is in Thyself; the 
 impediment, too, is in Thyself ! " CARLYLE. 
 
 " Jesus presented to the world a solitary Ideal, and in innumer- 
 able lives has made it real." JOHN W T ATSON. 
 
 " Behind my back I fling, like an unvalued thing, 
 
 My former self and ways ; 
 
 And reaching forward far, I seek the things that are 
 Beyond time's lagging days." 
 
 IN our frontispiece, from the pencil of Mrs. Munro 
 Ferguson, we see a climber who has fairly started. 
 It seems strange that, in the most important matter 
 of our life, for time and eternity, some do not show 
 
THE ASCENT BEGUN 13 
 
 even the ordinary earnestness and precision with 
 which they would make arrangements for a summer 
 holiday. The text runs : " Shall two walk together 
 except they have made an appointment ? " and all 
 through Scripture there is the call and the choice, the 
 opportunity and the decision. We know how tourist 
 offices are besieged when a steamer is to leave any 
 port, and how the coupons are carried carefully in the 
 breast-pocket. The sleepy travellers in a hotel at a 
 mountain foot know well by the early knock, and the 
 heavy steps on the wooden stairs, that an expedition 
 has been planned. In the fresh morning air the 
 company is on foot, and the sleepers sleep on. The 
 climbers were in earnest, made a plan, kept to it, and 
 started. 
 
 " Nothing happens/' says one ; and yet many speak 
 as if some day, somehow, they would awake to find 
 themselves saved. Not so Peter, who says : " Give 
 diligence to make your calling and election sure." 
 In engaging a courier or guide for a holiday tour, the 
 agreement is sometimes in writing ; and in the quiet 
 of our own chamber we can to-night put to our seal 
 that God is true. Was it a stormy night, with the 
 wind howling outside, when Christ said to Nicodemus : 
 " The wind bloweth where it listeth, and thou hearest 
 the voice thereof, but knowest not whence it cometh, 
 and whither it goeth : so is every one that is born of 
 the Spirit ? " Nicodemus heard and obeyed ; and 
 the blessed Spirit is working still, whether, as like a 
 summer breeze, He gently calls the child Samuel in 
 the stillness of the night, or as the bursting of a 
 cyclone, He lays down Saul prostrate at the midday 
 hour. The Holy Spirit is the Guide, the Revealer. 
 
14 HELPS TO MAKE IDEALS REAL 
 
 He taught John to say : " A new commandment write 
 I unto you, which thing is true in Him and in you ; 
 because the darkness is passing away, and the true 
 light already shineth." In Him and in you ; you 
 may make of the commandment a covenant. In 
 Him first, who cannot lie, and in you because you 
 believe His word. You have seen the vision ; the 
 Spirit leads you through the Son to the Father ; the 
 Ideal has dawned on your gaze, and you exclaim : 
 " This God is our God for ever and ever : He will be 
 our guide even unto death." " See," saith the Spirit, 
 " that thou make all things according to the pattern 
 shewed to thee in the Mount." 
 
 The Swiss guide has to see that everything needful 
 is provided, and disposes of all impediments. Miss 
 Havergal says that in her climbing it made all the 
 difference when the guide was obeyed implicitly, and 
 her steps went just where his had been. " Thorough 
 knowledge of the guide's language adds both to the 
 enjoyment and safety of our following. . . . The 
 guide decides your rest as well as your progress. . . . 
 A Swiss guide is literally faithful unto death." Her 
 lovely imagination and Spirit - taught soul found 
 meaning everywhere, even in the coil of rope with 
 its scarlet line. Other mountaineers tell us how 
 different are the steps of an amateur and of an 
 expert. Slow and steady are the guide's steps. He 
 does not hurry, nor does he loiter. As there was the 
 decision at the first, so there must be the purposeful 
 march all through. How much easier it would seem 
 in our climbing after our Ideal, if sometimes we 
 might rush on. And again, we would fain linger and 
 have the luxury of looking back, till Paul's words 
 
HELPS AND HINDRANCES 15 
 
 make us take heart again, and we forget the things 
 that are behind 
 
 " Be it mine 
 
 One aim to cherish and to track one line, 
 Straight on to heaven to press with single bent ; 
 To know and love my God, and then to die content." 
 
 CHAPTER III 
 
 HELPS AND HINDRANCES 
 
 " Make straight paths for your feet." HEB. xii. 13. 
 44 An highway shall be there, and a way, and it shall be called 
 The way of Holiness." ISA. xxxv. 8. 
 
 " For evermore the end shall tell 
 The unreached Ideal guided well." 
 
 WHITTIER. 
 
 A FRIEND described to us lately what it is to make 
 a highway in the East. For two months great forces 
 of men were making preparations. They were 
 laying low and raising up, and the cry was " Prepare, 
 prepare." The last thing done was to sprinkle the 
 surface with yellow sand the Imperial colour and 
 then behind the band of horsemen who led the 
 procession, alone on a black mule, rode the young 
 Emperor of China. 
 
 In life there are times of sorrow and of suffering, 
 of learning and of discipline, which seem to us like 
 preparing the highway, not only for ourselves but for 
 others ; and then there is the easy march, the onward 
 tread of the victorious feet. There are days in our 
 life when the steam-roller beats down the metal 
 stones of disappointment and delay and failure. 
 
1 6 HELPS TO MAKE IDEALS REAL 
 
 These are not joyous days, but grievous ; but after- 
 wards there come straight paths for our feet. The 
 very hindrance becomes a help. In our march 
 through life towards our ideal, there are many helps 
 and hindrances. Let us look at some of the hind- 
 rances and then at some of the helps. Let us be as 
 earnest as Stanley's followers in the African forest, to 
 resolve as we go on to cut down the high branches, 
 the brushwood and the low undergrowth of creepers. 
 There must be no aimlessness, no putting off. 
 
 Surely one great hindrance is want of earnestness 
 and enthusiasm. All around us are in earnest. The 
 followers of the world turn night into day for their 
 avocations and amusements ; but have we counted the 
 cost of what it is to be a follower of Christ? Another 
 great hindrance is want of thoroughness. In the 
 matter of our salvation there must be no scamp-work. 
 Another hindrance is surely the " Tyranny of the 
 things seen," the love of and the living in the present. 
 What Tertullian calls " the great interloper sin," that 
 is at the root of all. Paul called out, " O wretched 
 man that I am !" He was struggling after the ideal, 
 but the desire within met the temptation without, and 
 it was only when he looked away to his Ideal, Christ, 
 that he got the victory. A child also felt Paul's 
 struggle. One day among a number of Christmas 
 presents she looked unhappy, and a friend said, 
 " What ! not happy with all these ; what is wrong ? " 
 "Just the old thing that troubles us all:" and the 
 child spelt out in a whisper, S I N. Perhaps the 
 greatest hindrance of all is this want of realisation of 
 the stupendous importance of this life as a prepara- 
 tion for the next. As we sow we shall reap. 
 
HELPS AND HINDRANCES 17 
 
 One day we left the sides of the Annan and 
 climbed and climbed, passing Ericstane and the " Beef 
 Tub," until we were far away from human habitation, 
 among the moor and the heather. We came to a place 
 whence several streams parted. The dwellers in a 
 lonely cottage could give us little information, but we 
 found that one of the streams was the source of the 
 Tweed. There, in silence among the birds and the 
 clouds, the clear air, and the cool winds, the river 
 sprang, which, as we descended with it, widened and 
 broadened, fed everywhere from lesser streams. Let 
 all our activity for Christ have a source as real and 
 life-giving, even in Him who came to put reality, 
 intensity, nobility into the meanest things of life. 
 He who posts a letter to His glory, instead of letting 
 it lie in his pocket, shall not want call to higher 
 service. For our march through life " we are not 
 promised a chart, but a guide." The nearer we keep 
 to His side the more shall we be helped. Let this be 
 true of our lives 
 
 " That evermore beside thee on thy way 
 The unseen Christ may move, 
 That thou may'st lean upon His arm, 
 And say, dear Lord, dost Thou approve ? " 
 
 And talking to Him is just prayer, which is one of 
 our greatest helps. " It is not so much petitioning 
 now as communing," a friend said to us lately. The 
 Hebrew for the word " faithful ones " is " Amen-ers," 
 those who say Amen to His promises and His pro- 
 posals for their daily life. Prayer is like the sleep of 
 a tired infant. It was cross and fretful, it was hard to 
 get it even into the attitude where it would let its 
 
1 8 HELPS TO MAKE IDEALS REAL 
 
 weary head rest, and give itself a chance. It awoke 
 rosy, smiling, satisfied. 
 
 " Lord, what a change within us one short hour 
 Spent in Thy presence will prevail to make, 
 What heavy burdens from our bosoms take, 
 What parched grounds refresh, as with a shower ! 
 We kneel, and all around us seems to lower ; 
 We rise, and all, the distant and the near, 
 Stands forth in sunny outline, brave and clear ; 
 We kneel how weak, w r e rise how full of power." 
 
 There are various forms of prayer, but this we know 
 that to all of us the call comes, " Pray more, ask 
 more." 
 
 Another great help is meditation. In quiet waiting 
 as David did before the Lord, forethought is gained, 
 resolution formed, conscience obeyed, and strength 
 obtained. Linked on to meditation is the food we 
 feed on the word of God laid bare by His Spirit. 
 What fascination there is in its study in whatever 
 form we take it. And the beauty of all other reading 
 is that it sends us back and back to this living word, 
 which live.th and abideth for ever. The first inspira- 
 tion, the first start after the ideal, comes in many 
 ways. It may be from the reading of a poem, as 
 with Elizabeth Stuart Phelps, author of the " Gates 
 Ajar," who says of Mrs. Barrett Browning and her 
 poem " Aurora Leigh": "There may be greater poems 
 in our language than ' Aurora Leigh,' but it was many 
 years before it was possible for me to suppose it. ... 
 I owe to her, distinctly, the first visible aspiration 
 (ambition is too low a word) to do some honest, hard 
 work of my own in the World Beautiful, and for it.'' It 
 may be from perusal of a book like Law's Serious Call, 
 a book " with a strange and moving spiritual pedigree." 
 
HELPS AND HINDRANCES 19 
 
 We know how Dr. Johnson, George Whitefield, John 
 Wesley, and Thomas Scott spoke of that. It may 
 be from looking at a picture, it may be the inscrip- 
 tion on a coffin-lid ; but whatever we start from, no 
 progress can be made without feeding on the word 
 by faith. But all these, prayer and meditation, and 
 the word are but the handmaids leading us back 
 again to behold the vision of Him whom having not 
 seen we love, 
 
 "When I was young," said Gounod to a friend, " I 
 used to talk of ' I and Mozart.' Later, I said ' Mozart 
 and I ' ; but now I only say ' Mozart.' " 
 
 " Whom have I in heaven but Thee? 
 
 And there is none upon earth that I desire beside 
 
 Thee. 
 
 My heart and my flesh faileth : 
 But God is the strength of my heart and my portion 
 
 for ever." 
 
 " Nothing- resting- in its own completeness 
 
 Can have worth or beauty : but alone 
 Because it leads and tends to further sweetness, 
 
 Fuller, higher, deeper than its own. 
 Life is only bright when it proceedeth 
 
 Towards a truer, deeper life above ; 
 Human love is sweetest when it leadeth 
 
 To a more divine and perfect love." 
 
20 HELPS TO MAKE IDEALS REAL 
 
 CHAPTER IV 
 THE IDEAL OF THE PILGRIM SPIRIT 
 
 " Something I may not win attracts me ever 
 
 Something 1 elusive, yet supremely fair ; 
 Thrills me with gladness, yet contents me never, 
 Fills me with sadness, yet forbids despair. 
 
 It blossoms just beyond the paths I follow, 
 It shines beyond the farthest stars I see ; 
 
 It echoes faint from ocean caverns hollow T , 
 And from the land of dreams it beckons me. 
 
 It calls, and all my best, with joyful feeling, 
 
 Essays to reach it as I make reply ; 
 I feel its sweetness o'er my spirit stealing, 
 
 Yet know ere I attain it I must die." 
 
 "I count all things but loss." PHIL. iii. 8. 
 "Confessed that they were pilgrims." HEB. xi. 13. 
 
 IN the former chapters we have been considering the 
 helps and the hindrances to the realisation of our 
 ideal. We shall look in the next two at two ideals 
 realised. We know how with children a blackboard 
 or an object-lesson helps, and is remembered. 
 
 Our friend Frances Ridley Havergal left us twenty 
 years ago, but the further we go from the parting 
 with her, and the nearer to the reunion, we see how 
 God did make her an ideal realised, and as such she 
 lives in our hearts and memories. When we revisit 
 her bust in the niche of our heart we cannot help 
 giving God the glory. Under her name and over all 
 her life is written legibly, " Whose I am and whom I 
 serve." The name of the Sculptor shines out every- 
 
THE IDEAL OF THE PILGRIM SPIRIT 21 
 
 where, luminous in the darkness of time, with the 
 light of eternity. Sometimes an artist loves a piece 
 of work which he has so breathed his spirit into as to 
 make it a part of himself, and reserves it for himself. 
 It may be sent awhile to an academy for the inspira- 
 tion of others, but it is marked with a prohibitive 
 price. We think now, after two decades of years, 
 that this was what God meant by removing Frances 
 Ridley Havergal. " I will that they also be with Me 
 where I am " with Me where I am in the glory, and 
 with Me where / am as a preacher lately made 
 the word shine with another facet cut on the surface 
 in the field of service standing beside you. If the 
 air were rarefied enough, if we were more, of spirit 
 and not so held by the flesh, we would know more of 
 
 " The mystic sweet communion 
 With those whose rest is won," 
 
 through Christ the Head. We may think rightly 
 that they are nearer the Head than we are ; but one 
 was not very far wrong who said to us recently, 
 "Will you write something on this subject, ' Members 
 of His body; that is, nearer than even brothers and 
 sisters in Christ/ " We throw out the thought, and it 
 may germinate. We think, and think much of the 
 problems of life. Do we think out His designs ? Do 
 we add up His sums, of which He keeps the " Answer 
 Book " ? Are we tracing the connection between the 
 seed sown by those now at rest and the sheaves of 
 harvest we are helping to bind ? There is a mystic 
 communion in service even now between heaven and 
 earth. 
 
 About a week ago in our drawing-room the follow- 
 
22 HELPS TO MAKE IDEALS REAL 
 
 ing words were spoken, which seemed as the marriage- 
 service performed between the Keswick movement and 
 the Student Volunteer Missionary one. It seemed 
 the union of the two ideals realised, which we take 
 as our object-lesson. One who has risen up, left all, 
 and followed Christ, said, " What led me to do it was 
 the verse of Miss Havergal's hymn 
 
 " Take my silver and my gold; 
 Not a mite would I withhold.' " 
 
 Again, at a meal, the origin of the title of the record 
 of the Liverpool Conference, " Make Jesus King," 
 was discussed, as the proof-sheets were in our house. 
 A flood of thoughts rushed in, and we did not need 
 to think alone of the title of her book, My King, for, 
 in all her writings, prose and poetry alike, this note 
 of Kingship is found. 
 
 In our two object-lessons what strikes us most is 
 the ideal of the pilgrim spirit realised. It is said of 
 our Lord and Master, "There was no room in the 
 inn ; " and to speak reverently, when the infant had 
 grown to manhood, He saw the fox dart to its lair, 
 and the bird soar from its nest, and said, " But the 
 Son of Man." We would fain forget it, but the word 
 stands there. As the thought pervades our religious 
 literature, finding exponents in Bunyan and Dante, 
 in our hyrnns we sing 
 
 " A pilgrim through this lonely world 
 Our blessed Saviour passed." 
 
