They met in heaven

Preface

It would be an evidence of either weakness or conceit not to express my gratitude to the public for the cordial greeting it has extended to " Hiram Golf's Religion." I wrote the book as a tribute to a dear old man who firmly believed that all work is God's work, and that the toil of daily life, if done by consecrated hands, is never drudgery. " The little things of life are all great things," said Hiram to me one day ; and I have never forgotten it. He used to declare that my frequent conversations with him were a help and an encouragement, but when I reach the other shore I shall be able to prove to him that the balance of indebtedness is on my side rather than his. The silent ministry of his humble life has drawn many a weary and way-worn heart to the Lord.

VI PREFACE.

My publishers have asked me for other reminiscences of the " Shoemaker by the grace of God," and on looking over my note-books I find a rather full account of The Fireside Club and its discussions during the winter preceding the death of this remarkable man. Hiram was loved by every member of the club for his sterling honesty, his somewhat crude but always forcible way of expressing himself, and his unshaken faith in a Father who is with His children all the time.

The history of this club is contained in the following pages. There may be other Van Brunts in the world, souls wandering in the direction of the light but not reaching it, and if these find their way to the Cross they must needs thank Hiram, not me, for their new-found happiness. I am simply the chronicler of events, but Hiram's is the voice that gives good cheer.

The Author.

Contents

CHAPTER PAGE

I. A Few Friends i

II. In Utter Darkness 20

Chapter I. A Few Friends

It was the somewhat formidable necessity of earning a livelihood which forced me to spend .the winter of 1889 in the little village of Woodbine, whose humble citizens are lulled to sleep by the rippling Cheroquee. I had been engaged to superintend certain dyeing processes, the secret of which is my stock in trade, for Phil & Khun, in whose woolen mills several hundred men and women find employment ; but I sighed as I packed my trunks, and anticipated a very dreary time.

The six months of my stay, however, are not to be forgotten. The incidents that occurred seem now, as I look back upon them, like shuttles flying hither and thither through the warp and woof of time, weaving a fabric as rare and priceless as a piece of medieval tapestry.

How strangely things happen in this world ! What we look forward to with dread turns out, ofttimes, to be the delight of memory. I would have given half of my possessions — not worth much in solid cash, I must confess — if I could avoid this journey. Woodbine seemed the most undesirable spot on the globe, and I was in no amiable mood when I read the dispatch which ordered me to start at once.

A country village, " remote, unfriended, melancholy, slow." Bleak hills, frowning skies, and impassable snowdrifts. Why not go to Labrador, or Alaska, or Spitzbergen, and have done with it? It was exile from the friends of many years, from all the pleasures of city life, the music of my favorite orchestra, the stimulating rumble of a thousand vehicles on the hard pavement, the unconscious tingling of nerves which the crowd in a great thoroughfare always produces. " Anything but Woodbine, with its farms, farmers, and icicles!" I inwardly exclaimed. " I shall die of ennui, become a mere fossil before spring, and hear of nothing more exciting than the latest news of Neighbor Cobb's cow, or the grocer's colt." I like the whirl of life, enjoy the friction of contact with my kind, and therefore looked on the Cheroquee Valley as a sepulcher in which I was to be temporarily entombed.

But now, as I look back on those months, I find a resurrection rather than a burial. The experience I shrank from proved to be the most enjoyable and profitable of my life. I was like the Western miner who, by some good luck, stumbles on a pocket of ore at the very moment when he has concluded that there is no ore there.

Let me introduce the rare and gifted men whom it was my happiness to meet during that memorable winter, and then I shall gladly assume the duties of a phonograph, through which you may listen to their golden words.

There was John Jessig, pastor of one of the churches, and an old classmate of mine at Harvard. We lost sight of each other when he took a course in theology and I a dive into the maelstrom of business. How I loved the fellow in those far-away days ! He was a student with a conscience. When he entered the ministry, it was because he had something to say to the people. He examined the creed, the church, the Bible, as vigorously as Agassiz used to examine a new fish which some whaling captain had caught in the northern Atlantic.

" I know what others think of these things," he said to me just before we parted, "but I must find out what I think myself. I can't accept any one of them on hearsay. If I become convinced that creed, church, and Bible are necessary to an honorable life and to a proper preparation for the future, then I will enter the ministry. If I am not convinced, I will apply for a clerkship somewhere."

