Four feet on a fender

Contents

CHAPTEB PAGE

I When Life is Worth While . . . ,1 II The Secret of Trusting . . '. .13

III Blood Kin to Everybody ... 23

II

ONE golden summer day a man sat upon a hillside feasting his eyes upon a glorious scene that spread out before him. It was in the freshness of early morning, and the air was balmy and mellow, and the sunbeams danced like fairies upon the dewdrops on the grass. The sky was as blue as a baby's eyes, and the fields as far as the eye could reach were carpeted with beautiful flowers, white and purple and crimson and gold, and through the heavens darted here and there happy birds, leaving the echoes of sweet music behind them.

Presently the man turned and looked into the faces of a group of friends who had gathered around him, and his heart filled up with pity. Never before had he seen a contrast so strange and painful. In the outstretched landscape he had seen beauty, peace, joy, contentment; but the faces before him were seamed with anxiety and care, and the eyes that should have reflected the calm of heaven were filled with pitiful yearning and vague foreboding.

^^Dear friends," said the man, '^why are your hearts so troubled? Why do you consume your souls with anxious care? Look at those birds. Do they fly as if they carried a burden on their hearts? Listen to their music. Do you hear one anxious note ? Do they wear out their lives with fear for the morrow? They do not even toil for a living, and yet your Father feedeth them. If God cares for the birds that do not toil, will he not care for his own children that labor so hard for their daily bread? And those beautiful lilies yonder : think of them. Do they go with bowed heads all the day, eating their hearts out with anxiety for to-morrow? They do not even spin a thread for themselves, and yet — look at them. Even Solomon in all his glory was not arrayed like one of these simple little flowers. If your Father clothes the lilies which are only here for a few days, and which never do anything but hold up their heads to the Father's sunshine and the Father's refreshing dew, will he not much more clothe you, his children, whose hands are weary with spinning? friends, why are you so anxious? Why is it that you cannot believe in God?"

Who is this stranger with the peaceful face speaking with such beautiful confidence of the Father's loving care? I heard a saintly old man talk that way once — ^not so beautifully indeed, but with perfect sincerity — and when the sermon was over, a cynical neighbor said : ^ ^ It is very easy for that old man to talk that way, for he has enough government bonds laid away to last him a lifetime."

But this Stranger had no bonds. He did not have a penny. He did not have a place of his own to lay his head. The very clothes he wore were the gifts of friends. And, although he had divine power to provide for others, he had denied himself the privilege of using it for himself that he might take his place with us and be as dependent as we are upon the Father's care.

It is said that Jesus knew all men and needed not that any one should tell him what was in man; but there was one thing in the human heart for which he seems never to have been quite prepared, and that was anxiety. For anxiety means that we do not believe in the Father, and that was something as strange to him as my failure to believe in you would be to your child. Knowing the Father as he did, the fears of men shocked him. They seemed to him utterly against nature. How could any sane being doubt the Father? It was as if he had happened upon a little band of wandering children who doubted their own mothers. It was the only question he seemed bound to ask. ^^Why are ye so fearful? How is it that ye have no faith?''

I once knew a home — no, it was not a home ; it was a purgatory — in which the children had no faith in their parents. To me it was utterly inexplicable. How could a child doubt his own father and mother? I was but a child myself; and when I heard one day that the big sixteenyear-old boy in that purgatory had actually doubled up his fist and struck his mother a stinging blow, I felt — ^but there are no words to tell what I felt. I think Jesus — the human Jesus — ^must have had something of the same feeling when he looked upon men and women who did not believe in their Father.

If you have ever seen a home wrecked like that, you know there is but one thing that will bring order out of such chaos. You might fill it with music and flowers and singing birds and gay and clever friends and all the beautiful things which proud mortals use to hide their family skeletons; and unless faith came back into the hearts of the children, it would still be so hideous a place that you could not pass it without a shudder. For the world has never yet found a substitute for faith. We are given to saying that love is the greatest thing in the world, and that saying is true; but the most necessary thing in the world — the thing without which love cannot exist — is faith; and without faith, whatever else one may have — above all, whatever else a wife, a mother, may have — ^life is not worth while.

