The gentle heart : a second series of "Talking to the children"

Front matter

OF

PRINCETON THEOLOGICSL SEMINSRY

BV 4315 .M3 1881 Macleod, Alexander, 1817

Contents

PAGE

I. THE GENTLE HEART I

II. SOME GENTLE DEEDS 21

II

My next vision also took me back to old times, but not so far back as my first. It was to times that were very evil I was taken. There was a wide open place in an ancient city, and a great crowed of people standing far off in a ring. Inside of the ring were priests and soldiers in black cloaks and red. In the centre was a stake of wood, with faggots of wood piled round about it. And there chained to the stake in the midst of the faggots, was an holy man of God, whom evil priests were about to burn, not because he was bad, but because he had preached the gospel of Christ to men.

Then I saw the evil men putting a light to the faggots ; and I saw that the faggots were wet, and slow to catch fire, and the slow burning of the fire was a great agony to the man at the stake. And then came to me this strange but real gleam of the Gentle Heart. Out from the crowd stepped an old woman with a bundle of dried faggots and some straw. She set them on the pile, on the side the wind was, and they blazed up at once. And I saw a look of thankfulness come over the face of the poor sufferer as he said, half speaking to God, and half to her, " Oh, holy simplicity !"

It was the holy simplicity of the Gentle Heart. She could not bear to see his slow pain. Since he was to die for Christ, for Christ's sake she shortened his suffering.

Id.

That vision faded, and instead of the evil fire I saw a beautiful garden in Geneva. I saw a young

The Gentle Heart.

couple, with happy faces, come out of the house, come down the garden walk, and seat themselves beside a beehive. It is Hliber the student and Aimee, his beautiful wife. What we read now in books about the queen bee and the other bees, and the honey and the wax, was found out for the most part by this man. He spent his life in the study of bees. But look ! he is blind. He has been blind for years. He will live till he is an old man, and be blind to the end. And yet to the end he will watch the ways and find out the secrets of the bees. And he will be able to do this because the gentle Aimee is by his side. Her friends said to her, " Do not marry Francis Hiiber, he has become blind." But she said, " He therefore needs me more than ever now." And she married him, and was his happy wife and fellow-student forty years. She was eyes to the blind. She looked into the hives, and he wrote down what she saw. And she never tired of this work, and she did it with her whole soul. And the story of the bees, as it was seen and written in that garden by these two, will be read in schools and colleges when Hiiber and his beautiful Aimee are themselves forgotten.

It is a hundred years ago since they began to study the bees together, and they are both long since dead. But still shines out for me in the long helpful, patient, and loving service of Aimee, the Gentle Heart. And it was of that very heart, I am certain, her husband was thinking in his old age, when he said, "Aimee will never be old to me. To me she is still the fair young girl I saw when I had eyes to see, and who afterwards, in her gentleness, gave the blind student her life and her love."

IV

After that I saw an island on the coast of Africa. And in the island I saw a house for lepers, with a great high wall round about it. And I beheld, when a leper or any one else entered that house, that the gates of the great walls were shut upon them, and they never more were allowed to come out. The house was filled with lepers — lepers living, lepers dying — and no one to care for their sufferings or speak to them of God. Then I beheld two Moravian missionaries bidding farewell to their friends on the shore, crossing over to the island, coming up to the gates, and passing in amongst the sick and the dying, to nurse them, to preach to them, to live with them, and never more go out from among them, till they should be carried out dead.

The Gentle Heart.

V

Among my Christmas cards this year was one from a dear old friend in the north. And among niy visions of the Gentle Heart was one in which he was the centre. It is a long while now since he retired from business and turned for work to his garden and his flowers. But it is nearly as long since, as he went along the crowded streets of the town in which he lives, and saw homeless boys and girls on the pavement, the thought came into his heart to gather the orphans among them into a home. So he gave only a part of his time to his garden and his flowers, and the rest to provide this home. And the home was built, and the homeless ones gathered into it — a large family now. And in that home, and for that home, my friend spends many a happy hour. He is justly looked upon as the father of the home. Yet he is so modest that his name never appears in the reports of the home, except among the names of the directors, and those who give money for its support. Once, indeed, he was taken by surprise : the other directors asked as a great favour to have his portrait for the home. And if you were going there, and asking the children whose portrait it was, they would answer, '' It is the portrait of our papa."

One year, some failure in bank or railway made him much poorer, and he could not give the twenty pounds which he had given to the home each year. He might have said quite honestly, " I am sorry, but I can't afford to give my twenty pounds this year." But the gentle heart had something more in it than honesty. That very year a new flower had been brought to London from Japan, and each plant of it cost a pound. The orphans' papa sent to London for a plant, took it into his greenhouse, cut it into twenty bits, and struck a new plant out of each. Then he sold his twenty plants at one pound each. And so, that year too, there was joy in this Gentle Heart that he was still able to pay his twenty pounds to help to bless little orphan children.