And there he was in Woodbine, preaching to a hundred farmers and fifty mill hands. He had examined the foundations and was engaged in building on them. I can hardly tell you how surprised I was at meeting him ; but my surprise was not equal to my delight. I was strolling along the single street of the village on the second day after my arrival, rather glum and downhearted. A man came from one of the cottages, and, without casting a glance in my direction, walked away. There was something in his gait, in the swing of his arms, that immediately attracted my attention. I quickened my pace out of pure curiosity, wondering the while where I had seen him. My memory served me a bad trick ; but then he had changed in the ten years since that dance on College Green. His shoulders had broadened, he was no longer the boy who delivered the valedictory, but a robust and full-srrown man. Time had dealt with him generously, but had so far disguised, or rather developed, him that instant recognition was impossible. At last, however, the revelation came, and when I was within a half-dozen rods I impulsively cried, "John!" and the next moment we were in each other's arms. After that Woodbine seemed more tolerable.

It was around the ample hearthstone in Jessig's little study that many of the incidents occurred which I am about to relate. Good hickory was the cheapest fuel to be had, for there was plenty of it in the woodlands back of the village ; and as John's salary allowed no luxuries, he smilingly asserted that a cannelcoal is to a hickory fire what moonlight is to sunlight. The huge logs burned so cheerily and threw such a genial glow through the room that lamps could easily be dispensed with, and the enjoyment of those frosty evenings will never be surpassed until we gather in the other Home.

Then there was a saintly stranger with silver hair and deep-blue eyes — eyes like the sheen of a sapphire. He was erect of figure, imposing in his personality, and bore his seventy years with gracious serenity. He had an introspective mien, as though this world had given him all it could and he was looking for better things in the Beyond. I often said to myself as I gazed at his face, " The present is his dream ; the future is his reality. He is growing a little weary of to-day, and is thinking of to-morrow."

By general consent we addressed him as " the Master." He maintained the same calm demeanor at all times, and was unruffled by fickle circumstance. It was by no means the calmness of an indifferent or a sluggish soul, but that of one who has passed through the fire and been purified. At times I was even filled with awe, as though in the presence of a superior being. I hardly know why, but he always reminded me of the ocean as I have watched it from the shore on a summer afternoon. The waves rolled slowly and leisurely up the strand, but how resistless they were, and what a sense of authority they gave me ! " Quiet but omnipotent!" I have often said to myself, and then a voice from the depths has responded, " Quiet because omnipotent!" Yes, there is a certain majesty in mental and spiritual quiescence when it results from problems that have been settled once for all.

Shall I ever forget my first ten minutes' talk with the Master ? I said, with some show of irritation :

" Dollars and cents are autocratic and remorseless. They have borne themselves in the imperative mood toward me, and therefore I am here. I am the slave of business."

" Let me congratulate you," he replied, in rich, mellow tones, " on the divine necessity of work. The world's business is not only imperious but imperial. So is God's providence, and so are the laws of nature. Commercial activity means manliness. It results, as it was evidently intended to do, in individual and national pros-

A FEW FRIENDS. g

perity : therein it is imperial. Every one is forced by the pressure of circumstances to do his share of the general work, the penalty of neglect being poverty: therein it is imperious."

His words hit me hard. My work, then, was not drudgery, but duty. That was a new idea, and my petulant complaint shamed me. I cannot say whether at the time my cheeks flushed or not, but they do now as I recall the incident.

" I have a notion," he went on quietly, " that business, properly attended to, is an education. It is possible to learn from contact with our fellows certain profound secrets which textbooks cannot teach. The whirl of commercial transactions, the competitions of trade — though sometimes carried to a destructive limit — are God's university, from which one graduates only when Death hands him his diploma."

I was like a vessel at sea when the wind suddenly shifts and the sails are all taken aback. It staggers for a few minutes, until the crew with their merry "Ha, ya, boys!" haul the

IO THEY MET IN HEAVEN.

yards to leeward, and then rushes once more through the laughing waves. The Master made me reel, for he was uttering very radical opinions ; but still there was something alluring in his speech, and I said, " This man sees far and thinks deeply. He is not like other men, for he lives in two worlds, either of his own making or God's, I can't quite tell which as yet."