If I could condense the wisdom and experience of all the ages into one word of advice to women, I think that word would be : ^^ Whatever may happen, hold on to your faith in God and man ; for to cease to trust is to cease to live. ' ^

You have often noticed that wars and divorces and all like tragedies are nearly always preceded by a period of ^'strained relations.^' During this period the parties to the quarrel get so far apart that they become practically strangers. When this point has been reached, we know that reconciliation is hopeless unless they can be brought together face to face. For it is impossible for two nations or two persons to understand each other so long as they stand aloof the one from the other ; and, unless they do understand each other, they can never trust each other. That is why no wise woman ever undertakes to settle the differences between an estranged couple by acting as a go-between. She knows that they are already too far apart to understand each other and that the only thing to do is to bring them together face to face as quickly as possible under circumstances that will cause them to open their hearts to each other. For what estranged persons need is simply what strangers need. They need to know each other. And so the wise woman, instead of talking matters over now with one and now with the other, manages to get them both out for a drive with her, and perhaps drives around through the cemetery and leaves them for a little while alone at the grave of their firstborn child. And standing there each looks into the other's heart and finds that, after all, there were no differences to settle; they only needed to know each other.

Often during the Civil War the pickets on each side lay in the tall grass but a few rods apart; and now and then a ^^Yank," hungry for tobacco, or a ^^ Johnny Reb,'' thirsty for coffee, would lift his handkerchief on his bayonet above his head as a flag of truce, and the picket opposite would respond, and in another moment they would be lying side by side on the line swapping tobacco and coffee and war stories ; and after a time each would crawl back to his side wondering what in the world they were fighting for. For in those short fifteen minutes they would learn each other and discover what the North and the South had long before forgotten, that they were brothers, and that as brothers they could trust each other. Can you imagine that if all the soldiers on both sides had come together on the line and swapped tobacco and coffee and war stories and opened their hearts the one to the other — can yon imagine that there wonld have been any more fighting?

And what does all this mean? Simply this, that if we want to hold on to our faith in God and man and make onr lives worth while we must know them better. This is the teaching of experience, and it is the teaching of the Book. ^^For faith,'' says the Book, ^^cometh by hearing, and hearing by the word of God. ' ' If we will get close to men and listen to the word that comes from their hearts, we shall, as a rule, learn to trust them; and if we will get close to the Father and listen to his word as we read his book and as we talk with him in prayer, and as we seek to do his will, we shall learn to trust him.

I know there are pious folk who still contend that faith is ours for the asking, but it is not true. If we shun God and make no effort to get acquainted with him, we may ask him to send us faith until doomsday and we shall never get it, any more than we shall get bread if we refuse to sow the seed the Father gives us and wait for him to send us readybaked loaves.

A year ago a stranger moved next door. You did not like her looks and you found yourself regarding her with misgiving. You felt that you would never believe in her. To-day you believe in her as you believe in your own mother. What wrought the wonderful change? Did you go to see her three months after she came and tell her that for some unaccountable reason you did not have confidence in her and beg her to help you to trust her? And then did you stay away and wait for her to do something that would give you confidence in her? You would not treat a neighbor that way. You have never treated any one but God that way. You believe in your neighbor to-day because you cultivated her acquaintance. That is the only reason.

And if you ever believe in God it will be for the same reason.

Is it not strange that although our Father has been next door to us all these years and has done so many things to help us find him out — ^has given us a Book that lets us into the secrets of his great heart and never lets a day pass without doing something to show his love for ns, — is it not strange that so many of us should have the effrontery to send him word from day to day that we are still doubting him and to please do something that will help us to believe in him?

Ill

BLOOD KllSr TO EVERYBODY

PEEHAPS you know how it is. When troubles come they come in troops. And troubles had come to my friend in troops — almost in battalions. I have seen a tree suddenly set upon by a savage wind and whipped of its autumn leaves until it looked like the upstretched hand of a skeleton. My friend looked like that. I was saying this, and more, to Miss Prim, an acquaintance of mine. Not a friend, but an acquaintance. Everybody calls her Miss Prim. You would no more think of saying Lucille than you would think of calling an iceberg dearie. She listened in a bored way for a moment and then interrupted me.