 But is this only to be an ideal life with us? We 
 are sent back to the eleventh of Hebrews to see the 
 ideal realised in the record of the faith and progress 
 of the pilgrims. They " obtained promises." So did 
 
THE IDEAL OF THE PILGRIM SPIRIT 23 
 
 our friends now gone home. They believed that 
 what He promised He was able also to perform. 
 The eleventh of Hebrews shows us Abraham and 
 Moses and the Passover night. The Master Himself 
 described the pilgrims' attitude loins girt, lamp 
 burning, waiting for their Lord. Mr. Radcliffe used 
 to come into his Cannes meetings with the plaid and 
 the alpenstock, because of his delicacy ; and they 
 were fit emblems. The mighty spirit was lodged 
 in him in very fragile clay. One who prayed for 
 him and who led, if ever anyone did, the pilgrim life, 
 though she could not be an actual wanderer, had over 
 her porch the words, " Ut migraturus habita." Her 
 loins were ever girt, her lamp ever burning, her daily 
 fare was a Passover meal. All too rare it is to find the 
 pilgrim spirit now. How few send on their treasure 
 before to heaven, leaving little to " will " away of gold 
 or treasure ! Without our judging it, folly is seen 
 written on many of the mansions in favourite health 
 resorts. The proprietors outbuild themselves, and 
 have to let to strangers. Or having provided them- 
 selves with every new improvement, and for some 
 reason, health or education, having to flit, they could 
 not get a new home because they could not sell the 
 old. In some cases God and Death had been quite 
 left out of the calculation. 
 
 Yet very literally is He giving the pilgrim staff 
 and pilgrim heart to some of His chosen. We copied 
 these " Laws of Attainment " from the notebook of a 
 worker who hopes soon to have the ideal of his life 
 realised in India : 
 
 i. The law of reciprocal approach: "Draw nigh 
 to God and He will draw nigh to you." 
 
24 HELPS TO MAKE IDEALS REAL 
 
 2. The law of acquisition : " Whatsoever ye ask in 
 
 prayer, believing, ye shall receive." 
 
 3. The law of spiritual accretion and diminution : 
 
 " To him that hath shall be given . . . from 
 him that hath not shall be taken away even 
 that which he seemeth to have." 
 
 4. The law of the only limitation of God : " Your 
 
 iniquities have separated between you and 
 
 your God." 
 
 His was only one other testimony to the going 
 when the Lord's call is heard, and obedience bringing 
 the perfect freedom of the pilgrim life. In these 
 days the call comes to all, to the individual and to 
 the relatives. Is the mother to accept a foreign 
 merchant's or civilian's hand for her daughter with 
 satisfaction, and refuse to her the joy of being a 
 missionary? The choice, the decision, must be made 
 alone with God. But this we can all have as our 
 ideal, the pilgrim life at home or abroad. We can 
 be ready with our sails set for the first gale of the 
 Spirit. A missionary said to us lately, " When we 
 come back it is the Home Church who should stir us 
 up, and then we would not have to go about speak- 
 ing." We can open our houses to receive the pilgrims, 
 and be at some trouble to find their whereabouts, for 
 the time of the King's messengers must be spared. 
 When volunteers for the Ashantee War were sum- 
 moned from the ranks, a whole company stepped 
 forward. Let us send our children to see reviews 
 of troops for our King's great gatherings, such 
 as Liverpool. The schoolboy camps and the Kes- 
 wick gatherings are the parade-ground. The pilgrim 
 spirit demands that the eye be fixed on the Leader, 
 
THE IDEAL OF THE PILGRIM SPIRIT 
 
 2 5 
 
 to receive His marching orders. This loosening from 
 earth will make death a less unwelcome visitor to 
 ourselves and others. For the leasehold of our life 
 is short, and some on foreign shores cannot even 
 have the graves of their dear ones " in perpetuity." 
 The pilgrim spirit demands that the Spirit be not 
 grieved, or our prayers will be like " the dead birds 
 that cannot fly." The pilgrim spirit demands ab- 
 sence of judging or censuring. If we may not too 
 hardly judge those who seem to us willing to remain 
 out of the atmosphere of blessing, neither must the 
 others judge us. " Many will not be lost eternally 
 who will yet be eternal losers." In what measure are 
 we going to have the pilgrim spirit ? The spirit of 
 criticism and earthly wisdom may grieve the Holy 
 Spirit. " I thank Thee, O Father, Lord of heaven 
 and earth, that Thou hast hid these things from the 
 wise and prudent, and hast revealed them unto babes. 
 Even so, Father." 
 
 We live in a restless age, invention crowding out 
 invention, swift steamers making record crossings, 
 and the eager press rushing to make these records 
 known. But if the two of whom the next chapters 
 speak could return to earth, with what joy would 
 they see the young recruits for our King all over the 
 land offering themselves for His service. 
 
26 HELPS TO MAKE IDEALS REAL 
 
 CHAPTER V 
 
 AN IDEAL REALISED 
 
 FRANCES RIDLEY HAVERGAL 
 
 44 1 thank Thee for Thy written Word, my God, 
 
 For every sacred line ! 
 But more I thank Thee for Thy humblest saint, 
 
 Whose daily life doth shine 
 A living- page, most true, most pure, most sweet, 
 
 Fresh from Thy hand divine." 
 
 THE spring of 1874 had been cheerless at Bourne- 
 mouth, with gales, snow-showers, and mist, and we 
 resolved to finish our April holiday at Leamington. 
 Here we found summer, and the warmth in the 
 Jephson gardens was delicious. But springs may go 
 and come, holidays begin and end, with perhaps no 
 deep mark in our hearts or lines in our calendar. 
 This was to be an eventful one, for we found a friend. 
 The friend was Frances Ridley Havergal. She 
 glided like a sunbeam into the garden of our hotel in 
 the street, and gave colour not only to that holiday, 
 but to the three years after, that she remained here. 
 We can still see the slim figure tripping along rather 
 than walking to greet us. We had no common past, 
 except the great heritage of pilgrims in a covenant- 
 keeping God ; and as our earthly lives had not 
 touched till then, she knew not but that the mourning 
 garb we wore for an aged relative might be for a baby 
 then laughing in his nursery on the Tay, and feared 
 to ask. But we had a common present', and she had 
 a newly-found gift from her ascended King to share 
 with us, and told us that the little lemon-coloured 
 
AN IDEAL REALISED 27 
 
 booklet entitled Such a Blessing was her own history. 
 And we had a common future, full of meaning as of 
 mystery. As we heard her story, our barque drifted 
 out to 
 
 " Where there was mid-sea and the mighty things." 
 
 This note had prepared us for the visit : " I hope 
 to run in and give a short but hearty greeting a little 
 before one o'clock to-morrow. The day after, I have 
 an entirely free afternoon. You must not call on me. 
 Christians need never stand on ceremony ; we under- 
 stand each other too well, and those who love the 
 Lord Jesus Christ are never mere acquaintances, 
 much less strangers, but always friends." 
 
 Her eager spirit got up a meeting in an incredibly 
 short time to hear about Mr. Moody's Edinburgh 
 work. We had many discussions about the blessing 
 she had received, and which it was the fashion then 
 to speak of as it. She maintained that it was some- 
 thing to be received during the Christian life, whilst 
 we argued that many children of God received it at 
 conversion. 
 
 In a note from Switzerland, written in the same 
 autumn, there was the beautiful blending of evan- 
 gelistic effort and deepening knowledge. " God has 
 tried our faith about Leamington. There is terrible 
 unbelief, and the town is afraid to wet its respectable 
 feet in any wave of blessing. But in His time the 
 answer will come, and then you will rejoice with us. 
 Now I understand why Dr. S. found nothing new in 
 R. P. S.'s teachings. He told me he had been under 
 Dr. Candlish's ministry, so no wonder; for that 
 splendid book of his on the First Epistle of St. John 
 
28 HELPS TO MAKE IDEALS REAL 
 
 is just f it! But we have not had that teaching in 
 England, and I understand now why I was told that 
 Dr. Candlish was ' not sound/ You see you in Scot- 
 land have been ahead of us." 
 
 And again : 
 
 " Though we ( know ' that our ' labour is not in vain 
 in the Lord/ it is very nice to have pleasant proofs of 
 it. And I would, perhaps, rather say ' suffering ' than 
 ' labour/ For there is no ' labour ' in writing hymns 
 or poems, but there is often long and deep c suffering,' 
 which goes to the making of what is written in a few 
 minutes. I could not have written ' Disappointment ' 
 had I not known and experienced it, and if I had not 
 thus known it, that little drop of comfort could not 
 have reached you. So it is delightfully true that 
 ' none of us liveth to himself ' in this sense; and while 
 there is most sweet rest in such personal comfort as 
 ' whom the Lord loveth He chasteneth,' it has long 
 seemed to me a higher and more blessed thing to feel 
 that the trials He sends are not for ourselves alone, 
 but for others' sake and for His work's sake. ' Unto 
 you it is given ... to suffer for His sake.' Does it 
 not make suffering lighter to feel that it is somehow 
 (no matter about our seeing how) for His glory, that 
 by it He is making us more ' meet for the Master's 
 use'? And that not only here, but it may be for 
 unguessed glorious service millions of years to come, 
 when ' His servants shall serve Him,' and oh so joy- 
 fully and perfectly ! May I give you another thought 
 which has helped me over some trials, namely, that 
 every separate trial shall have its own blessed c never- 
 theless, afterward.' This struck me strongly a year 
 or two ago, and has been a curiously practical help 
 
AN IDEAL REALISED 29 
 
 to me, for every trial now sets me hoping and won- 
 dering what 'afterward' of 'peaceful fruit' is my 
 Father going to cause this trial to yield ? And so I 
 keep looking forward, and vividly expecting some 
 special blessing, near or remote, to follow every 
 separate trial, believing that however unseen at pre- 
 sent, it is surely linked with it in God's purpose. I 
 am so burdened with correspondence and work that 
 it is very rarely I can indulge in such a long letter, 
 but I have written to you as a sort of little treat to 
 myself." 
 . Another letter runs thus : 
 
 " PYRMONT VILLA, LEAMINGTON. 
 
 " I wonder why ? But we never have a ' why ' 
 without the Lord's having a full 'because,' whether 
 He sees it well to tell it or not to us. So there must 
 be a 'because 'in this seeming denial to our prayer. 
 Is it an answer that now in this matter it is definitely 
 given to her to suffer for His sake? May she have 
 all the sweetness and hidden blessedness of that gift 
 and a special and gracious ' nevertheless afterwards ' 
 as well ! I have just heard that a French Wesleyan 
 pastor in the south of France has been so roused by 
 Such a Blessing to seek more for himself, that he too 
 has got ' such a blessing,' and has gone among his 
 people with new power, and God has used him 
 already for the conversion of many members of his 
 flock and the quickening of others. Isn't that nice ? 
 What shall I send you ? ' What He hath promised, 
 He is able also to perform.' " 
 
 " THE MUMBLES, SWANSEA, October 24. 
 " It is worth knowing something of under-the- 
 
30 HELPS TO MAKE IDEALS REAL 
 
 surface sorrows, if one may thereby have the privilege 
 of bringing a drop of God's comfort to others the 
 same comfort, and yet each has such different sor- 
 rows. I have just begun an entirely new life-era. 
 Since my poor mother's death, last May, our old 
 home has been finally broken up and furniture sold, 
 and now my very dear elder sister and I have just 
 settled into lodgings here for the winter, partly for 
 economy, partly to be well out of reach, as both of us 
 were very worn and weary, and sorely needing rest 
 and quiet. I think this is likely to be a permanent 
 arrangement, at anyrate this address will always 
 find me. 
 
 " All the ' changes and chances of this mortal life ' 
 seem to bring one into view of fresh promises ; don't 
 you find it so too? There are so many which one 
 can't get the full preciousness of till one is brought 
 into some specially corresponding position of need 
 or sorrow ; and as one after another lights up, one 
 wonders, What next ? " 
 
 This was to be our last note from her pen. " What 
 next?" As the pilgrim mused and wondered, she all 
 at once sighted the Golden Gate. Her life was a true 
 poem. It had kept pace with her prayers. " A great 
 deal of living must go to very little writing," she used 
 to say. She walked with God, and was not, for God 
 took her. The mist that came up from the sea, as 
 she took the temperance pledges of the donkey-boys 
 on their saddles, was the descending of the cloud that 
 was to part her from our sight. And now, all over 
 the land, organs peal out 
 
 " Take my life, and let it be 
 Consecrated, Lord, to Thee ; " 
 
AN IDEAL REALISED 31 
 
 and as we catch the echoes, we look round to see the 
 fulfilment of her prayer. On the mountains at home 
 and abroad the feet of well-tried messengers are swift 
 and beautiful ; the silver and the gold fall into the 
 treasuries ; literature increases presenting the aspect 
 of truth in which she loved to sun herself; and, best 
 of all, the young press forward to offer themselves 
 willingly as recruits for our great Captain. 
 
 " For slowly as the years go on, 
 
 With thankfulness we find 
 That Death, which takes so much away, 
 
 Has left so much behind ; 
 The light which glorified our past 
 
 In blessing" lingers yet, 
 And lessons learned from holy lives 
 
 More deep with years shall get." 
 
 CHAPTER VI 
 
 AN IDEAL REALISED 
 
 REGINALD RADCLIFFE 
 
 " To me fair memories belong 
 
 Of scenes that used to bless, 
 For no regret, but present song 
 
 And lasting thankfulness ; 
 And very soon to break away, 
 
 Like types, in fairer things than they." 
 
 THERE is another who to us lived an ideal life, 
 was an ideal realised, who went home in the close of 
 1895. Almost for twenty years he was allowed to 
 live on after the sweet singer went home. She did 
 not live to see the " Keswick " movement grow and 
 spread, but she tuned up the orchestra. He did not 
 
32 HELPS TO MAKE IDEALS REAL 
 
 live to see the conference in his dear Liverpool, but 
 the prophetic soul saw from his Pisgah that promised 
 land of conquest. 
 
 When we read in the columns of the Daily Chronicle 
 that Reginald Radcliffe had gone home, and when, 
 some weeks later, we got in the opening days of the 
 year thrilling accounts of the Students' International 
 Missionary Conference at Liverpool, the above lines 
 seemed true. We looked back at some of our old 
 journals after there came to us from Liverpool such 
 sentences as these : " It is a wonderful convention. I 
 wish all our children were in it. This is the work for 
 men to do who mean to be men at all. All the rest 
 is like children pulling crackers." . . . " I had read 
 the Spectator article on Noah ; but this modern 
 miracle of a thousand missionary conferents beats 
 the Flood. These are the men and women who have 
 the future." 
 
 The "fair memories" of Reginald Radcliffe are 
 very distinct, and we stand in transition years, for 
 surely fairer things are coming. He is already among 
 the fairer things, and his passing away has caused a 
 strange blending of then and now. When asked by 
 us to write a motto in a book, he wrote the one word 
 " Nigh." It was the keynote of his life. 
 
 The first sight of him we had was at Perth in 1860. 
 We played in an attic room at Springland with the 
 stranger children who had come from Liverpool, and 
 whose missionary names Brainerd and Heber re- 
 mained with us. When the older people had gone 
 to an evening meeting we were left together. Out- 
 side was the quiet flowing Tay, and beyond, the 
 trains rushing to Dunkeld which called us often to 
 
AN IDEAL REALISED 33 
 
 the window. There was the railway, the river, and the 
 road running side by side as they do so often in our 
 Scottish straths and passes. Below was the tower 
 on the river's brink, where Mr. Radcliffe loved to be 
 alone with God. We remember taking our place 
 with our mother and grandmother on the day in 
 August of the great open-air gathering, on the raised 
 wooden seats on the South Inch, and well remember 
 the giving out of the psalm 
 
 " O God, what time Thou didst go forth 
 Before Thy people's face ; " 
 
 and the power of the addresses by Radcliffe and 
 others. What struck the child-mind was that there 
 stood a man who, when he prayed, believed in God, 
 and got what he asked, and saw the Spirit descend. 
 He asked the anxious to adjourn to Free St. Leonard's, 
 which scores of men did, while the women went into 
 a tent near. Week after week for many nights after, 
 we helped our grandmother in the work in the side- 
 room, as she could not overtake the many seeking 
 help. The power of the Lord was present to heal, 
 and the talk between the evangelist and his hostess 
 going home in the cab was like chapters of the Acts 
 lived over again. 
 