" If this diploma," he added, in a sort of soliloquy, " certifies that the bearer has been a faithful student, has made an honorable record, has bequeathed to society at large an example which it would be well for the younger generation to follow, has recognized his duties as well as his privileges, has helped his kind with one hand while achieving success with the other, he need have no fear when he knocks at the Golden Gate, for it was the Lord Himself who said, ' By their fruits ye shall know them.' "

I had been brought up to walk on the level, hard, smooth, macadamized highway of the dear old Athanasian Creed, and must confess

A FEW FRIENDS. II

to being somewhat shocked. His words had a heterodox taste, and though I bowed politely, I am sure he detected my dissent ; but he continued in a strain which rather exasperated my conservatism.

" I have another notion," he said, " that business and religion were intended to complement each other. They are like different strands of a rope, which, united, hold the weight of the world. If religion is divorced from business, mankind suffer; if they are like man and wife, both of them necessary to a happy home, the other life throws its radiance on this life, and this life becomes the prophecy of another life. To be only a business man is to be only half a man. God bestows His blessing just as willingly on a warehouse as on a church. What is preached on Sunday amounts to little unless it is lived on Monday. The love of money is honorable ; the passion for money is fatal. To combine getting with giving is to bring heaven and earth together ; to get without giving is to invite Satan to laugh in his sleeve. When the poor man and the rich man are brothers, then hospitals abound, asylums are built, charity prevails, and the world is happy ; when the rich man is an aristocrat and the poor man is a sycophant, the world chokes and gasps."

"The Church," I ventured to suggest, "would hardly approve of such strong statements."

"And more's the pity," he replied; "but I think you are in error. At any rate, Christ approved of them, and that ought to satisfy us. If the people were taught that the prime object of religion is to make a noble character, and that a noble character is prima facie evidence of saving grace, consciously or unconsciously possessed, the multitude would shake hands with the pulpit. The clergy would then have the fulcrum which Archimedes sought, and could pry the earth out of its dullness and despair. As it is, the multitude and the pulpit are hardly within co-operative distance of each other. They are mutually courteous and form-

A FEW FRIENDS.

ally polite, but neither has the other's entire confidence. As a consequence, the multitude go their own way perversely, and the pulpit pleads in vain for a hearing."

This is what occurred at my first interview with the Master. He gave my old-fashioned ideas a terrible shaking up, and I felt for a time as though some one had exploded a pound of dynamite in my brain. He had, however, the bearing of a most gracious sovereign. He did not overwhelm me by his self-assertion, as the poor Switzer is buried under an avalanche, but seemed to be trying all the while to persuade me to become a genuine man, with personal convictions instead of prejudices, with opinions which I could put to the test and prove true.

Next in this little group of royal souls was Hiram Golf, saint and shoemaker. He was in some respects the most original, and in other respects the most lovable, creature I have ever met. Hiram mended a torn pair of brogans as reverently as he prayed, and seemed to regard the one service as quite as important as the other. His crutch was his scepter, and his lapstone a kind of lay pulpit. He was one of the elect few whose right hands do not know what good their left hands are doing. There were two witnesses, and only two, to his kindly deeds of charity — the dear Lord and the poor man who received the basket of provisions. A shoemaker and a high-priest!

They laid his body in the churchyard in 1892, and John Jessig was so hurt by the blow that he had to ask for a month's leave of absence. When the doctor told Hiram that his end was near, he faintly whispered, " That's good news. No crutches up yonder! It'll be kind o' strange at first, I reckon, but I'll soon feel to home, for I know quite a lot of people on the other side."

How shall I describe the last member of our company, who occupies a conspicuous position in this little story ? Peter van Brunt had been visited by an affliction so terrible that my heart stood still when we heard of it, and I noticed that even the Master's eyes were dim. From a cloudless sky the bolt came that ruined his home and left a scar on soul and body. He had fortune, social position, genius, a wife and a child. A shady nook in paradise had apparently been assigned to him. But in one short week two catastrophes occurred, and when I first saw him he reminded me of a huge tree that had stood in the path of a blizzard. He was riven, torn, disfigured, and hopeless to the point of despair. In his residence some accident had happened to the drainage, and between Monday and Saturday the boy and the mother were called to heaven. His desolation of heart was beyond expression. The sudden shock had benumbed him, but when the mental paralysis passed away and he realized the situation, he was for a time on the edge of insanity.- A dismantled ship on the lee rocks, a magnificent edifice reduced to ashes by devouring flames — I could think of nothing else. He had too much heart to be a Stoic, and too much manliness to drown his grief in dissipation ; so he faced the facts, shivered with resistless emotion, and did the best he could.