VI

Then I saw a vision of a rich man's son. In the city of Glasgow once lived a worthy merchant, whose children I knew. As God had blessed him in his buying and selling, he became a rich man. And having a great love for country life, he took his riches and bought some fields on which he had played and gathered flowers when a child, and also the mansion in which the old laird of the place was wont to live. There was just one thing he forgot to do ; he forgot to make his will, and say to whom the mansion and fields should go when he died. So by-and-by, when he died, no will could be found. Now he left behind him his wife, four daughters, and an only son. But as no will had been made, the mansion, and the fields, and a great part of all his riches, came to this only son. He was in London when the news came that his father had died, and that he was now a rich man. Just at that moment money would have been very useful to him, for he was a young merchant beginning hfe, and no one would have blamed him if he had said, " The money is welcome, and with it I shall push my new business on." But God had given him a Gentle Heart. He left London as soon after he got the news as he could get a train. And, although it was late in the day when he arrived at his native city, the first thing he did was to go to the house of a friend who writes out wills. And that friend, at his request, wrote out a will by which the mansion and the fields were made over to his mother all her days — and all the rest, both land and money, which his father had left, was divided, share-and-share alike_, between her, his sisters, and himself. And when that was all fixed, he went to his home and buried his father. Somebody said to him afterwards, ''But why did you go that very night and have the will made out?" He said, "I that night saw that it was my duty to do it. If I had left it till next day, my duty might not have seemed so clear." That is the way of the Gentle Heart.

VII

One vision of a Gentle Heart came to me out of the years when I was at school. Among my class-fellows was a Jewish boy. His real name was John, but some of the bigger boys had given him the name of Isaac, and by that name he was known. He was a shy, timid-looking boy, tall and slender, with a little stoop. He was very clever at making musical toys. He used to bring pan-pipes and singing reeds and wood whistles to the school. Sometimes he brought a little flute, and in playhours, when the bigger scholars were at their games, he would stand leaning against the wall, with a crowd of little fellows around him, whom he taught to play on his simple reeds and whistles, or to whom he played on his little flute.

I sat beside him at school, and got to know him well ; and I never knew him to tell a lie, or do a base, or mean, or cruel thing. And I do not think as much could be said of any other boy amongst us all at that school during the years when he was there. He helped the backward boys with their lessons. I have seen him oftener than once sharing his lunch with a school-fellow that had none; and although he had no quarrels of his own, he took up the quarrels of the little boys when the bullies were ill-treating them. One day he saw a big lad of fifteen beating a little fellow of eleven. *' Now, Tom," he called out, "let that little fellow alone." " You mind your Jews' harps and whistles/' said the bully. Isaac made no reply, but went right up to the hulking fellow, seized the wrist of the hand which had hold of the little boy, gave it a sudden twist and pinch, which loosened the hand-grip in a moment, and let the little boy free. It was done so quickly and neatly, that all the boys standing around burst into laughter at the bully. From that time the bully was Isaac's enemy and every evil trick that could be done against the Jew lad he did, and every spiteful word that could be spoken he spoke.

But it happened one afternoon, when school was over, that Isaac was standing at his father's door, and he saw a great crowd turning into the street. Boys and men were storming up, and there, in front of them, running as if for life, and white with terror and fatigue, was the bully. He had been in some boy's prank or other, and was being chased by those who wished to punish him. Isaac saw at a glance how matters stood, and, standing back within the door and holding it open, he said, " Come in here, Tom ; I'll let you out another way." And he let him out into another street. Isaac saved his bitterest enemy, and Tom escaped. It was Tom who told us all this. Isaac never referred to it. But we all noticed that Tom said as much good of the Jew boy afterwards as he had said evil before.

VIII

But while I was thinking of these visions, as they came one by one, I found that they began to come two and three together, and at last in a crowd. And it is only little bits of what I saw after that I can now tell.

I saw a brave man plunging into a river one dark night, and saving a woman who had stumbled in ; and when the friends sought him in the crowd, to thank him, he was not to be found. The brave man wanted no thanks. His reward was that he had saved a human life.

I saw a gracious man going into a bank one day.

and entering a large sum of money to the credit of a widow, w^ho had lost husband and means the day before.

I saw a wounded soldier on the field of battle refusing the water he was thirsting for, that it might be given to one beside him who was worse wounded and needed it more.

I saw a tender lady passing from bed to bed in a hospital, and speaking cheering words to the sick people, as she did some gentle service to each. And I saw the thankful smile that came up over their wan faces as she passed.

I saw daughters refusing homes of their own, that they might wait beside their sick mothers. I saw them lovingly tending the dear sufferers as if they were queens, and counting it joy to be able in this way to show their love.

I saw a man stand up before an angry mob, and say to them, "It is falsehood you are speaking against my friend." And when they cried against him in their anger, he defended his friend the more.

I saw a brave captain on the great sea, bringing his ship close to a burning vessel crowded with human beings, and waiting beside it — risking his own ship in the flames — till the day closed, and

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1 8 The Gentle Heai't.

far on through the night, till at length every soul was saved.

And in each of these visions, and in many more that I cannot tell, what I saw was a gleam of the Gentle Heart.