 Some ten years later, our father engaged rooms in 
 the hotel at Cannes for Mr. Radcliffe. To the pro- 
 prietor and his visitors, the salon was just a number 
 on a floor ; to those who heard it given out at the 
 meetings which he soon began to hold, it was to be a 
 trysting-place for heaven. To the girl of eighteen 
 there again came the vision of the ideal realised a 
 worm threshing mountains. He had faith in God, and 
 God did not disappoint him. The meetings for the 
 
34 HELPS TO MAKE IDEALS REAL 
 
 working men in the " Gymnase Medicale " are those 
 which we remember most distinctly. The excursions 
 of that winter are dim, the friendships then formed 
 are mostly severed, but the power of God seen and 
 known remains a part of the Eternal within us. The 
 printing of the bills, the practising of the choir, the 
 old hymns that had a new zest in French dress, the 
 little meetings for prayer, the blue blouses of the 
 French ouvriers^ and the walk home in dark nights 
 over muddy fields, now all built over by hotels, are 
 all memories, but the personality of the man and the 
 presentness of his God are the most vivid. We think 
 we hear him say what we noted at the time : 
 
 " Dear friends, I am here like yourselves seeking 
 health. I have been asked to hold one or two 
 meetings in this place. I feel a great desire to do 
 something for the dear people around us. I invite 
 your help. For this we shall all best get strength, 
 and be prepared, by forgetting for the moment that 
 there are any souls to save, forgetting the gospel, and 
 looking to ourselves. God does not wish us to re- 
 main babes, He wants full-grown men. He will not 
 have stunted believers, He will not have us to be 
 always as little children ; He wants men, men full- 
 grown, men and women filled with the Holy Ghost. 
 He did not send His twelve children forth, but bade 
 them wait for the promise, till the power came. The 
 power did come, but not at once ; there was the ten- 
 sion of faith, the drawing out of desires, the realising 
 of helplessness, and the being shut up to God. And 
 then the power came down ; and so with us here, the 
 blessing must begin with ourselves. And when the 
 Spirit comes to the instrument or place, then, as a 
 
AN IDEAL REALISED 35 
 
 matter of course, the dead awake, one word is dropped 
 here, and another there, and then the careless man 
 awakes, the wicked one turns. I beg of you all to 
 spend the time between this and Thursday morning 
 in prayer, wrestling with God. 'Ask, and ye shall 
 receive/ You must get the thing before you leave 
 your knees. God is well able to move Cannes from 
 this little room without anything being done." 
 
 After two prayers in French, Mr. Radcliffe gave 
 out for us to read Psalm cxxvi., and asked it to be 
 read in French. Mr. Radcliffe said : " We shall take 
 this Psalm as the motto of our work in Cannes, and 
 expect to see it made good. ' When the Lord '- 
 1 When the Lord ' - better stop here for to-day. 
 There's enough here to fill our minds in these three 
 words, ' When the Lord' . . . not Samson, David, or 
 any man, not the pastor or evangelist, not believers, 
 but ' When the Lord' Let us stop here and all 
 get in, completely hidden, behind the Lord. This 
 Conqueror never lost a battle, this Promiser never 
 broke His word. This Captain goes first, does all, 
 and bids His poor people follow Him. Does He 
 want to do a mighty work like to the tunnelling 
 of a great mountain ? He does not take an axe, 
 a spear, or even a staff, does not call for gunpowder, 
 but picks up a worm a poor grub a small worm 
 such as goes into the chrysalis and with it He 
 tunnels Mont Cenis. ' Fear not, worm Jacob, thou 
 shalt thresh mountains/ The Lord goeth before. 
 We are worms in His hand. God's invariable rule 
 is still as Christ laid it down, ' According to your 
 faith be it unto you.' Oh that He would begin 
 here to teach these worm-like children of His to 
 
36 HELPS TO MAKE IDEALS REAL 
 
 be talking to the mountains in faith, and bidding 
 them go down into the Mediterranean there. We 
 must wrestle on in prayer till all the barriers and 
 hills that oppose His work in Cannes be cast into 
 the Mediterranean. Before we shall have done with 
 this Psalm, in Cannes shall we not be as men that 
 dreamed ? We shall be saying, ' What opening 
 graves are these?' ' Wasn't that man dead?' 'Is 
 that woman praising Him ? ' ' They that sow in tears 
 shall' (and that's the right tense of the verb) 'reap 
 in joy' shall doubtless, beyond all doubt, 'come 
 again rejoicing.' 
 
 " I would fain go to all the table d'hotes in Cannes 
 and preach Jesus, if I had only strength. I would 
 fain go from one drawing-room to another, and if 
 one person in Cannes won't receive the message, 
 then go on to another place ; and if one person on 
 this side of the bay won't receive the word, then go 
 to some one on the other. The evangelist's commis- 
 sion is to go to every creature." 
 
 Then there were some more prayers in French and 
 English, and Mr. Radcliffe gave out "Tel queje suis" 
 (" Just as I am "), the same tune and our words trans- 
 lated. Mr. RadclifTe asked any who might not be 
 quite sure that they had Jesus, to remain. After- 
 wards he had conversation with some who were 
 already anxious at that meeting. 
 
 In the autumn of 1884 we slept for a night under 
 the same roof with him in Copenhagen, and did not 
 know till he had gone. He was at his old work, on 
 the old errand, but we only saw the name posted up 
 as we passed out for our drive next day. So near and 
 yet so far may friends often be in these great hotels ! 
 
THE QUEST OF THE IDEAL 39 
 
 In December of that year he came to Edinburgh, 
 bringing Stanley Smith and Studd to address our 
 students, and so to begin the movement in our uni- 
 versity which has borne such wonderful fruit. Here 
 was the Scottish fountain-head of the Liverpool Con- 
 vention. A year later he was again with us, among 
 his companions being two other Cambridge students, 
 one of whom wrote his address in the visitors' book 
 as "Corpus Christi College, Cambridge," and the 
 other, " China Inland Mission, Shanghai." 
 
 And did not the Lord let him slay more in death 
 than even in life, when hardly had he left us, ere 
 there was held in his own city the greatest student 
 conference on missions that has ever been seen ? In 
 our quiet harbour the great waves have come as from 
 the broad Atlantic, and we feel as if we must slip our 
 moorings and put out to sea, lest we or any near to 
 us miss the meaning of this tide of blessing. 
 
 CHAPTER VII 
 
 THE QUEST OF THE IDEAL 
 
 IN MEMORY 
 
 " I will set no base thing- before mine eyes." 
 
 Ps. ci. 3 (R.V.). 
 
 " None sends his arrow to the mark in view, 
 Whose hand is feeble, or his aim untrue." 
 
 GOWPER. 
 
 As in the photograph of the woman wearily toil- 
 ing up the five stone steps, so our daily life is often 
 the upward monotonous climb, even though we have 
 
40 HELPS TO MAKE IDEALS REAL 
 
 the light beyond. We shall perhaps in the few 
 practical chapters to follow, find, as the old woman 
 did, the steps irksome at the time but pleasant in the 
 retrospect. For the little things make the big things 
 easy. As one has said, " Between the big things we 
 are afraid are too high for us to do, and the little 
 things which we think beneath our doing, the risk is 
 that we shall end in doing nothing." We cannot all 
 climb heights, but to us all there is the staircase of 
 daily life. We like this picture because we feel that 
 for the old woman, too, there was an ideal and a goal. 
 We shall be well rewarded if the steps .in the follow- 
 ing chapters make the lives of any go more smoothly, 
 by removing hindrances, and filling them with hope. 
 
 As steps cut in the ice, as a track in the desert, as 
 a path on the mountain-side, we give in this and the 
 following chapters some hints to help travellers who 
 have started. 
 
 How important in any undertaking is forethought ! 
 Minutes well spent now may save hours after. What 
 should we take and what should we let go in life's 
 journey? Miss Havergal says that in climbing she 
 gave up nearly all, little by little, till, instead of her 
 " Practical Guide," she only carried the few pages cut 
 out necessary for that day's excursion. 
 
 It is told of Jenny Lind that she said : " Memory, 
 I engaged thee to be my servant, and thou hast not 
 failed me." Thomas Fuller says : " Memory will 
 easily preserve matter well arranged, just as one will 
 carry twice more weight trussed and packed up in 
 bundles, than when it lies untowardly flapping and 
 hanging around his shoulders." We owe much to 
 the training of one whose business habits left a last- 
 
THE QUEST OF THE IDEAL 41 
 
 ing impression on us. Our father took great pains 
 with us. We were sent to the dictionary to hunt up 
 words for ourselves, or to the directory to learn the 
 rates of postage, instead of being told. We were 
 warned not to commence our letters with apologies ; 
 always to acknowledge money on receipt; to be 
 specially careful of the property of other people, and 
 never to keep books long on loan. The pamphlet which 
 we thought we had put up carefully was held up by 
 the ends of the wrapper, and let fall out, to show that 
 we were slovenly ; and we were told how people 
 disliked a letter misplaced or missing in their names. 
 We were made to carry a pencil and notebook to aid 
 our memory. But best of all, there was the living, 
 consistent example before us, the embodiment of 
 business habits putting us to shame. Now, after 
 thirty years, as the pattern of a carpet, or piece of 
 willow-pattern china makes some old memory live 
 again, so some line in a book or sentence in a sermon 
 makes his maxims speak once more. 
 
 In this restless age much fret and worry would be 
 spared if the young early acquired business habits. 
 Christ said : " He that is faithful in a very little is 
 faithful also in much." The girl who practises faith- 
 fully on the schoolroom piano till the hour strikes, 
 will not fail when called to play her part in the 
 orchestra of life. We see daily in a household how 
 much time and temper might be saved by simply 
 having memory in little things. If we drift with the 
 tide, and let things slip, we are great losers, more 
 than we shall ever know. An idea comes, a thought 
 presses in, but we put it off, and it never is embodied 
 in action. The windows of our mind get swollen 
 
42 HELPS TO MAKE IDEALS REAL 
 
 through damp, and will not open ; and so new ideas, 
 like fresh air, cannot come in. The stop-cocks of 
 memory will not work through want of use. 
 
 " It's the stream swiftly flowing- that keeps aff the frost, 
 
 And the friction that keeps aff the rust, man ; 
 And they gather aye weel wha let naething be lost, 
 And the rest leave tae Heaven in trust, man." 
 
 It is the busy, active workers who never refuse us 
 help ; the idle ones are always " too busy to have 
 time." If we simply answer a letter by return of 
 post, our friend can plan a whole week of arrange- 
 ments with comfort. When a letter comes too late, 
 we feel as if we paid double postage for the delay. 
 We suffer waste of brain tissue wondering when the 
 answer will come, and dissatisfaction when it has 
 come. "He gives twice who gives quickly" is true 
 of much more than money. If one person is put out 
 of temper, he in his turn depresses others, and so on 
 and on. 
 
 One friend was so very punctual in taking his seat 
 in the railway carriage that a child, his companion, 
 was in constant terror that she would be left alone. 
 This was excessive, and there is danger in too much 
 attention to trivialities and details, but hardly in 
 those things which concern a household's comfort. 
 Different natures and dispositions will always cause 
 each other some amount of discomfort, as in the case 
 of the horse and the ox ploughing together. There 
 are trains like the German Bummelzug, which stop 
 at all the stations and march slowly, but may carry 
 much precious freight. It would not do if all were 
 expresses. The percentage of collisions would in- 
 crease. 
 
THE QUEST OF THE IDEAL 43 
 
 But " memory without judgment is like a treasure- 
 house without treasure." Some have had to listen 
 patiently to long conversations, and learn to be 
 politely silent, when perhaps the information they 
 were longing to convey would have been to the 
 persistent talker great gain. We educate each other 
 by enforced silences. We are almost touching a 
 vein of gold when a conversation has to be broken 
 off a visitor is announced. But if we cultivate 
 prompt and kindly thoughtfulness, the mind will get 
 so agile and tractable that it will make use even of 
 interruptions to diffuse happiness, and make our 
 friends feel more at ease. What a purifying of the 
 air there is in even five minutes of healthy reading 
 aloud ! The minutes are long and drawn out, and 
 the mud of a troubled pool goes to the bottom. 
 Perhaps conscience rings her alarum-bell, and a mes- 
 sage from the shore of eternity meets us on this 
 " brief wave of life." Even looking silently into a 
 clock's face gives us time to hear the tick of these 
 lines as the pendulum seems to say 
 
 " Improve time in time while time doth last, 
 For all time is no time when time is past." 
 
 Anyhow, more reading and less talking would 
 leave fewer regrets at the day's end, and if conver- 
 sation followed, it would be fuller in tone and richer 
 in flavour. Many look back to George Macdonald's 
 reading aloud of some poem on his " at-home " day 
 in Bordighera, as a jewel in the bright setting of 
 the blue Mediterranean and the grey olive. Quiet 
 thought and planning for a week or a month before- 
 hand is like laying smooth rails for the days to glide 
 
44 HELPS TO MAKE IDEALS REAL 
 
 along. There are a number of relations, all of the 
 same clan, for they have fallen in love with each 
 other and intermarried Memory, Promptitude, 
 Method, Order, Neatness, and more distant cousins 
 whom we do not take time to name. They whisper 
 to each other what a saving it is when a collector's 
 money is left out on the slab, and a shop parcel that 
 has to be returned is awaiting the messenger. To 
 the young, stairs do not count for much. A long 
 sleep, not some broken sleeps, makes each day's 
 simple living a delight. You are now hopeful, fresh 
 and vigorous, and life lies like an unsolved con- 
 undrum, of which the experience of later life holds 
 the key. You have what a writer has called 
 "enthusiasm resembling a cloak of three pile to 
 keep its gloss in wear " during the friction of years. 
 
 You think you have an unlimited supply of time 
 before you. In later years you may find you are in 
 debt. " For who knows most, him loss of time most 
 grieves." Knowing the value of time, let us use it 
 judiciously. Knowledge and diligence! We feel, 
 like Peter, that we can hardly separate them. The 
 words are like a pair of eyes or ears or hands. They 
 work together, and are not yet jealous of each other. 
 
 "Rest is not quitting 
 The busy career ; 
 Rest is the fitting 
 Of self to its sphere. 
 
 'Tis loving- and serving 
 
 The hig-hest and best ! 
 'Tis onwards, unswerving-, 
 
 And that is true rest." 
 
THE QUEST OF THE IDEAL 45 
 
 CHAPTER VIII 
 THE QUEST OF THE IDEAL 
 
 IN MONEY 
 
 " The Master commits five talents to the servant, and the trust 
 is shrewdly managed. The five becomes ten, and the Master is 
 fully satisfied. What reward does He propose for His servant? 
 Is it release from labour and responsibility a future in contrast 
 with the past ? Is it, so to say, retirement and a pension ? It 
 would not be absurd, but it would be less than the best. The past 
 shapes the future ; and this servant, having served his apprentice- 
 ship, becomes himself a master, ' ruler over many things.' " 
 
 IT is remarked, " In the Bible there has been more 
 said about money, the use of it, the abuse of it, the 
 curse of it, and the blessing of it, than on the doctrine 
 of justification by faith." As long as we are in this 
 world we shall have to do with money ; we cannot 
 get away from it. When we go to a new country, 
 one of the first things we do is to seek a good 
 exchange, and to learn the coins. A missionary thus 
 writes of the Chinese : " Wherever people are met, 
 cash is almost invariably the subject of discourse. 
 They talk cash, they think cash, they live cash. 
 Some of the most amusing stories for children treat 
 on the subject of cash ; it is said that three-fifths of 
 all the proverbs in the Chinese language have seen 
 the light first through the small square hole in the 
 centre of a cash." 
 