To make matters still worse, his convulsing agony had roused the dormant energy of a disease which he had probably inherited. If he had been at peace with himself and with God, the malady might have remained forever in hiding; but during the rebellion that raged, these malign elements of his physical nature came to the surface and there intrenched themselves.

I cannot tell how close the connection may be between mind and body, but it has sometimes seemed to me that mental repose and bodily health are more nearly related than is generally supposed. Van Brunt was in a volcanic state of mind. I could not look into his haggard face without thinking of the French Revolution of '93, when the people lost their balance, repudiated both duty and justice in their passionate outburst, and then built a guillotine on the Place de la Concorde. If poor France had steadfastly held to her ancient faith, had sought the Throne in prayer instead of pelting it with execrations, the frantic folly of Robespierre would have been impossible, and the brutal agonies caused by the so-called " Committee of Safety " would never have been written in blood on the page of history. When France lost her mind, the body-politic became diseased, and the pursuits of peace gave way to the mania for murder.

In like manner, if Van Brunt had had a cross to cling to as well as a cross to bear, I doubt if the physician would have shaken his head and sent his patient to the pine forests of Woodbine, knowing that the little village was on the way to a cemetery.

Faith came to him at last, however, and how it came and what results it produced are recorded in these pages. It came too late, though, to save his body. The edifice was tottering to its ruin, and could no longer afford a safe shelter for the spirit. But trie short afternoon of his life was bright and hopeful, and when the shadow fell he went forth to meet his dear ones with a smile on his lips. He bade us good-night " like one who wraps the drapery of his couch about him and lies down to pleasant dreams." It was not the sleep that knows no waking, but that quiet slumber from which one is roused by angel whispers to find that he is clothed upon with immortality and surrounded hy those not lost but gone before.

Just before the farewell, he intrusted to my care the journal of incidents that occurred during his stay in Woodbine, and gave me permission to do what I thought best with it. It is the faithful mirror of the man's soul. It reflects the doubts which lashed him as with a whip of knotted cords, and also his gradual emancipation from them. I have read many of its pages with trembling lips, for there are traces of tears on them still, and other pages with a sense of God's pitying and sympathetic presence. When I closed the little volume, it was with the feeling that the age of miracles has not yet slipped into the past. " I will be with you alway " includes the latter half of this nineteenth century.

Chapter II. In Utter Darkness

LET me now make you acquainted with Peter van Brunt, and with the pitiful circumstances against which he bravely struggled, by some quotations from his journal. There is many a soul, perhaps, breasting the same storm, and vainly looking for the light which after months of darkness filled his firmament with perfect day. If few have suffered as he did, few have rejoiced as he did. There is a metempsychosis by which one is literally born again, and it is possible that in this diary my friend has blazed a path which others may follow.

" October 6th. Well, here I am in Woodbine. It seems to me like a railway junction where I shall change cars for my family lot in

Forest Hills. Doctor Franklin didn't say so, but he made so much of an effort not to say so that I am sure he thought it. He told me a change of scene was necessary to get my mind away from — no matter what, and suggested this wretched little forlornity because there is a lot of pine trees growing somewhere. I am not deceived, however. The doctor has done his best, but the result can't be avoided, and is not far off. I don't much care; the sooner it is over, the sooner I shall be at rest. It is about as easy to die in Woodbine as anywhere else.

" October ioth. The old pain, but aggravated by a sharp wind from the northwest. It blew a gale, and the wind whistled through the woods when I went for a walk, as though in derision. All nature, the sky, the clouds, the long sweep of intervale, seemed to say, ' We've got you. You may struggle, but there's no escape.' How I hate nature, merciless, relentless, cruel! It is one everlasting must — a fist of iron, with no heart behind it. I have had a miserable day, and shall be glad to go to sleep.

" October 1 2th. Gooby's birthday ! When he was a mite of a fellow, just learning the use of his tongue, he used to pat his chest with his dimpled hand and cry, ' Gooby ! ' which I interpreted to mean ' Good boy ! ' and by that name he was always called. Ah, how could you leave me? Where are you, dear boy? Anywhere? Nowhere? Who can tell? I suppose every parent is proud of his children, but Gooby was exceptional in some respects. A ten-year-old head on a five-year-old child. That was the trouble. He was sitting on my knee one. day, looking intently into the distance, when he turned suddenly and said, ' Papa, where is heaven, anyway?' The question struck me with the impact of a bullet, and I staggered, and kept silent. What could I answer? I knew nothing about heaven, and cared less. The present absorbed my attention, and all I asked was that it might run on indefinitely.