^^Why should you be so concerned about it?^' she asked. ^^He is nothing to you.''

'^But he is my friend," I replied.

^^But suppose he is; you can't afford to bother yourself with other people's troubles."

You may imagine that Miss Prim is only a thoughtless young thing who doesn't know half the time what she is saying. But it was not a thoughtless speech; as I found out afterwards, it was her philosophy of life. In the depths of her heart, or in whatever depths she has, she sincerely believes that one should mind one's own troubles as well as one's own business and let other people's alone.

It is not altogether Miss Prim's fault. When she was a mere tot, her mother took her children across the water to educate them. They went to school a little while in England and a little while in France and a little while in Germany and several little whiles in divers and sundry places, and they never stayed long enough in one place to become interested in anybody but themselves. They saw people and they met people, but they never knew anybody. And when they came back to America, they lived a little while here and a little while there, and then they grew restless and packed up and went to Europe again. And they have been on the go ever since. If you should ask Miss Prim where she came from, she would say London

BLOOD KIN TO EVERYBODY 25

or Berlin or New York, as the mood took her; and if yon wanted to know her country, she would say: ^^Well, I suppose I should say America, of course, but really it makes no difference."

And it really doesn't make any difference, for she has no more sense of patriotism in her soul than a pine cone. She is a woman without a country and without a people.

Life has never been a problem to Miss Prim, for the simple reason that she does not live. She rises at a decent hour, eats three meals during the day, looks after her clothes, keeps a new book on hand, and occasionally a new bit of fancywork, takes long walks, shops, meets people, sees a new play, goes to bed at a decent hour, and sleeps well on what she calls a comfortable conscience. That, she tells me, is her strong point : she is sure no woman ever had a more comfortable conscience to sleep on. I don't think she has ever discovered her conscience: it's something else. But whatever it is she takes care of it. For she must be comfortable: comfort is her existence. When she picks up the morning paper she holds her eyes fast to pleasant things and carefully avoids all headlines that might stir her sympathies. When she goes on the street she never sees a sign of poverty or suffering or need of any sort. She has trained herself so well that if some poor devil should fall dead at her feet she could make her way around him and go on as coolly as if he were a fallen post. And when it comes to conversation — ^well, no diplomat ever understood so well the art of evading a disagreeable subject. Whatever happens, she must avoid the disagreeable. The disagreeable is none of her affair and she must live her own life. Her sensibilities must not be disturbed.

And as she never hears a cry of need, she never answers, and so nothing ever takes her out of her way. Nothing is to be done except what was done yesterday. If the recording angel writes up the deeds done in the body, there must be a very long white space beneath the name of Miss Lucille Prim, for I have never known her to do anything, either good or bad. She simply draws her monthly stipend and takes the days as they come. And of course she has not found life worth while ; she has sim-

BLOOD KIN TO EVERYBODY 27

ply found tliat it is not worth while not to exist.

"What is the secret of this woman's failure? You have already guessed it : she has failed simply for want of a sense of kinship. In her childhood her environment was such that she could hardly have been expected to discover her kinship with either God or humanity. She had a prayer book and went to church, but she remained as ignorant of both as a kitten. The idea that God was her Father never found its way into her mind. She never became conscious of any tie binding her to God. She never became conscious of God. And she never laid her heart up against the great heart of humanity and heard them beat in unison and discovered that they were one. She thought of herself as a unit, complete in itself, with no cords running out from her heart except those which tied her to her mother, sisters and brothers, and she looked on the passing throng merely as a passing show. And so, never having discovered her kinship with humanity, she has never taken her place in the throng. She has never admitted, never even imagined, that she and the throng had anything in common. In all her life she has never recognized a human form lying in the dust as a brother or sister, nor has she ever heard anything in a cry of need from human lips that sounded like the voice of a kinsman. Nor has she ever thought of listening for the voice of the Father above. Having no sense of kinship, she has pursued her way in the world as one deaf and blind, and naturally she has never found her place in life, and therefore she has never found life worth while.