 Where there are no coins, the missionary and the 
 merchant carry with them the calico or the beads for 
 which they get goods in exchange. There is always, 
 
46 HELPS TO MAKE IDEALS REAL 
 
 all the same, the giving and the receiving, and in 
 the East, the weary bargaining. Our children copy 
 us, and in counters or copper or paper pence 
 transact their business. It would be an interesting 
 study to note down the passages all through our 
 Bible bearing on this subject. We have the warn- 
 ings of Achan and Gehazi, of Ananias and Sapphira, 
 the tragic end of Judas, and the last glimpse of 
 Demas. Christ says : " How hardly shall they that 
 have riches enter the kingdom ; " and yet the same 
 voice says: "Shew me a penny; render unto Caesar 
 the things that are Caesar's, and unto God the things 
 that are God's." He gave to all their due, and from 
 the paths of the sea, in the fish's mouth, His tribute- 
 money came. Matthew and Zaccheus were both His 
 willing followers, Who for our sakes " became poor." 
 Paul soars very high in his resurrection chapter, and 
 closes with the verse which seems to bridge the 
 chasm, and link on the highest to the commonest, 
 the heavenly to the earthly. " Wherefore, my beloved 
 brethren, be ye steadfast, unmovable. . . . Now 
 concerning the collection." It seems as if this verse 
 were a place of repair for tired collectors down to 
 this very day. But why should collecting money for 
 Christ's kingdom be weary work ? If each application 
 for money were answered by return of post, or at 
 least the same day, how much time would be saved. 
 One collector told us how she wrote twice for a 
 small sum of money, got no reply, and at last 
 advanced the money on trust, resolving if she did not 
 receive it to give it herself, as the card had to be 
 given in. A minister said there were three things 
 needed in collectors : " Intelligence, promptitude, and 
 
THE QUEST OF THE IDEAL 47 
 
 enthusiasm ; " and the literal reading of a familiar 
 verse is, " God loveth an hilarious giver." But how 
 many are eager to gain and slow to give, and so miss 
 great joy ! It is best when a certain proportion can 
 be set apart consecrated to the Lord. Where our 
 treasure is there our heart is also ; so let us with joy 
 send our treasure where it will reap great return in 
 His treasury. That is a sure investment, with no 
 liabilities, but with the highest interest. " Riches do 
 not take to themselves wings, they make to them- 
 selves wings ; " but what we give to Christ is returned 
 into our own bosom a hundredfold. 
 
 In all dealings with money there should be exact 
 accounts kept, and all accounts paid with no delay ; 
 and our children should be taught to do this early. 
 There is a strange " deceitfulness " about riches, and 
 " the love of money is the root of all evil/' About 
 this very thing Peter said to Ananias, " Why hath 
 Satan filled thy heart to lie to the Holy Ghost ? " 
 Marcus Antoninus said : " Such as are thy habitual 
 thoughts, such will be the character of thy mind ; for 
 the soul is dyed by the thoughts." How many 
 hearts are withered to the core through gold, yellow 
 as an autumn leaf. Some are even more than 
 withered ; they are killed by what they prided them- 
 selves in, as in the story of the old miser. " He had 
 caused a cellar to be constructed with an iron door 
 and a complicated iron lock, of which he only knew 
 the secret. In his cellar he heaped up his treasure 
 metallic treasure which he loved to handle, the 
 rattle of it sounding as the most harmonious music in 
 his ears. One day when he and his wealth were 
 tete-a-tete, the door shut upon them. It was some 
 
48 HELPS TO MAKE IDEALS REAL 
 
 time before the man was missed, and then it took 
 time to find the workman who had made the 
 mysterious lock. When at last he came the cellar 
 was a sepulchre. He who lay there in the deformity 
 of a last convulsion had been dead for several days." 
 It is better to give than to lend, for lending often 
 separates friends, and is bad for the borrowers. 
 ' ' Hoping for nothing again " is one of Christ's maxims ; 
 but when we give to Him we draw r interest at once. 
 How much thought is given about investments, some 
 even wishing to live on the interest of their interests; 
 and we hear how small a return is got for money 
 because it is so plentiful. Christ's kingdom is not 
 only safe, but the return is unvarying. God is our 
 Judge. He looketh on the heart, and knows what 
 is withheld as well as given. This we know, that the 
 joy of those who have given in their lifetime has 
 been immense in seeing the fruit of their giving, and 
 this liberal spirit is infectious. It has been our privi- 
 lege to know one of the largest annual contributors 
 to the student movement in America and mission 
 lands. Through others we heard that she supports 
 thirty or forty foreign and native missionaries. The 
 natural result followed that this friend wanted to visit 
 the mission stations herself, and went. When Chris- 
 tians of leisure and means are planning a winter's 
 tour abroad, it gives great zest to combine in the 
 search for health a visit to scenes of missionary 
 labour, as the merchant goes to see the increase of 
 his ground in foreign plantations. We have said that 
 this giving is infectious, but we feel we cannot do 
 better than quote from a letter of Mr. L. D. Wishard, 
 Treasurer of the World's Student Christian Federa- 
 
THE QUEST OF THE IDEAL 49 
 
 tion. He had told us of an old woman who each 
 night baked her bread which she sold by day, all the 
 time praying earnestly in her prayer for foreign mis- 
 sionaries. We asked to know more, and this was the 
 reply 
 
 "The most interesting case of liberality that has 
 ever come to my notice was that of the ' old bread- 
 woman,' as you characterise her. Among the first 
 contributions which came for Mr. M'Conaughy's 
 work in India was one of five pounds from an 
 unknown lady in one of our Western towns. I, sup- 
 posing that a giver of that amount had still another 
 five pound contribution to dispose of, wrote her over 
 a year ago for a similar contribution for the extension 
 of our work in Asia. The substance of her reply was 
 as follows : c How deeply I regret that I cannot give 
 you another five pounds. If I had the money, Mr. 
 M'Conaughy would not have to wait long for the 
 building which he is trying to secure as headquarters 
 for this movement in India. I am, however, an 
 old woman in my sixty-seventh year, and am 
 dependent upon my own exertions for my support. I 
 had been saving something with which to provide for 
 my wants in my old age ; but when the call came for 
 help for this student movement in India, I could not 
 resist the desire to have a part in it, for I can think 
 of no more important work in the world than this 
 student movement. I, therefore, sent you five pounds, 
 which represented the savings of an entire winter. 
 I cannot give you five pounds now, but I must give 
 two pounds more. I pray for you and Mr. M'Con- 
 aughy three times every day. At midnight when I 
 get up to mix my bread I make you and your work 
 4 
 
50 HELPS TO MAKE IDEALS REAL 
 
 my special subject of prayer/ I afterwards learned 
 that she had been for some time dependent upon 
 her bread-making for a living, and my informant 
 told me that there was no more inspiring sight than 
 the face of that old woman as she moved about the 
 streets in her old-fashioned bonnet and faded dress, 
 with a large basket of bread on her arm, her face 
 shining like the face of Moses after his long inter- 
 view with God. The recital of this incident has 
 already influenced some large gifts for the student 
 work. In one single day the salary of one of our 
 men was pledged, chiefly, I believe, because of the 
 impression made by hearing the letter from this old 
 lady, Margaretta Moses." 
 
 Let us enter a room in the gay city of Paris. The 
 deceased countess was found dead in her chair by her 
 concierge, and on her knees was resting a box con- 
 taining gold, while near her was another receptacle 
 containing bonds and securities amounting in value 
 to ;8oo. " Lay not up for yourselves treasures upon 
 the earth . . . but lay up for yourselves treasures in 
 heaven." Another incident we cull, not from the 
 basket of the poor bread-woman, but from the collec- 
 tion plate of a city church. It shov/s how the liberal 
 heart deviseth liberal things, and is inventive in its 
 giving. Some diamonds were found in a box among 
 the coins. They were redeemed by the chairman, 
 and set by him in a brooch for the wife of the mis- 
 sionary who had been speaking, whose health obliged 
 her to remain at home. 
 
 As in individual life, so with great gatherings. 
 The presence of God's Spirit was wondrously felt at 
 the Students' Liverpool Conference last January ; and 
 
THE QUEST OF THE IDEAL 51 
 
 as a natural result, as at Pentecost the money was 
 laid at the apostles' feet, as for the tabernacle the 
 people offered willingly, so the money poured in. A 
 friend writes thus : " After some speeches on the move- 
 ment as a whole, and on missions and stewardship of 
 money, Mr. Sherwood Eddy gave one of those brief, 
 rare speeches that come with the power of the Spirit 
 of God, and move hearts far more deeply than the 
 mere words could do, and during silent prayer 
 promissory slips were handed round. ,1500 were 
 needed by the movement, and ^1630 were raised in 
 ten minutes that night, without the faintest approach 
 to begging. As a result, not only has the Confer- 
 ence been paid for and the year's work financed, but 
 the movement has been started on the Continent for 
 the first time, an advance that will mean more than we 
 can measure." One Cambridge student wrote: "250 
 and myself besides." It was a wonderful forecast of 
 the millennium, as it was a repetition of Pentecost. 
 The ideal will be real when the greatest impediments 
 of some shall become the greatest power in the 
 service of Christ, because stamped with His super- 
 scription. What is to some a dead-weight dragging 
 them down shall then be as dynamite to blast the 
 mountains. Each in our measure can hasten on the 
 day. 
 
 We heard a friend speculating on what would 
 become of all the " capital " at the Day of Judgment. 
 To some who have been at Liverpool, it was as if 
 God had cleansed what they called common in 
 this very matter of money. When a student was 
 studying with one candle instead of two, and a 
 companion coming in asked what he meant, he 
 
52 HELPS TO MAKE IDEALS REAL 
 
 said, " The evangelisation of the world in our 
 generation." 
 
 "'All very well, but the good Lord Jesus 
 
 has had His day.' 
 
 1 Had ? Has it come ? It has only dawn'd. 
 It will come by and by.'" 
 
 CHAPTER IX 
 
 THE QUEST OF THE IDEAL 
 
 IN TIME 
 
 " Seek not earth's prizes ; 
 Whoso wise is, 
 Tests them by a dying 1 hour 
 For things you get not, long not, fret not, 
 Ruled by duty's power. 
 
 When harvest beckons, who that reckons 
 Worth of moments, wants to play? 
 Awake immortals ! heaven's bright portals 
 Open stand to-day. 
 
 My soul, take care ; use well thy share 
 
 Of time so costly and so rare. 
 
 Hast thou a mind a home to find ? 
 'Tis now thou must prepare." 
 
 WE have seen at a children's gathering how eagerly 
 some would crumble a piece of cake in search of the 
 ring, thimble, or sixpence, till they found one of their 
 treasures. To some minds the fascination is great of 
 taking words to pieces, breaking them up, finding the 
 root, and seeing the " visual image " before them. 
 The French for the word "now" seems so much 
 better than ours " maintenant" what your hand 
 
THE QUEST OF THE IDEAL 53 
 
 grasps at the moment. We must redeem the time, 
 buy up the opportunity. The Auctioneer Life, with 
 his assistant Circumstance, holds out the precious 
 ware we call time, the moment, " le maintenant" 
 Shall our ideal be to make what the hand holds, 
 but must soon drop, worth having for ever? How 
 much would be gained if all the odd minutes were 
 bought up. The chances are, that if we do not do a 
 thing at the moment, we shall never do it at all. 
 Lady Nairne's sister employed the minutes that 
 elapsed between the ringing of the gong for dinner 
 and the arriving of the guests, in embroidering a 
 table-cover. Sir James Simpson had to wait for a 
 steamer at Burntisland, and he spent the time making 
 experiments on the eels with chloroform. One day, 
 not long ago, we are told, Mr. Gladstone was going 
 a drive into Chester after luncheon. His pudding 
 was very hot, so he went away from the table, 
 changed his clothes, got ready for the drive, and 
 came back and ate his pudding, thus using the 
 minutes it took to cool. When the luncheon gong 
 sounds he lays down his pen, and is first in the 
 dining-room. Promptitude generally goes along 
 with time-saving habits. When a duty comes to 
 us, let it be done at once, and the time thus saved 
 seems to go into the bank with the thing done, as 
 immediate interest at once. 
 
 One other way of saving time is, concentration, 
 that is, the art of giving undivided attention to the 
 thing of the moment. A student from America 
 called on us, but left no address on his card. We 
 had no clue to his whereabouts, and had to write 
 to Philadelphia for the address. Older people are 
 
54 HELPS TO MAKE IDEALS REAL 
 
 sometimes to blame in not giving express utterance 
 as to their wishes, and time is saved when an exact 
 pattern accompanies an order. When visiting a 
 family we noticed that the older and more retired 
 member saved the time of the younger. It was like 
 a General Post Office, where letters collected from 
 all the pillar-boxes were sorted : the best news were 
 gathered and sifted, and spread abroad among the 
 children. Or, to change the illustration, it seemed 
 like a junction of a great railway, line, where trains 
 were made up and started to the minute. Dr. 
 Welldon's three rules for teachers were: "Answer 
 letters ; Make up your minds ; Keep appointments." 
 Certainly indecision is a fruitful source of loss 
 of time. 
 
 " It isn't the thing- you do, dear, 
 
 It's the thing you leave undone, 
 Which gives you a bit of heartache 
 
 At the setting of the sun. 
 The tender word forgotten, 
 
 The letter you did not write, 
 The flower you might have sent, dear 
 
 Are your haunting ghosts to-night. 
 
 The stone you might have lifted 
 
 Out of another's way, 
 A bit of heartsome counsel, 
 
 You were hurried too much to say ; 
 The loving touch of the hand, dear, 
 
 The gentle winsome tone, 
 That you had no time nor thought for, 
 
 With troubles enough of your own." 
 
 An experience we had in August last left a deep 
 impress on our minds, both as to the uncertainty 
 and the preciousness of time. The Highland train 
 was advancing at half speed into the Newtonmore 
 
THE QUEST OF THE IDEAL 55 
 
 station. We had just looked out at a hill, on whose 
 side there was a white patch of snow. Then a thud, 
 a collision. "Will another shock come? Is this 
 all ? " At that moment all along the train strange 
 experiences were lived through. Professor Dobie 
 was taken, and his favourite horse beside him was 
 spared. One minister was looking at the view, when 
 the window was smashed. Another passenger undo- 
 ing wraps got a most hurtful twist. During the two 
 hours of waiting in the rain among the sufferers one 
 realised how short one's working day may be, how 
 soon the night may come. 
 
 This moment, this day may be the last in the place 
 of opportunity. 
 
 u The period of life is brief; 
 
 It is the red in the red rose leaf, 
 It is the gold in the sunset sky, 
 It is the flight of a bird on high ; 
 But one may fill the space 
 With such an infinite grace, 
 That the red shall vein all time, 
 And the gold through the ages shine, 
 And the bird fly swift and straight 
 To the portals of God's own gate." 
 
 We sometimes wish that we had five quarters in the 
 hour, and also extra hands and extra feet. It is 
 best to employ well what we have. " Our possessions 
 are in heaven ; therefore, sons of men, purchase unto 
 yourselves by these transitory things which are not 
 yours, what is yours, and shall not pass away." We 
 may grudge that so much time must be spent, and 
 thought given to these transitory things; but this is 
 our training-school for the great future. 
 
 One great saving of time is gained by putting away 
 
56 HELPS TO MAKE IDEALS REAL 
 
 a thing when we are done with it, and then there is 
 no searching when we need it again. " Disorder," 
 says Xenophon, "seems to me something like as if 
 an husbandman should throw into his granary barley 
 and wheat and peas together, and then, when he 
 wants barley bread or wheaten bread or peas, should 
 have to abstract them grain by grain, instead of 
 having them separately laid up for use." Is there 
 not for us, even in common things, a lesson from 
 what the apostles saw in the empty Easter tomb, in 
 the linen clothes lying, and the napkin that was about 
 His head wrapped together in a place by itself? 
 