He wouldn't be put off, though, and, looking me full in the face, said, ' Papa, how old are you ? ' ' Why do you ask ? ' I replied. '■ No matter why, papa, just tell me.' '■ Well, Gooby, I am thirty-eight.' 'Then,' he cried out, 'you are a great big man, and yet you don't know where heaven is. Aren't you ashamed?' I still kept silent, hoping the boy would change the subject ; but he broke out with this odd assertion : ' Papa, you don't know as much as I do. I know where heaven is, because mamma told me all about it'

" Poor Gooby ! he really thought he knew all about it, and it made him happy. Does he know all about it now, or isn't there any heaven to know about? 'To sleep: perchance to dream : ay, there's the rub.' Ah, if I could be sure of even dreaming, certain I am that in my dreams I should see those dear ones again. But to sleep and not to dream ! To sleep on and on, with never a ' good-morning ' for any one!

" These thoughts are too exciting. ■ My pulse is high, while my despair deepens. If I could only, only forget! To remember, and to be helpless and hopeless! I think I know just how the great rebel whom Milton depicts felt when he said, in uncontrollable disgust, ' Myself am hell.'

"October 15th. After what I wrote last night, my conversation with Rev. John Jessig to-day seems rather odd. We met on the street, and I walked home with him. The hour I spent in his library, looking over his books, was rather pleasant, and yet it left a pang in my soul. I can't see things as he does ; would that I could! He has a splendid edition of Horace, and we read some of the Odes together. Jessig is a scholar, and ought not to be buried among a lot of mill hands. Just at the end of our interview — does he know why I am here, or can he see my mental as well as my physical condition? — he took down the

Apology of Socrates and translated this passage, not knowing that he was driving a lancepoint into my quivering flesh :

" ' Moreover, we may conclude that there is great hope that death is a blessing. To die is one of two things : either the dead may be annihilated and have no sensation of anything whatever, or, as is said, there is a certain change and passage of the soul from one place to another. If ij; is a privation of all sensation, as it were a sleep in which the sleeper has no dream, death would be a wonderful gain.

" ' But if, on the other hand, it is a removal from hence to another place, what greater blessing can there be than this, my judges? At what price would you not estimate a conference with Orpheus and Musaeus, Hesiod and Homer? I indeed should be willing to die often, if this be true.'

" I don't know that I was ever in greater agony in my life, but of course I concealed it from Jessig. How vividly it brought back those awful days in which my hopes and my life were blasted — wife and child both in the churchyard ! The cold perspiration broke out all over me, and for a moment I was faint.

"The theory of reunion I can't accept, and sleep means eternal separation. That is my quandary. Is God just? I say, a thousand times, no ! It is easier for me to dispense with God altogether than to believe in one who could think it either wise or fair to rob me in this ruthless fashion. I simply refuse to be disciplined in that way. A human autocrat who should decree such suffering would drive his subjects to rebellion and endanger his throne. Omnipotence, unfortunately for us, can do as it pleases, but it must not ask for acquiescence in its caprices.

" October 16th. I have just read yesterday's entry. True, I am in desperate rebellion against what preachers call Providence ; but how can I help it? I hear only one word from morning to night — 'Gone!' I see nothing but those two pale faces, and am beside myself. If I could die, or if I could believe ! But I can do neither. I am like one consumed with thirst sitting on the bank of the river at which others are drinking their fill, and unable to swallow a drop. For John Jessig's faith, or for what he professes to believe, I would give a hundred fortunes if I had them. But to stare at heaven and not see it! To look longingly for the dear ones whom fate has hidden from your sight! My weeks are a prolonged nightmare. O religion, if I could once get hold of you ! O God, if I could only say ' Our Father ' ! But with two graves in evidence, it is impossible. Woe is me ! Good-night, old world, good-night.

"October 18th. I spent three hours this morning in the pines. The mercury was well up toward sixty, and with my fall overcoat on I was very comfortable. The wind blew from the south'ard and came across the blithe Cheroquee. They call it a river — village pride, I suppose — but it is only a fair- sized stream. It is a rippling little affair, though, and runs along as merrily as possible. Somehow I thought of it as a line of poetry, and as it tumbled rhythmically over the rocks in its bed I fell to scanning it. I could really make a regular pentameter out of it. Why, I don't know, but these lines of Lowell came to mind as I sat there listening :