You cannot live without a sense of kinship. Leave a man on an uninhabited island, and a day will not pass before he will realize that he must have something more than food to sustain life; he must have something that he can claim kinship with. And he will search every nook and corner of that island for that something. If he can find nothing but a cold-blooded snake, he will find comfort in the snake. He will feed it and watch it for hours as it lies in the sand before his hut. He will talk to it and call it Jim. And the snake will become attached to him, and he will think of Jim al-

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most as his cliild. If he can find nothing, and if he has no consciousness of the presence of the Unseen, he will throw up his hands, and you know what the end will be. And it will come quickly.

Trying to live unto one's self turns one inward to live on one's self. It is like sucking one's own blood. . . .

The fire has been full of beautiful visions for me to-day. I wish you could see the beautiful face that I saw a moment ago in those coals just over there. Ah ! there it is again. I have rarely seen such marvelous sweetness. It is the face of a woman who attained to a life of wonderful richness and beauty. I knew her years ago. She was not the kind of woman one usually thinks of when we speak of a beautiful soul — not a recluse, not an invalid who had become beautiful because her face had become so transparent that her glorious soul could not help shining through it. She lived in the world, just as you and I live in it. She had her place in the throng and she kept it. But the smell of the world was not on her garments. She had money, but her money had always found its way outward, never inward. It had never reached her soul ; it had never soiled her finger tips ; it was as if she had handled it all her life with rubber gloves. All the town bowed before her, but the worship of men, women, and little children was to her only as the love of her own family. It had never taken anything from her sweet simplicity, her beautiful humility, her transparent purity of soul. Her life was full, but never overcrowded. She was never too nervous to rest. She never pushed herself through crushes. She never joined in the world's mad pursuit. She never chased a fad, never went distracted over a new movement. She never spent a moment in that most desperate, most unreasonable, most agonizing of all womanly avocations — social climbing. She didn't have to, it is true, but she wouldn't have done it whatever her circumstances might have been. Her face was so serene and her ways so quiet that you would have wondered, if you had met her, whether she ever did anything that the world would count. Yet I do not think that I ever met her when her heart was not in a

BLOOD KIN TO EVERYBODY 31

flame. It was a steady flame, as steady as her soulful eyes that looked straight into yours and never flickered. And she always had something to do that was worth while. There were the children of the mill to look after. There were fifty tots in her Sunday-school class that were ever on her heart. There were poor neighbors to feed. There were Bible women in heathen lands to take care of. There was a young man who had gone to drinking, and who needed an outstretched hand. There was a grief- stricken poor woman in the lane who needed comforting. There were fevered brows to be bathed; there were throbbing temples to be soothed; there were prodigals to be stopped in the way and led back to the Father.

And she was always doing the things that needed to be done.

She is doing them yet. I have not seen her in a long while, but I know she is doing them yet. If you should ask her to-day for the secret of her life, she could not tell you. But I can tell you, and I can tell you in a word. She has a sense of kinship as wide as the world. Her heart is tied to the Father and to all his children. She has never cut a cord that ties her to humanity. She feels that she is kin — really kin — blood kin — to every human being, and she knows she is kin to God. She has learned of him in his Word and talked with him in prayer and sat with her feet on the fender and looked into the fire and dreamed of him until she has become as conscious of the tie that binds her to him as she is of the tie that binds her to her husband. And because her heart goes out toward the Father, she is always doing something that he wants done ; and because her heart goes out toward his children — because she feels that his children are her kin — her blood kin — she is always doing something for them. She is not trying to help the world to be better; she is only trying to help her kin. And that gives to her life a particular meaning and a particular use. And that makes her life worth while to herself. And it makes it worth while to others.