 Forethought is another secret of saving time. It 
 removes impediments, and prepares the way. " It is," 
 as Frances Willard says, " doing good according to 
 a plan." But it needs forethought and precision or 
 business habits at both ends, else the scheme mis- 
 carries. If every order came home executed as it 
 was ordered, what a saving of time and worry there 
 would be. We must learn to think. " Whatsoever 
 thy hand findeth to do, do it with thy might." 
 
 " Lange Leben ist nicht viel Leben : 
 Viel wirken ist viel Leben." 
 
 And even at the very end the word will be true of 
 us which is written on Green the historian's grave at 
 Mentone, " He died learning." 
 
 We all know by our failures where the leakage has 
 been. Whether we have let our " senses make a 
 playground of our mind by folly," or held too many 
 " debating societies in our cerebrum " by indecision, 
 we can now make a fresh start after our ideal, and 
 resolve to make the most of each moment as it flies. 
 
THE QUEST OF THE IDEAL 57 
 
 Let us utilise every power we possess for Christ and 
 His service. Let us see that our feet are not tripped 
 up in the threadbare gossip of the hour. Let us pro- 
 voke to love and good works, and organise frequent 
 prayer - meetings to increase the love of prayer. 
 Prayer will give us messages to others, and teach 
 us to take the initiative for Him. Dr. Gordon, 
 Boston, tells how r the most useful man in one of their 
 churches was converted through the word of a Chris- 
 tian lady, spoken across the counter when he was 
 selling goods to her. One dear servant of Christ, 
 now at rest, said he got great opportunities to testify 
 for Christ when the hairdressers were cutting his 
 hair. Another aged worker, living alone in the 
 country, never let a message-girl leave without a word 
 said, or a book or orange given. These faithful ser- 
 vants fulfilled Paul's injunction to the believers, both 
 at Ephesus and Colosse, to buy up their opportunities. 
 We shall never lack calls to more earnestness. Even 
 as we write, a prince, a painter, a musician have all 
 been called away. 
 
 There is a power which is sometimes stronger even 
 than the realisation of the importance and the fleet- 
 ingness of time. We are told that the seven years 
 that Jacob worked for Rachel seemed like a day, 
 for the love he had to her. Love makes havoc of 
 time and distance. Faith may be the lantern which 
 throws on the screen of our heart the vision that 
 allures us to make much of time in pursuing our 
 ideal ; but Love is the operator, Faith worketh by 
 Love. When we feel that the personal living Christ 
 is the motive-power of our life, the mainspring of 
 every action, then alone does the importance of the 
 
58 HELPS TO MAKE IDEALS REAL 
 
 maintenant come in, to live and use the moment for 
 Him ; for, as the lines say 
 
 " The loss of Gold is much, 
 The loss of Time is more, 
 But the loss of Jesus Christ is such 
 As no man can restore." 
 
 CHAPTER X 
 
 THE QUEST OF THE IDEAL 
 
 IN BOOKS 
 
 " Let us thank God for books. When I consider what some 
 books have done for the world, and what they are doing ; how 
 they keep up our hope, awaken new courage and faith, soothe 
 pain, give an ideal life to those whose homes are hard and cold, 
 bind together distant ages and foreign lands, create new worlds 
 of beauty, bring down truths from heaven, I give eternal bless- 
 ings for this gift, and pray that we may use it aright, and abuse 
 it not." JAMES FREEMAN CLARKE. 
 
 IT was our privilege to hear Thomas Carlyle deliver 
 his rectorial address in the Music Hall in 1866. He 
 then divided books into two classes when he said, " I 
 conceive that books are like men's souls, divided into 
 sheep and goats. Some few are going up, and carry- 
 ing us up, heavenward ; calculated, I mean, to be of 
 priceless advantage in teaching, in forwarding the 
 teaching of all generations. Others, a frightful mul- 
 titude, are going down, down ; doing ever the more 
 and the wider and the wilder mischief. Keep a strict 
 eye on that latter class of books, my young friends ! " 
 We remember during a course of Astronomical 
 Lectures given in our school days going at night out 
 
THE QUEST OF THE IDEAL 59 
 
 on a country road to study the stars. The eager 
 eyes might have spent the time gazing up and 
 scanning the heavens. It was more profitable to 
 fix the eye with the help of the telescope on one 
 constellation or one planet, on the Plough, or on 
 Mars or Jupiter. We would like to speak of one or 
 two helpful books, not for connoisseurs in this de- 
 partment, but for those who are making out their first 
 list or catalogue, their first skeleton map of an un- 
 known country. Emerson says : " Private readers 
 . . . would serve us by leaving each the shortest note 
 of what he found. . . . Each shall give us his grains 
 of gold, after the washing." We got these grains of 
 gold in the following letter, when we asked for a 
 course of reading-aloud in a country house by the 
 sea : 
 
 " I should say, read M'Crie's Life of Knox, or 
 M'Crie's (the younger) Sketches of Scottish Church 
 History ', or Stanley's JewisJi Church^ or his Life of 
 Arnold^ or Memorials of a Quiet Life, or Hugh Miller's 
 My Schools and Schoolmasters ', or Trevelyan's 
 Macaulay^ or Farrar's Paul. Perhaps the last or first 
 two would be best ; only get one, get it done. Before 
 you begin each evening's reading, get your reader to 
 question you upon last day's lesson. That is worth 
 two readings. History is the very best kind of read- 
 ing. It connects, collects, and cools one's mind. It 
 gives you illustrations, examples that light up your 
 own life and the life of the present day. Religious 
 history is perhaps the best for us; but there is no 
 good history of Scotch or English religion. If you 
 take secular history, Froude's, which is reappearing 
 just now, might be good. Have you read Living- 
 
60 HELPS TO MAKE IDEALS REAL 
 
 stone's? If not, you might get that for Sabbath. 
 It is the most Christlike life I ever heard of, except 
 Paul's." 
 
 When a friend asks us what books to read, or an 
 invalid for a sudden accession of illness, or a traveller 
 for a long journey, we should all have a repertoire, a 
 list in memory's secret drawer to call out at once. 
 First let us taste for ourselves, and then be a purveyor 
 of good books. Very much depends on the time, 
 the circumstance, the mood when a book is read. 
 When we have read it and passed our verdict, did we 
 give it a fair chance, did we give it our undivided 
 attention ? We remember a friend saying to us how 
 much more profitable it was to read a book in one's 
 own copy, which we could mark at will, than in a 
 fugitive library copy. And we have found this to be 
 increasingly true. Sometimes after making a book 
 our own by marking, we have been tempted to leave 
 it with a friend, and when we wanted it for reference 
 it was gone. There is a moving population of summer 
 visitors who come and go, and leave not much im- 
 pression on our bit of land ; but we must have some 
 residenters living in mansions or villas who have 
 taken a lease for life to purchase a place in our lives. 
 Mr. Stead speaks of the "communion of readers," 
 and such bonds are healthy and strong. In your 
 friends' bookcases you have a key to their tastes, an 
 index to their lives. You go with a friend on holiday. 
 As is his habit he may have taken a book suitable to 
 the district, such as Wordsworth at the Lakes, or 
 Scott at Kenilworth, Romola in Florence ; and as he 
 turns the pages you know his thoughts. Leaving Mar- 
 seilles, on two deck-chairs lay copies of Monte Christo. 
 
THE QUEST OF THE IDEAL 61 
 
 The readers did not speak, being better employed, 
 but though utter strangers, never again likely to meet, 
 they were for the time friends. Certainly it is safer, 
 when talking is resorted to, to discuss a book than a 
 person. People get friendly over a book which they 
 have both discovered to be to them " the most brilliant 
 book of travel of the century " ; and just when they 
 have begun to read some standard book, they are 
 pleased to see it praised in a magazine. The more 
 they read, the more their reading seems to overlap 
 like wave on wave on a pebbly shore, and the more 
 they realise their own ignorance. How easy it is for 
 the young to found a library, a bookcase of their very 
 own, compared to what it was in our young days. 
 There are the penny poets and the fourpenny standard 
 novels within reach of all ; and we have heard from a 
 friend about a wonderful collection which can be got 
 in Glasgow for the sum of six shillings, including 
 postage. 
 
 Hugh Miller says : " I began to collect a library in 
 a box of birch bark about nine inches square, which 
 I found quite large enough to contain a great many 
 immortal works;" and we know what his learning 
 grew to. When a book is lent, it is a great help to 
 put the name of the person to whom it has gone on 
 a slip of paper on the shelf. A prize might be 
 offered for the most effective punishment for the non- 
 returning of books. The careful librarian will send 
 out a reminder, a post-card, to recall it, or a reply 
 post-card, asking when it will be returned ; but it is 
 the duty of the person who received the favour of the 
 loan not to keep it beyond a due time, a week or a 
 month. Some one said : " Though my friends are 
 
62 HELPS TO MAKE IDEALS REAL 
 
 poor arithmeticians, yet they are good bookkeepers ! " 
 We know how great scholars treat their books, and 
 we long to imitate them. They exercise great care 
 and solicitude, and will let no stranger hands dust or 
 disarrange. For a library is like a garden. It needs 
 pruning; it needs weeding; it needs raking and 
 watering, arrangement and rearrangement according 
 to the plan which the proprietor feels most helpful to 
 him. 
 
 Speaking of libraries, the well-known story comes 
 to mind of one who was mostly concerned as to the 
 outward appearance. He ordered his several shelves 
 to be filled with volumes of varying size, and when 
 asked if they were to be bound in russia or morocco, 
 replied, " What's the use o' sending them so far ; can 
 they no' be bun' at hame ? " 
 
 The young are very critical. We went with a 
 friend who had literary tastes, and who had lived 
 among books, into the study of a writer. What 
 struck her was the meagreness of his library. Her 
 standard was high. In another country house, very 
 destitute of books, we found one which helped us. 
 The owner was not aware that it was in the house. 
 Next to the good done to the young by founding a 
 library we would put the keeping of a book of 
 extracts. True, it is asked, " Do you ever use them ? " 
 but the mere writing out of the lines impresses them 
 on the memory. And then it is like the delight of 
 arranging a vase of flowers to see those that go well 
 together, and add new beauty each to the other. 
 What rare delight it is to quarry a piece out of the 
 solid rock yourself, instead of merely picking them 
 from a heap of metal on the roadside. A list of 
 
THE QUEST OF THE IDEAL 63 
 
 pieces in a book of quotations is like eating bride- 
 cake which causes indigestion, or to use merely a 
 book of quotations, as if a dinner were all made up 
 of savouries without substantial dishes. What a joy 
 it is to share our treasures with some appreciative 
 and enthusiastic friend. When on showing your 
 notebook you can tell the habitat of the plant, and 
 still more, that you plucked it and labelled it your- 
 self, the joy is something akin to the botanist opening 
 his herbarium, or the geographer making a new map. 
 The author's name attached is like the hall-mark of the 
 Queen's head on the silver, or the cock on the Canti- 
 galli china. We would say to the children, " Save 
 up your pennies for books rather than sweetmeats," 
 and " learn by heart whilst yet the memory is nimble." 
 A book may bind a whole family together in loving 
 sympathy if suited to be read on the different flats of 
 a house. A friend has started a lending library to 
 be put in servants' halls in country houses. The 
 subscription is small, and the books are sometimes 
 gladly welcomed upstairs. A douane and douanier 
 should certainly be stationed at our bookshelves, not 
 to let in any contraband literature. And who should 
 seek to station this douanier like a mother? Lady 
 Nairne began a book of extracts from books to 
 leave for her son's use, but he went first. She had a 
 high ideal in this as in all else, for one of her 
 favourite mottoes was " Holiness is happiness." Mrs. 
 Booth of the Salvation Army said to Mr. Stead : 
 " Give us mothers ; mothers are the want of the 
 world." Some remember learning to read at their 
 mother's side by the easy method of " Reading with- 
 out Tears." In learning the alphabet they got a key 
 
64 HELPS TO MAKE IDEALS REAL 
 
 to their mother's heart, and a strange life of inter- 
 change and communion began. On Sabbaths it 
 was Peep of Day and Line upon Line, and after- 
 wards Ministering Children was added to the list. 
 The mother hears the child throw out a hint and acts 
 on it, and at the next birthday or Christmastide pre- 
 pares some surprise. A girl went to the country to 
 nurse an invalid, and she found packed, by her 
 mother's desire, among the clothing the blue volume 
 sequel to Ministering Children which she had long 
 desired to have. And when the treasured gift has an 
 inscription with a loved quotation, or pages marked 
 worthy of special study, the value of the gift is 
 enhanced. After the Bible, which another cannot 
 study for us, with its chapters learnt by heart, its 
 tracks of waste land cultivated, and mines explored 
 with help of Cruden (who seemed to our minds more 
 a person than a book), what book was like the dear 
 old " Pilgrim," as we called it. A student told us 
 that there was hardly a Sabbath passed on which he 
 did not read out of the Pilgrim's Progress, and it is 
 to us the ideal book after the Bible. Then our 
 mother arranged Rutherford's Letters for us on a 
 plan of a letter, or part of a letter, for every day 
 in the year. The attractive binding and beautiful 
 paper of Andrew Bonar's edition first impressed us, 
 but the book was ever a delight. Foremost among 
 the favourite stories of our childhood stands Robinson 
 Crusoe, and not far behind it the Swiss Family 
 Robinson. In later days we have seen children 
 devouring Ballantyne's Coral Island, which is some- 
 what akin. In a train to London we read Uncle Tom's 
 Cabin. Across our memories there flit the images, 
 
THE QUEST OF THE IDEAL 65 
 
 the places where we read the books, the friends who 
 gave them, and it is good to tell our children the 
 histories that there is not time to write. In these 
 days of deluges of literature, typewriting machines, of 
 evening papers, of fountain pens, the hours seem to 
 have fewer minutes and the days fewer hours ; but 
 with the scantier supply of children's books long ago 
 there was just as much pleasure, and, perhaps, as 
 much profit. 
 
 In later life it has been our privilege to make a 
 study of some tracks of literature with one who was an 
 authority and who had a master mind. We took each 
 winter a different author for an hour's reading regu- 
 larly and thoroughly : a course of Browning, including 
 the " Ring and the Book," a course of Dante, one of 
 Ruskin, and one of Wordsworth. We all have allo- 
 cated different readings at different times, remember- 
 ing some books along with the sunsets over the sea 
 at country houses when they were read aloud in the 
 long summer evenings. The good of this course of 
 study was from the side-lights that the friend threw 
 on the reading, as he explained the growth of the 
 writer's mind, the source where he got certain ideas, 
 etc. These talks favoured assimilation and digestion. 
 We have come across his vigorous marginal pencillings 
 this winter, now that his hand is cold in death. We . 
 only wish we had taken down notes of all he told us. 
 In a course of reading he was like a living encyclo- 
 paedia, for he knew the chief figures in the literature 
 of the period. 
 
 Paul said " especially the parchments," and in our 
 longing after the ideal in books, we feel that we are 
 just like children throwing stones into the sea and 
 5 
 
66 HELPS TO MAKE IDEALS REAL 
 
 listening to the waves which speak of the expanse 
 beyond. For life is so short and the books so many 
 that the difficulty is to remember what we have read 
 and have it ready for use, and not as rusty weapons 
 in an armoury. 
 
 And the most learned will tell you they are still 
 at the beginning, though advancing. We watch with 
 interest the growth of the mind of our friends. We 
 may court introductions to the great and good, but 
 we need not wait for an introduction to a book ; 
 and then, when tried and proved, it is our privilege 
 to pass it on to others. A friend told us once that he 
 did not understand Browning, but that he loved Mrs. 
 Barrett Browning. Only the other day he advised us 
 to read over again " Rabbi ben Ezra." His child had 
 educated him. In our drawing-room Browning and 
 Virchow discussed " Paracelsus " twelve years ago, 
 but we hardly then knew Browning's poems, else how 
 different would the conversation have been to us ! It 
 was Browning who said, 
 
 "Ah, but a man's reach should exceed his grasp, 
 Or what's a heaven for ? " 
 
 and each time we turn his pages our ideal is raised. 
 For writers and readers alike we close this chapter 
 with Milton's grand words. Let no young reader 
 fear the long name, but go to the pages where he will 
 find it for himself in the " Areopagitica." The effect 
 that the words have on us as they call us from our 
 low level and scrappy reading, are like leaving the 
 hurdy-gurdy organ on the street and entering a great 
 cathedral where the grand music is swelling out, and 
 one by one the worshippers yield themselves to the 
 spell . 
 
THE MISSION AR Y IDEAL 67 
 
 " For Bookes are not absolutely dead things, but do 
 contain a potencie of life in them to be as active as 
 that soule was whose progeny they are ; nay, they do 
 preserve as in a violl the purest efficacie and extrac- 
 tion of that living intellect that bred them. I know 
 they are as lively, and as vigorously productive, as 
 those fabulous dragons teeth ; and being sown up and 
 down, may chance to spring up armed men. And 
 yet, on the other hand, unlesse warinesse be us'd as 
 good almost kill a Man as kill a good Booke ; who kills 
 a man kills a reasonable creature, God's image ; but 
 hee who destroys a good booke, kills reason itselfe, 
 kills the Image of God, as it were in the eye. Many 
 a man lives a burden to the earthe ; but a good booke 
 is the pretious life-blood of a master spirit, imbalm'd 
 and treasured up on purpose to a life beyond life." 
 
 CHAPTER XI 
 
 THE MISSIONARY IDEAL 
 
 " There was depression in every direction. We met and prayed 
 for the heathen. We were drawn out of ourselves. God blessed 
 us while we tried to be a blessing 1 . Our hearts were enlarged, 
 and we were baptized into a deeper sympathy with the soul- 
 saving- purposes of the Redeemer. And the spirit was con- 
 tagious." ANDREW FULLER. 
 
 "O Master! when Thou callest, 
 
 No voice may say Thee nay, 
 For blest are they that follow 
 
 Where Thou dost lead the way ; 
 In freshest prime of morning 
 
 Or fullest glow of noon, 
 The note of heavenly warning 
 
 Can never come too soon. 
 
68 HELPS TO MAKE IDEALS REAL 
 
 They who go forth to serve Thee, 
 
 We, too, who serve at home, 
 May watch and pray together 
 
 Until Thy kingdom come; 
 In Thee for aye united, 
 
 Our song of hope we raise, 
 Till that blest shore is sighted, 
 
 When all shall turn to praise!" 
 
 ALREADY to some is it like the sound of the wheels 
 of His chariot, the advent of His feet, the missionary 
 ideal realised, " the world for Christ," when the cul- 
 tured youth of all the nations are federating to " make 
 Jesus King." And the news that comes to us from 
 the ends of the earth is often like a page of some 
 romantic story. We heard from a lonely missionary 
 in the heart of Africa, whose faith is as great as his 
 bodily strength is weak. It takes five months for a 
 letter to go to him. It may arrive or not, according 
 to the good luck the letters have at the hands of the 
 carriers; though only the wrapper may arrive without 
 the book. From his outlook the chariot may seem 
 long of coming, but with what joy will the lonely 
 sentinel months after hear of the Liverpool Confer- 
 ence ! It would be worth while to have from him 
 not a photograph of the face which we remember as 
 more spirit than flesh, but of the innermost soul 
 beating on all alone true for Christ and His heathen, 
 having for his treasured possession a wife's grave. 
 Surely a sight of that soul, so like the Master, tread- 
 ing the wine-press alone, would fire our icy coldness, 
 for he is an ideal missionary. This is a part of his 
 last letter 
 
 "I do not know if you would remember a young 
 wife of the king, in whose heart and for more than 
 
THE MISSIONAR Y IDEAL 69 
 
 two years the grace of God had been working. 
 Being a favourite wife, she was not free to leave the 
 royal harem. Once, on a very solemn occasion, when 
 several had made a profession,, the king summoned 
 her also to speak, for he knew the work that had 
 gone on in her soul. But he meant that she might 
 make a profession, and still hold her place as one of 
 his concubines. She answered by a flood of silent 
 tears. At last she entreated him not to stand in "the 
 way of her salvation, but to free her once for all. 
 The king, who himself is wavering, would "have liked, 
 for reasons of his own, to postpone that step. But 
 he yielded at last, and very nobly. By her own 
 slaves he had all the material prepared for her house 
 in the village ; and then last Sunday, when she stood 
 up in church, and with a firm, clear voice declared 
 herself a follower of Jesus, and made a short but 
 pointed appeal to the chiefs, the whole congregation 
 was breathless, and all eyes were fixed upon her. 
 But soon they were fixed on the king himself, who 
 had risen to his feet, and declared that it was with 
 .his fullest consent that that young woman left once 
 for all his harem. And then, turning to the big 
 chiefs, he said, ' It is useless to fight against the 
 things of God,' and taking an image from the course 
 of the sun, c they have risen : we cannot impede 
 them and push them back. They must go forth/ 
 This has caused a very great sensation. The chiefs 
 were enraged. They declared the woman was mad. 
 Why did she not wait for the king to become a 
 Christian himself? Why set such an example to 
 their own wives? Indeed, she has put our little 
 world upside down. Meantime, she Is no more a 
 
70 HELPS TO MAKE IDEALS REAL 
 
 , ' queen/ Nobody kneels now before her and claps 
 hands as a few days ago, although she is of royal 
 blood, a cousin of the king; but she is cheerful and 
 happy, she is free. A host of men and women 
 have been after her to compel her to go back to 
 the City of Destruction, but the Lord sustains her. 
 Now we are waiting for the king himself." 
 
 As we write, a letter comes from India, saying 
 " One of our hospital patients had been ill for long 
 with chronic bronchitis. She was a woman of about 
 fifty-five years, had been a Telegu Brahmin, but 
 married a Mohammedan man, and broke caste. Her 
 name was Raddia. One night her distress was 
 terrible. Next day we found her sinking. Her 
 mind was quite clear, and she spoke with joy in 
 laboured sentences of going to be with Jesus Christ. 
 She knew quite well that she was dying. She had 
 no fear. She asked that she might be buried as a 
 Christian woman, and regretted that she had not 
 been baptized. My fellow-worker went to tell the 
 missionary, and he at once said that he thought she 
 should be baptized, and he would come to do it. 
 We knew it would comfort her. It was a very 
 simple and a very solemn service. The dying 
 woman, fighting hard for breath, confessed her faith 
 in Him who had brought life and immortality to 
 light. She w r as baptized in the name of the Father, 
 of the Son, and of the Holy Ghost. She could not 
 speak much after that, but in whispered, broken 
 sentences told us that her ' heart was very happy,' 
 that she 'had peace/ Just about midnight that 
 same night she fell on sleep." 
 
 A steamer is even now putting out from Bordeaux, 
 
THE MISSIONAR Y IDEAL 7 1 
 
 carrying back, for the second time, to the French 
 Congo a choice labourer. With him as freight he 
 carries a house, a boat, seeds for his garden, and, 
 among his books, Make Jesus King. He knows the 
 deadly nature of the climate, but if it is to finish 
 there his course with joy, he counts not his life dear. 
 In the gay city of Paris, as, long ago, in the upper 
 room at Jerusalem, or in the Catacombs of Rome, a 
 company of friends met to wish him God-speed ; and 
 two student friends have caught the enthusiasm, and 
 are to follow to Africa. 
 
 One of the ideals of missionary life is consecration. 
 We all know the breath of one of those souls upon 
 us, the effect of one of their letters ; and why are 
 these consecrated spirits so rare ? It does not need 
 a Tent or a Conference ; the Spirit is ours, and it 
 may be said of any of us as it was long ago, " The 
 Spirit of God clothed himself with Gideon/' When 
 they leave us the ordinary conversation of Christians 
 seems cold, the discussions about lines of demarcation 
 between the Church and the world so futile ; for we 
 have been with those who have seen the vision of 
 Christ and the needs of the heathen world. 
 
 " Whoso hath felt the Spirit of the Highest 
 
 Cannot confound nor doubt Him, nor deny : 
 Yea, with one voice, O world, though thou deniest, 
 Stand thou on that side, for on this am I." 
 
 Our standard of life has been raised for a few days, 
 and the heat or feeling of a room all depends on what 
 you have come from. Some features have struck us 
 in some ideal missionaries and workers we have 
 known which may help us to make our missionary 
 ideals real. We think of one who went about with no 
 
7.2 HELPS TO MAKE IDEALS REAL 
 
 excitement or hurry. He failed to keep an appoint- 
 ment with us one forenoon for reading and prayer. 
 Later on other duties were pressing, and he found 
 the door locked, The words were called in, " I've 
 been O.K. M.S." He meant "On His Majesty's 
 .Service." The service had been praying and talking 
 with a needy soul in another room. It was business, 
 and he meant it. Without unhealthy excitement 
 there may be great enthusiasm ; and this enthusiasm 
 is infectious when it has been generated in the 
 atmosphere of secret and social prayer. For the 
 separated ones there is 'freedom, for His yoke is 
 easy and His burden light. 
 
 Another thing we find in these ideal missionaries 
 is the joy of sacrifice. They would not say it, but 
 when we wondered why the serpent of trial had 
 become a rod in their hand, and how that rod seemed 
 to blossom for them, and every conversation had the 
 flavour of eternity, every hymn was praise and every 
 petition meant business, we felt that hidden deep in 
 their heart was the motto, " He left all ; rose up and 
 followed Jesus." The sacrifice demanded of some 
 such has been unto death, but they live oh in 
 thoughts like these penned in an outgoing steamer, 
 " I have just passed Aden. Why was Ion Keith 
 Falconer taken and I left ? " The Holy Ghost is 
 given to them that obey Him, and if the Spirit has 
 His way He may make strange demands. 
 
 Ideal missionaries are all men of great faith. 
 
 " Believe!" I say, " Faith is my waking life: 
 One sleeps, indeed, and dreams at intervals, 
 We know, but waking's the main point with us, 
 And my provision's for life's waking part." 
 
THE MISSION AR Y IDEAL 73 
 
 ."And so you live to sleep as I to wake, 
 To tmbelieve as I to still believe." 
 
 They are awake, and thank God for what is to be 
 done before they see it. Mr. Radcliffe had a room 
 .prepared for anxious souls in a boarding-school, and 
 the first person to walk in, was the headmistress, 
 who had just before objected to its being prepared. 
 And with faith will always go the joyous, praising 
 spirit. Ordinary Christians may call them fanatical. 
 The day will declare when the wood, hay, and stubble 
 will be burned up, and the gold of service will be left, 
 and they are content to wait. 
 
 We feel towards the missionaries as to those who 
 have got swift promotion in the ranks. We at home 
 are only common soldiers. To the command, ""Go," 
 the risen Lord linked one of His sweetest promises, 
 "I am with you all the days." We think of a brother 
 and a sister. The brother died of cholera in China, 
 but the missionary spirit of the sister who stayed 
 at home was just as true, when she said to her 
 lover, " Are you one who would sacrifice the greatest 
 temporal for the smallest spiritual advantage?" 
 We quote some lines from her pen about how the 
 missionary life is to be lived at home and abroad : 
 " When a merchantman sets sail for a foreign 
 port, the partner at home feels that he has as much 
 at stake as the captain on board. In the same way, 
 when a missionary agrees to go abroad, it is much 
 to be desired, nay, for the success of the undertaking, 
 it is vital that some one in the old country should be 
 brought to take as real an interest in the errand on 
 which the other is going, as if he himself were, say, 
 China bound. The worker at home must be led to 
 
74 HELPS TO MAKE IDEALS REAL 
 
 give himself up to labour here in such a way, in 
 sympathy so strong, in effort so active and judicious, 
 as virtually to become set apart as a missionary." 
 This makes us think of the way she entertained 
 that ideal missionary, William Burns, at her home. 
 " When we invited Mr. Burns to dinner, we received 
 from him the usual reply, that his work and study 
 took up all his time. He did not dine out, or even 
 breakfast, anywhere; but he would call at the house. 
 The call was a late one, and, as the dinner-bell 
 sounded, Mr. Burns rose to leave. A man of simple 
 habits, he was caught by guile. ' Sorry we cannot 
 ask you to stay to dinner. We have only a sheep's 
 head to offer you/ said his hostess. ' Oh/ was the 
 ready answer, ' if you put it that way I shall stay ! 
 There's nothing I like better/ 
 
 "It was one day in September 1853 that the 
 Scottish Auxiliary of the China Mission was set on 
 
 foot. Miss , who had worked with her brother 
 
 during his twenty years of congregational and mission 
 work in England, and one of her brother's friends 
 were of the party. At one of the pauses in conver- 
 sation she said, as though half in fun, ' I think you 
 two idle gentlemen might do worse than start a 
 Scottish branch of our mission ! ' Probably the idea 
 had been simmering in their minds long before ; any- 
 how, prayer was there and then offered up for 
 guidance. By October of the following year the 
 first Annual Meeting of our Auxiliary was held. 
 William Burns appeared on the scene from his seven 
 years' term of service in time for it. It was his first 
 and last visit to Scotland. He was asked if he never 
 felt home-sickness in China. He promptly said, ' I 
 
THE MISSIONAR Y IDEAL 7 5 
 
 never knew that feeling till now ; ' meaning that China 
 was for him altogether home." 
 
 Many other missionaries at home on furlough have 
 the same tale to tell. They have known the priva- 
 tions, the loneliness, the longings of the missionary 
 life, but they have the home-sickness for the land of 
 their adoption. Christ says, " Go ye into all the 
 world ; " " Look ye on the fields." Let us go with 
 Him alone, and try to write the sum where He says, 
 " How much owest thou ? " Otherwise He will write 
 our verdict on the palace wall of eternity " Weighed 
 in the balance and found wanting." We are living 
 in the interval between His teaching the petition 
 " Thy kingdom come," and the shout of triumph 
 "The kingdoms of this world have become the 
 kingdoms of our Lord and of His Christ." Con- 
 stantly gaps are made in the ranks of missionaries, 
 and we long for the wise counsel of the missionary- 
 hearted stayers at home who are now with the Lord. 
 They did their work, and though not allowed to see 
 the fruition, we think of Sir Bartle Frere's conversa- 
 tion with the aged man, who was planting acorns. 
 He thought his friend rather fanciful. " You feel 
 that I shall never enjoy the shade ? " " Yes." He 
 replied, " I know what that shade will be, and, at 
 anyrate, no one will ever alter these lines." We 
 sit now in the shade of the great oaks planted by 
 Carey and Brainerd, by Heber, William Burns, and 
 Duff. They rest, but their works follow. 
 
 A saint, now with the Lord, used to call a child 
 to watch the lovely golden sunset, or, later in the 
 evening, the pink of the aurora borealis, saying how 
 she longed that it might be the King coming. As 
 
76 HELPS TO MAKE IDEALS REAL 
 
 we see everywhere the missionary enthusiasm lighting 
 up our grey northern skies, we think the missionary 
 ideal is slowly yet surely coming, and these words 
 express our longing 
 
 " Lo, as some ship, outworn and overladen, 
 
 Strains for the harbour, where her sails are furled ; 
 Lo, as some innocent and eager maiden 
 Leans o'er the wistful limit of the world, 
 
 Dreams of the glow and glory of the distance, 
 Wonderful wooing and the grace of tears, 
 
 Dreams with what eyes and what a sweet insistance 
 Lovers are waiting in the hidden years ; 
 
 Lo, as some venturer, from his stars receiving 
 Promise and presage of sublime emprise, 
 
 Wears evermore the seal of his believing 
 Deep in the dark of solitary eyes ; 
 
 So even I, and with a pang more thrilling, 
 So even I, and with a hope more sweet, 
 , Yearn for the sign, O Christ ! of Thy fulfilling, 
 Faint for the flaming of Thine advent feet." 
 
 CHAPTER XII 
 
 THE IDEAL IN FELLOWSHIP 
 
 " How good it is to hail pilgrims on the great journey even for 
 an hour by the way : the sound of their * tramp, tramp ' quickens 
 one's own tread, and makes one take in his knapsack-strap one 
 hole further. " R. W. BARBOUR. 
 