IV

AND SO you too know what it means to be hungry for God. You know the loneliness and weariness and humiliation of wandering about in God's world as one of his nominal children and all the while realizing that you are hardly on speaking terms with him. You know what it is to start out in Christ's name and find no power to follow in his steps. And you know

the emptiness '

No ; don't say that. Your life is not as empty as that. It cannot be as empty as that, for you are determined, and a determined woman's life you know is never empty. Only yesterday you were saying that you were tired of being a Christian in name only — ^tired of carrying Christ's flag and never winning a victory — and that you were resolved to be a real Christian if it cost you everything you had. Up to that point your life may indeed have been empty, but the moment you determined to be a real Christian it began to fill up. You may be sure of that. And, believe me, it is going to keep on filling up; for you are going to be the Christian that you are determined to be.

How do I know? Because in the life of the spirit we can all be just what we are determined to be.

Yes, I mean it. I am not seeing visions in the coals now : it is a plain matter of fact and as true as a sum in arithmetic. In the physical world we may determine and fail in spite of our strength ; but in the spiritual world we may determine and succeed in spite of our weakness. We can be just what we are determined to be. Mind you, I do not say that you are going to be what you would like to be; that is a very different matter. Only yesterday a friend of mine told me that all her life she had longed to be a Christian and she could never understand why she had made no progress. It seemed to her that her earnest longing should have accomplished something. That is the trouble with many sincere people who are hanging around the threshold of the Christian

THE ART OP BEING A CHRISTIAN 35

life: they begin and end with longing. I once knew a woman who longed to be a Christian for seventy years and then died outside the threshold. Longing never takes yon a step upward. It may take you downward, but not upward. As Marie used to say —

But I have never told you about Marie. An old friend of mine once said that Marie was the most charming volume of the evidences of Christianity he had ever read — and the most convincing. No man could look into her beautiful face and argue against Christ; he was there ; you could see him in her eyes.

Marie used to say that the reason so many nominal Christians never become real Christians is not that they don't long to be Christians, but that there is a high step between longing and the threshold of the Christian life — the step of determination — and the average man or woman seldom has the will to take it. God may fill us with longing to enter into the Christian life, but he is not going to take us up in his arms by force and carry us into it. He would no more try to force us into loving communion with himself than a mother would try to force her child into loving communion with herself. Forced communion is an absurdity. A child must step up to the threshold of his mother's heart of his own will. So if we would live the Christian life we must step up to the threshold of our own free will. That is what you did when you determined to be a real Christian regardless of the cost: you took the high step that brought you to the threshold. And now the way is clear before you. You do not need to wait for anything. You do not even need to wait for God. God has been waiting for you all these years and he is standing ready to go with you. You need not give yourself a moment's uneasiness about him : he will look after his part : you only need to be concerned about your part. Why not begin to do your part to-day ? If you want

to learn the art of becoming a Christian

Yes, I mean art, I know the word has an unorthodox sound, but that does not matter; sound is no test of orthodoxy any more than it is of piety. Of course being a Christian is something more than an art — infinitely more — but there is art in it. There is

But I see you are knitting your brows again. You are thinking that I have contradicted myself. Yes, I remember I was talking the other day about my beautiful spring and I said that it was the living image of a Christian ; and you would like to know if a beautiful spring, of all things, is not above all art. That depends. It may be true of springs in general, but it is not true of my spring in particular. If my spring was nothing but a fountain of water, certainly there would be no art in it; but if you should sit by it alone as I have done until the fountain disappeared and you saw in its place a calm, sweet face looking up into yours and seeking fellowship with your spirit, I think you would agree with me that it has at least mastered one art — the art of living. Did you ever know a man or woman who better understood how to keep the channels of the heart open to the stream of life, how to keep the spirit calm and sweet, how to keep the face upturned to heaven, how to look pleasant, how to be kind to everybody, how to give a cup of cold water in the name of Christ to friends and foes alike without spilling it on them? Yes, there is art even in being a Christian. No art can give us physical life, but if we want to live, really live, we must learn the art of living. So no art can give us spiritual life — Christ alone can give us that — but if we want to live, really live the Christian life, we must learn the art of Christian living.