 ONE of the little songs of ascents which were sung 
 as the tribes were going up to the temple, was Psalm 
 cxxxiii.: " Behold, how good and how pleasant it is 
 
THE IDEAL IN FELLOWSHIP 77 
 
 for brethren to dwell together in unity !" Like oil, 
 like dew, for " there the Lord commanded the blessing, 
 even life for evermore." There is heaven begun. God 
 means us to be joined together. He hath set the 
 solitary in families. We are not solitary atoms, nor 
 wandering stars. We belong to a family, a church, a 
 kingdom. " They that feared the Lord spake often 
 one to another ; and the Lord hearkened, and 
 heard." 
 
 Outside our home-life many new and old agencies 
 are promoting unity. When we heard lately of a 
 Christian Endeavour band where fifty young people 
 of the congregation were studying the Bible and 
 praying aloud together, we did not wonder that the 
 minister received ten young communicants as a 
 definite result. 
 
 One bond is love, another prayer. Love makes 
 perpetual summer in the soul, for it is an evergreen.^ 
 Some travellers escape winter altogether, and find 
 two springs, two summers, as they leave the South, 
 come slowly North, and then leave with the swallows 
 again. Where love is the atmosphere the other fruits 
 of the Spirit quickly follow. Inconsiderateness of 
 others, which is just selfishness, quickly disappears. 
 William Law says if we have hard thoughts about 
 any, let us pray for them, and then we begin to 
 love. "What counsel give ye me to return answer 
 to this people? And they spake unto him, saying, 
 If thou be kind to this people, and please them, and 
 speak good words to them, then they will be thy 
 servants for ever." Prayer and love make harsh 
 speaking impossible. A Highland minister, speaking 
 of the woman who slipped in and washed Christ's 
 
78 HELPS TO MAKE IDEALS REAL 
 
 feet with tears, said : " When Christians take to 
 washing one another's feet, some use water so hot 
 that it scalds us, others so cold that it freezes us ; but 
 hers was blood-heat." Dispositions are so different, 
 environment is so varied, that each day we must 
 learn to " praise more and blame less." He did not 
 quench the smoking flax. 
 
 Love will never want outlets when it exists. We 
 saw a friend not long ago in the south of France. 
 Whether it was in reading a chosen chapter or verse 
 from God's word, or making a .cup of beef-tea, he 
 seemed to live and carry with him an atmosphere of 
 love. He told us that in a town among the moun- 
 tains there was a cab proprietor who had been very 
 kind and considerate to him. He did not tell him 
 the day of his arrival, as he could count on the hotel 
 omnibus being at the station ; but he took out of the 
 train a whip carefully wrapped up, which he had 
 brought from England for his friend. To his amaze- 
 ment, when he got out of the station, who was seated 
 on the box of his carriage, to give him a surprise and 
 drive him home, but his friend. When two hearts 
 meet who love, it is as a time of spate on two 
 Highland rivers ; they join with a rush of joy, and 
 their force is doubled. This may seem a small and 
 ordinary circumstance, but upon this spirit of love 
 all unity is built up. " Better to build on foundations 
 than on ruins." Could we have a more lovely founda- 
 tion-stone to lay at any time than just this hundred 
 and thirty-third Psalm? Besides love and prayer, 
 two bonds of union in our homes are family worship 
 and reverence for the Lord's day. Let us dig deep 
 the channels of His appointment, and He will fill the 
 
THE IDEAL IN FELLOWSHIP 79 
 
 pools. Let us see to it that the altar is in our 
 home. It is our part to build it ; He will send the 
 fire to consume the sacrifice. The morning hymn at 
 worship tunes the day. The evening children's hour 
 on Sabbath may bring out instead of toys the mis- 
 sionary boxes (perhaps one still kept for the child 
 now serving in the temple on high) and the Sunday 
 album. It will be ill for him and for his household 
 who despises God's Eden gift to our race, and 
 breaks down the fence of the Sabbath day. Wild 
 creatures will rush in and destroy his fields. The 
 cares and the pleasures, the worries and the traffic 
 of everyday life, will not easily be shut out again. 
 This will come if the thoroughfare be opened and the 
 boarding taken down, " No road this way." We read 
 in a missionary magazine that Korea is establishing 
 its Sabbath. Shall we cast ours away ? Some find 
 the " reading round " at worship still a help, and the 
 occasional joining of all audibly in the Lord's Prayer. 
 One of our valued friends and ministers, now at home 
 with God, said that he found it of great use to have 
 family worship at night, immediately after the evening 
 meal of supper or dinner, so that all the children 
 might be present and nobody be drowsy. 
 
 In the home-life there must be sympathy, exchange 
 of books or gifts or news with those who, though 
 serving us, are, like us, serving Christ. We are 
 helped by remembering how the ideal in home- 
 life was lived out by those now at home with God. 
 When father and mother have both gone, one feels 
 as if the roof over our head were gone, and that 
 we must now become more than ever, to those 
 growing up around us, what they are to us. As 
 
8o HELPS TO MAKE IDEALS REAL 
 
 
 
 we sigh for them, Riley's lines to a child come to 
 our mind 
 
 "There! little girl; don't cry! 
 
 They have broken your heart, I know ; 
 And the rainbow gleams 
 Of your youthful dreams 
 Are things of the long ago ; 
 But heaven holds all for which you sigh. 
 There! little girl ; don't cry!" 
 
 We cannot think of those who have gone without 
 our ideal being raised. We have been made to drink 
 into the same spirit. Why are there ever days of 
 discord and friction in our souls, in our family life, 
 in our social gatherings or meetings as Christians? 
 "The fruit of the Spirit is love," and love is unity. 
 We remember how on a dusty Boulevard between 
 Cannes and Cannet, we wondered and rejoiced in the 
 green palm-trees when the grass was brown and all 
 else was burned. up. One day we learned the secret. 
 At the top of a slope a long piece of indiarubber pipe 
 from a water-supply was being led into deep channels 
 cut round each plant, with connecting channels from 
 each in a straight line to the next. The water filled 
 them, and the soil was shovelled in again to protect, 
 from the sun's rays. The plants revived. Where the 
 Spirit of the Lord is, there is unity. 
 
 " I thirst for springs of heavenly life, 
 
 And here all day they rise ; 
 I seek the treasure of Thy love, 
 
 And close at hand it lies ; 
 And a new song is in my mouth, 
 
 To long-loved music set : 
 Glory to Thee for all the grace 
 
 I have not iasted yet." 
 
THE IDEAL IN SUFFERING 81 
 
 CHAPTER XIII 
 THE IDEAL IN SUFFERING 
 
 " There are some far-travelled, bruised, and battered souls 
 who will understand everything 1 when they arrive." 
 
 THE garden has its rain-gauge, the river the measuring- 
 pole for times of flood, the porch its thermometer, but 
 who shall measure the heights and depths of pain, 
 the sharp twinge, the dull, wearing-out, monotonous 
 continuity, the long-drawn-out agony? As in a 
 range of hothouses we pass from one to another, and 
 feel the temperature rising to degrees that make us 
 more and more sensitive to the outside chill, we see in 
 successive compartments the forms of beauty and 
 wealth of sweetness increase ; so is it in the experi- 
 ence of God's choicest saints. There are the every- 
 day hardy plants, but the grape-clusters and the 
 orchids need much heat. The gardener's stock of 
 coal diminishes, the luxuriance increases. In a back 
 room in Naples Bishop Lightfoot went in to see a 
 sufferer. A maiden as kind and skilful as that of 
 Naaman's wife with her strange tongue had been 
 trying a remedy. His cordial was, " No pain, no 
 gain." As the writer of the Epistle to the Hebrews 
 says: " It became Him, for whom are all things, and 
 by whom are all things, in bringing many sons unto 
 glory, to make the Captain of their salvation perfect 
 through sufferings." And suffering becomes one of 
 the steps to the perfection of His followers. Michael 
 Angelo says : " Nothing makes the soul so pure, so 
 religious, as the endeavour to create something 
 6 
 
82 HELPS TO MAKE IDEALS REAL 
 
 perfect." We may be sure that Christ not only 
 sends the suffering, but that He is with us in it, 
 though the " form of the Fourth " with us in the fire 
 may be hard to distinguish. It may not be till after 
 the pain has gone that we see the Hand that smites ; 
 yet some of His chosen ones have sung, like Paul 
 and Silas with the irons on, in the prison. Here is 
 the heading of one of Miss Havergal's poems, written 
 when climbing a hill of sorrow : " A Song in the 
 Night, written in Severe Pain "- 
 
 " I take the pain, Lord Jesus, 
 
 From Thine own hand ; 
 The strength to bear it bravely 
 Thou wilt command. 
 
 I am too weak for effort, 
 
 So let me rest, 
 In hush of sweet submission, 
 
 On Thine own breast." 
 
 Very often with saints less disciplined than she was, 
 the first feeling is rebellion. They realise that they 
 are caged birds with their wings cut. Engagements 
 have to be- cancelled, and the brain that w r ants to 
 work is like wood or pulp, or the limbs are powerless 
 to obey it. Why has this come? A child had 
 slipped into a room where the doctor was vaccinating 
 a baby-brother. She heard the scream and saw the 
 blood, but never guessed from what dangers the 
 lancet-prick would save the infant. All day the 
 feeling of revenge against the minister of healing 
 smouldered like fire, until at night she prayed that 
 God would punish the doctor who hurt her little 
 brother. And we feel this too. Worse to bear than 
 our bodily suffering, be it an acute illness or the 
 
THE IDEAL IN SUFFERING 83 
 
 harder trial of prolonged weakness, is our lot when 
 we have noiselessly to shut the door, or close a shutter, 
 leaving our dearest to the mystic sacrament of pain. 
 Then, indeed, is our frail barque out from the pier, 
 away from the harbour, rocked on the billows in a 
 heavy, seething sea, compass and rudder lost. In 
 each case, for watcher or sufferer, the amount and 
 degree vary according to the temperament and frame 
 of the person. No diver has brought up correct 
 soundings of any human heart, no plummet has 
 measured aright the depth of human feeling. We* 
 think of the lines of the poet 
 
 " Souls by nature pitched too high, 
 By suffering- plunged too low." 
 
 All through the Bible it is not so much deliverance, 
 though Christ loved to grant it, and went about heal- 
 ing all manner of sickness and disease, that is sought 
 for and gained, as His realised presence granted to 
 the sufferer. Paul says : " I besought the Lord thrice, 
 that it might depart from me. And He said unto 
 me, My grace is sufficient for thee : for My strength 
 is made perfect in weakness." Christ said : " If it be 
 possible, let this cup pass from Me : nevertheless not 
 as I will, but as Thou wilt." Dante's sentence has 
 been to many as a life-line thrown out for their hope 
 and rescue from all doubts and misgivings. " In His 
 will is our tranquillity." Thus wrote a friend to 
 a sufferer: "Three years are well spent in learning 
 Dante's line 
 
 'In la sua volontade & nostra pace.' 
 
 Time does not make people better, nor trial, nor 
 sorrow, but only submission to His will ; and these 
 
84 HELPS TO MAKE IDEALS REAL 
 
 have but one thing to teach, and it is that. When 
 it is learnt we really have done with these." 
 
 Faith sees His will paramount, and for the time faith 
 makes the other things non-existent. Some travellers 
 had driven to Grindelwald and spent the day in ex- 
 ploring that bewitching neighbourhood. All the way 
 there and back they desired to see one peak, of which 
 they had so often heard. Just as they were nearing 
 home the mist lifted, and the rosy evening light lit up 
 the Jungfrau, and it dwarfed all else. The vision of 
 the Will of God, higher even than service, is an epoch 
 in any life. If His will is first, instead of the longed- 
 for desire, the coveted object, a change occurs which 
 would have before seemed impossible ; but our sun 
 colours the plants, our winter gives place to spring, 
 the moon claims kinship with the tides, the tempest 
 is quiet at His command, the age of miracles is not 
 yet past. As Augustine says : " It is not by our feet, 
 or change of place, that men leave Thee, or return 
 unto Thee." His promises, His verilies, are as sheet- 
 anchors at such times. There was one who lived to 
 do kindnesses, and she had a patent of her own. 
 When friends were going long voyages she put a 
 series of envelopes, one inside another, with dates 
 attached, so that they might have a message of cheer 
 from her at different stages, or at times when they 
 felt lonely. More surely and more freshly does our 
 Father send straight from Himself the word we need. 
 He knows the weary nights when in the stillness one 
 longs for morning. God intends sleep to be the time 
 of repose, the easy bridge from one day to another. 
 He does not want His waiting-room to be turned 
 into a workshop ; but when He withholds the sleep He 
 
THE IDEAL IN SUFFERING 85 
 
 is there to soothe the restlessness. And we always 
 have the company of those whom one has called the 
 night-watchers in the temple, the many sick in lonely 
 room or hospital, the great company of those for 
 whom our night is day in other quarters of the globe. 
 But for the most part we rejoice in knowing that 
 we suffer alone with Him. In His book all our 
 members are written, all the limitations, all the dis- 
 appointments. He is the Head, and though He 
 allows no stranger to regulate the furnace heat or 
 mould the clay, yet when one member suffers all the 
 members suffer. And how hard it is to lose some of 
 the members of the earthly body when they go to 
 make up the heavenly. It is as sore as losing one of 
 the members of our earthly tabernacle. Who shall 
 solve the problem of the early dead, and the limita- 
 tion of suffering imposed on the most useful who 
 are left? " In His will is our peace." " Most gladly 
 therefore will I rather glory in my infirmities." They 
 go on before to prepare the place for us, and He will 
 keep His " tryst in the Valley " with us. It has been 
 said that only one thing is certain, that we shall all 
 die. We add that only one thing is sadder, that is 
 the sin that causes death. The moral pain of having 
 done wrong, and yielded to sin, has led many to 
 realise that the hell of the future, to be alone with an 
 impenitent heart and a living conscience, might be 
 worse than any actual flame or gnawing worm. Each 
 one has to suffer alone and die alone ; but it is in hours 
 of strength and relief from pain that we must face 
 the future, and acquaint ourselves with Him and be at 
 peace. Now is the time to make a confidant of Him 
 who " knoweth our flittings," who makes paths in the 
 
86 HELPS TO MAKE IDEALS REAL 
 
 sea, who makes mountains a way, and bare heights 
 pastures, who alone doeth wonders. In the hour of 
 sickness and death other necessities come trooping 
 in, and this dissolving body clamours for attention. 
 
 Let us be willing scholars in His school, arriving, 
 though it may be slowly, at this ideal the knowledge 
 of His will. The holidays will soon come, when the 
 Ideal will be real in His presence. These lines of 
 Adelaide Procter seem to us like a lifeboat sent 
 out to us amid the wreckage of wasted hours or 
 opportunities. If we enter it, we shall be landed in 
 the harbour, and already the rainbow spans the rain- 
 clouds, as to the sufferer, her message is 
 
 " Have we not all, amid life's petty strife, 
 Some pure ideal of a noble life 
 That once seemed possible? Did we not hear 
 The flutter of its wing's, and feel it near, 
 And just within our reach? It was. And yet 
 We lost it in this daily jar and fret, 
 And now live idle in a vague regret. 
 But still our place is kept, and it will wait, 
 Ready for us to fill it, soon or late : 
 No star is ever lost we once have seen, 
 We always may be what we mig-ht have been." 
 
 CHAPTER XIV 
 
 BEHOLDING OUR IDEAL 
 
 "We live in a very busy, perspiring 1 time, when a thousand 
 clamant calls assail us on every side ; but we must have more 
 time for visions if we would be well equipped for tasks." 
 
 SOME years ago there lived with us in a country 
 house one whose personality made us always think of 
 
BEHOLDING OUR IDEAL 87 
 
 the Apostle John, and when we heard that Dr. Gordon 
 of Boston had passed away, the world seemed poor 
 indeed. His face was finely chiselled under the 
 white hair, and there was deep experience in it ; 
 peace had come after storms and striving, and love 
 filled it. Children and all loved him. Outside on 
 the iron staircase there was a wealth of sweet-briar ; 
 inside his presence was like perfume poured out. 
 This is what we wrote down to his dictation : " Evan- 
 gelical faith consists not only in a glance, but also in 
 a gaze. A single glance is sufficient to save, but a 
 prolonged gaze is necessary to sanctify." Another 
 friend tells us that where we read, " We beheld His 
 glory," it is literally we " theatrised His glory pro- 
 longed our delighted gaze upon it, as the Greeks did 
 with the masterpieces presented in the theatre, de- 
 taching themselves from all other occupations, and 
 surrendering themselves to all the impressions of the 
 hour." This is the spot where ideals are generated, 
 this is the atmosphere where saints are made. Let 
 us each so live as that we shall be entitled to the 
 name which legend ascribes to the beloved disciple, 
 Epistethios, the leaner upon the breast. " Multitudes 
 are ready to speak for Christ, or to sacrifice them- 
 selves in labouring for His cause. But the utterances 
 are too few that come from sitting at His feet, or 
 leaning on His breast." The communion with Him 
 takes different forms, according to the temperament 
 and condition of the person, but the Spirit is the 
 Revealer, the Unveiler. With some it is as the 
 infant's cry, the whisper from a sickbed ; with the 
 young and vigorous it is the "strong crying with 
 tears," the wrestling to obtain. One thus describes 
 
88 HELPS TO MAKE IDEALS REAL 
 
 it : " The soul is sighing ; for the vision tarries : and 
 we grudge even the brief threescore and ten years 
 that separate us from the goal. Is this only a dim 
 and tantalising vision, this knowledge of our bad 
 selves and revelation of our better selves ? Does the 
 Eternal bind us so intolerably in the irons of time ? 
 We pant, we crave, we fret, in passionate prayer, we 
 plead to be allowed to touch if only with the tip of 
 the finger the glorious and entrancing realities of the 
 world beyond. And while we pray, from the midst 
 of the Timeless rises the To-day, from the midst of 
 the Spaceless rises the Here, and a sight of the 
 Father opens our eyes till we see our Brother : the 
 Ideal has now descended from heaven." 
 
 "We beheld His glory." Faith is the eye, Hope is 
 the field-glass to bring the distant near. " Without 
 faith it is impossible to please Him." But there is 
 a germ working havoc in us all ; it is like a cancer 
 eating out the life. It is unbelief. It empties the 
 promises, sours the psalms, and vitiates all. Even 
 Christ could not do many mighty works because of 
 their unbelief. If we analyse the proceedings of any 
 one day the engagement of a servant, the journey by 
 cab, railway, or steamer, the buying of our daily pro- 
 visions we shall see what a large share faith has in 
 every little transaction, and yet on the highest and 
 most vital of all transactions we do not give it full 
 play or power. But once we have beheld the Christ 
 through saving faith, all other visions and sights for 
 us are dwarfed. We felt how we must stay long 
 and gaze on Niagara, and ponder over the Pyramids 
 till their greatness dawned on us ; and so it is with 
 this greatest sight of all. We feel our own smallness, 
 
BEHOLDING OUR IDEAL 89 
 
 our own vileness. Isaiah did so when " he saw His 
 glory." A strange attraction draws us back again to 
 gaze and gather strength, and we long to copy His 
 likeness. Two of the ripest saints we knew kept 
 these mottoes over their mantelpieces, one from the 
 Old Testament and one from the New, but both of 
 the same purport : " Thou remainest ; " " Jesus only." 
 
 It was the punishment in Dante's dream for those 
 who would not look up when they might, to have 
 always their backs and heads bent down. Let us so 
 commend Christ that the strivings shall be generated 
 in some young hearts to look past all the "vanity" 
 (evanescence, not necessarily viciousness) of the things 
 seen. " I am often compelled," says a correspondent, 
 " to stop and wonder whether close study of any one 
 subject does not so fix our eyes upon the ground and 
 upon one point of truth, that we not only become 
 narrow in our sympathies, and unable to appreciate 
 other minds, but to lose the power of lifting our faces 
 to the blaze of eternal light, which is the Reason and 
 the End of all the rest. Even more difficult than 
 study itself is the keeping of study in its right place 
 as a handmaid in the outer courts of the King's 
 Palace of Truth. I have often felt myself like one 
 who ought to be swinging a censer before the altar 
 of His presence, when in reality I am burning sacri- 
 fices to a pagan deity rather to a whole Olympus of 
 them. I suppose the only remedy is strictly to sub- 
 ject everything to the Lord of Light, so that things 
 may be seen in their proper proportions, and we may 
 not mar the eternal harmonies." 
 
 A young believer was distressed because of her 
 difficulties. Like many others, she longed to wake 
 
90 HELPS TO MAKE IDEALS REAL 
 
 up and find herself sanctified. So her French pastor 
 wrote : " Avant tout, ma chere enfant, laissez-moi 
 vous dire que vous n'etes pas une exception, ce 
 qui vous arrive est arrive a beaucoup de chretiens 
 et des meilleurs. Si d'autres ont triomphe, vous 
 triompherez aussi, si vous souffrez de cet etat, et si 
 vous desirez en sortir. Seulement ne vous figurez pas 
 triompher une fois pour toutes, et ne soyez pas 
 etonnee si vous traversez de nouvelles phases d'ob- 
 scurite. La vie chretienne n'est pas une crise d'un 
 jour donnant naissance a un etat de sante parfaite ; 
 c'est une lutte, ou, si vous le voulez, un travail de 
 chaque jour, dont 1'eternite seule verra le parfait 
 achievement." 
 
 So she tells us she is waiting and working till she 
 shall awake "satisfied," like the Japanese workman 
 who was parted from a loved piece of work. He let 
 it go, looked up, and said, " The next will be more 
 beautiful ! " We wait for Eternity's fulfilment of our 
 Ideal. "When He shall appear we shall be like 
 Him ; for we shall see Him as He is." 
 
 " Fear not to build thine eyrie in the heights 
 
 Where golden splendours stay. 
 And trust thyself unto thine utmost soul 
 
 In simple faith alway. 
 And God will make divinely real 
 The highest form of thine ideal." 
 
THE IDEAL LIFE 91 
 
 CHAPTER XV 
 
 THE IDEAL LIFE 
 
 " HEAVEN the land where there are no two hemispheres, 
 but only .one infinite circle of united love." 
 
 " There is a beyond, and he who has once caught a glimpse of 
 it is like a man who has gazed at the sun. Wherever he looks, 
 everywhere he sees the image of the sun. Speak to him of 
 finite things, and he will tell you that the finite is impossible 
 and meaningless without the infinite. Speak to him of death, 
 and he will call it birth ; speak to him of time, and he will call it 
 the mere shadow of eternity." 
 
 As the rose in the rose-bud, as the oak in the acorn, 
 as the butterfly in the chrysalis, so surely lies the im- 
 mortal hidden in our mortal frame. There is no waste 
 in Nature, and even out of gas-refuse bright colours 
 come; and is it possible to think of the Creator's 
 works not coming to perfection in a future state ? 
 
 What tries some minds most is the element of 
 change in this life. Friends change and die: a 
 residence abroad for some years makes you even feel 
 your place in the home circle different when you 
 return, and we change too. Not only does science 
 grow apace and text-books change, so that there are 
 new names and terms and newly-discovered facts 
 about everything, but we also change. We grow out 
 of books and experiences as out of clothes. Is it not 
 the stirring of the immortal within us ? A poor 
 London child went for the day to the country, and 
 came back saying, " I saw a bird and it had no cage." 
 We sometimes leave our cages to try to walk or fly, 
 but are forced back again by the limits of the things 
 seen. But the vision seen by John of the New 
 
92 HELPS TO MAKE IDEALS REAL 
 
 Jerusalem coming down from God out of heaven, 
 arrests our gaze. If we lived more in sight of this 
 vision, there would not be such a crash or stoppage of 
 the machinery of our life when one and another pass 
 into it. For the Spirit, the Paraclete, is with us and 
 them, and as the Psalm says so beautifully, Death is 
 just the Shepherd who introduces into the Spirit 
 World. We shall exclaim, even after all His reveal- 
 ings, " The half has never been told." It is said that 
 Watts painted a picture of Covent Garden Market, 
 which was strikingly beautiful. A visitor said : " Well, 
 Mr. Watts, this is all very beautiful, but I know 
 Covent Garden Market, and I have never seen it look 
 like this." "But don't you wish you could?" the 
 painter replied. The Spirit draws no picture for us 
 that is only an imagination. It is all fact and reality. 
 
 " Saints' deaths do but give dating to the world, 
 They are the human points of that one plan 
 Which moves unhindered and unhelped of man." 
 
 . To how many have the first stirrings of the ideal 
 come because they wished to follow where the loved 
 have gone. Like a cutting seen from a railway train, 
 they had, down through the dark avenue of time, a 
 vision of the city descending from God, and they set 
 out in search of this ideal. " Now they desire a better 
 country, that is, an heavenly." On occasions of great 
 joy or sorrow or perplexity, we cannot help longing 
 to have the loved ones at our side again, and our 
 thoughts find expression in the words 
 
 " If I could call you back for one brief hour, 
 
 It is at evensong that hour should be, 
 When bells are chiming from an old grey tower 
 Across the tranquil sea. 
 
THE IDEAL LIFE 93 
 
 Just when the fields are sweet and cool with dew, 
 
 Just when the last gold lingers in the West, 
 Would I recall you to the world you knew 
 Before you went to rest. 
 
 And where the starry jasmine hides the wall, 
 We two would stand together once again ; 
 I know your patience I would tell you all 
 My tale of love and pain. 
 
 I would not call you back ; and yet, ah me ! 
 
 Faith is so weak, and human love so strong, 
 That sweet it seems to think of what might be 
 This hour at evensong." 
 
 We walk between " the silences of the stars above 
 and the graves beneath." Our loved ones would not 
 return if they could. They wait for us on the heights, 
 and surely are not idle. And if we asked the Spirit 
 more He would commune with us more of the life 
 beyond. In a forest in France a tourist called at an 
 artist's studio, and after admiring the masterpieces, 
 wanted to give a gratuity to the servant, when he 
 found it was the artist himself. So gentle and dove- 
 like are these breathings that we may not realise in 
 whose company we are, till in the silence of a death- 
 chamber, or rather a robing-room, His voice is heard. 
 His name is Comforter. We have got so accustomed 
 to the name that we miss the meaning and do not 
 see the beauty. In the margin of the Revised 
 Version another reading for Comforter is Helper ; and 
 that is what we need when the chamber is darkened 
 and the heart stricken. More tenderly than a 
 mother's hand does for her infant, will He at the same 
 time let in the sunlight of eternity and yet not allow 
 the glare to dazzle us. The French reading of the 
 Psalm thus beautifully describes the place where the 
 
94 HELPS TO MAKE IDEALS REAL 
 
 still small voice is heard : " Celui qui habite dans la 
 retraite secrete du Souverain est loge a 1'ombre du 
 Tout-Puissant." 
 
 Not only in the quiet stillness, but in the busy 
 thoroughfare of the crowded cities, we are on the 
 confines of the eternal world. A military band was 
 playing under a canopy in a foreign town Weber's 
 " Invitation a la Valse." During a quick movement 
 the musicians stopped for a space, and all heads were 
 quickly uncovered ; for as the crowd turned they saw 
 a hearse bearing the coffin of a well-known citizen. 
 Even as we write, the gay dancers in the ballroom 
 one evening have to attend a Requiem Mass next 
 morning for the sufferers in the terrible tragedy at 
 Moscow. At such a time the gaze of the world is. 
 turned to what is going on daily in unrecorded ways ; 
 sorrow treading on the heels of joy. On one of the 
 most beautiful spots on the Riviera, not far from 
 Monte Carlo, one of the most sorrowful of sights is 
 to be seen. A visitor thus describes it 
 
 " There is a very sad sight to be witnessed at 
 Monaco, about a mile from the rooms the Suicides' 
 Cemetery. It is situated above and apart from the 
 ordinary burial-ground, in barren, uncultivated land, 
 very much in keeping with its dire associations ; and 
 there are buried without ceremony any who have 
 taken their lives through their losses at the Casino. 
 Four blank walls forming a square enclose it, and the 
 unfortunate one's resting-place is only marked by a 
 piece of plain wood with a number on it. As the 
 numbers only reach a little over thirty, one is apt to 
 take comfort in thinking that there are not very many 
 suicides ; but when you are informed that the bodies 
 
THE IDEAL LIFE 95 
 
 are removed after a certain time, a feeling of dreadful 
 depression comes." Did they pass away without 
 God, without hope ? Before they took the fatal 
 plunge were they inquiring 
 
 " What of the Darkness? Is it very fair? 
 
 Are there great calms, and find ye silence there? 
 Like soft shut lilies all your faces glow 
 Like some strange peace our faces never know, 
 With some great faith our faces never dare ; 
 Dwells it in Darkness ? Do ye find it there ? 
 
 Is it a Bosom where tired heads may lie? 
 
 Is it a Mouth to kiss our weeping dry? 
 
 Is it a Hand to still the pulse's leap ? 
 
 Is it a Voice that holds the runes of sleep ? 
 
 Day shows us not such comfort anywhere. 
 
 Dwells it in Darkness? Do ye find it there?" 
 
 With deep thankfulness we turn from such a picture 
 to find ourselves still with an open Bible, still with an 
 Easter Morn reminding us that our Saviour Jesus 
 Christ hath " abolished death, and brought life and 
 immortality to light through the gospel." How 
 shall we prepare for the ideal life ? " The best way 
 to practise dying is to practise living. Dying faith 
 is just living faith. When the last signal is given, he 
 who has lived well has nothing to do but die." We 
 often long that Christ had told us more about the 
 life beyond the grave ; but we know that " His 
 servants shall serve Him: And they shall see His 
 face." One day in autumn, a large steamer, which 
 had come from the Cape of Good Hope, entered 
 Southampton Docks. The gangway was put down, 
 and the passengers were eager to step on English 
 soil. Setting foot on the gangway, we were stopped 
 by an official coming on board, saying, " Wait till I 
 
96 HELPS TO MAKE IDEALS REAL 
 
 get a clean bill of health from the captain." " There 
 shall in no wise enter into it anything that defileth, 
 neither whatsoever worketh abomination, or maketh a 
 lie ; but they which are written in the Lamb's book of 
 life." 
 
 " The ideal stuff that is in a man, the something 
 which hovers round him as a spirit of eternity it is 
 this which makes this world tolerable, and in the 
 heart of it credible to us. It was really not worth 
 while making a creature like man except this ideal 
 world lay on the horizon of him, except he was in 
 training for idealities ; except this life is the rough 
 scaffolding by which he reaches the home of them in 
 God." This makes us sing with Whittier 
 
 " I have but Thee, my Father ! let Thy Spirit 
 
 Be with me then to comfort and uphold ; 
 No gate of pearl, no branch of palm I merit, 
 Nor street of shining- gold. 
 
 Suffice it if my good and ill unreckoned, 
 
 And both forgiven through Thy abounding grace 
 
 I find myself by hands familiar beckoned 
 Unto my fitting place. 
 
 Some humble door among Thy many mansions, 
 
 Some sheltering shade where sin and striving cease, 
 
 And flows for ever through heaven's green expansions 
 The river of Thy peace. 
 
 There, from the music round about me stealing, 
 I fain would learn the new and holy song, 
 
 And find at last, beneath Thy trees of healing, 
 The life for which I long." 
 
FKOM THE PORTRAIT OF SIR J. Y. SIMPSON 
 
 Painted Jor Mrs. Harbour by Norman Macbeth, R.S.A. A Replica in the Roynl 
 Maternity ant/ Simpson Memorial Hospital was presented from the " Woman's 
 Offering" Fund, initiated by Mrs. Harbour. 
 
fcr 
 
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