PART II

I—ODD VOLUMES

We have had a kind of wedding in my study this morning. The bride arrived by post. It happened in this wise. Twenty years ago I attended an auction sale at Mosgiel. A valuable library was under the hammer and the chance was too good to be missed. The books were all tied up in bundles and laid out on tables. I took a note of the numbers of those lots that contained works that I wanted. When, on the arrival of the carrier's cart, I proudly inspected my purchases, I found among them an odd volume. It was the first part of _Foster's Life and Correspondence_. The book was bound up with a number of others, and I could not buy _them_ without becoming responsible for _it_. My first inclination was to throw it away; and the temptation recurred when I left Mosgiel for Hobart, and again when I left Hobart for Armadale. Of what use was an odd volume? In packing up at Hobart I actually tossed it to the heap of rubbish that was to be left behind; but an aching void in the last case led to its ultimate rescue. This is the first part of our little romance.

Last week I was visiting a country minister. In the ordinary course of things, I glanced over his book-shelves. I was just turning away, when, among some dusty volumes away on the topmost shelf, my eye caught the words _Foster's Life and Correspondence_. It, too, was an odd volume. On hearing of my own experience, the good man urged me to transfer the volume to my portmanteau and say no more about it. It was, he said, of no use to him.

'But, my dear fellow,' I replied, 'I might just as well say that _mine_ is of no use to _me_. We must leave the matter in the meantime. It is so long since I looked at the volume on my shelves that I cannot be sure that they are companions. They may be duplicates. Yours, I see, is _Volume Two_. If, on my return, I find that mine is _Volume One_, we will come to some arrangement. If not, neither of us can help the other.'

My Mosgiel purchase turned out to be the _first_ volume. I posted my friend a copy of _Bleak House_, which, as I happened to know, he had never read, and he forwarded the _Foster_ by return of post. And this morning I took the odd volume from the lumber on the top shelf, introduced it to its mate, and now the two stand proudly side by side among my biographies. They make a handsome pair: no bride and bridegroom could look more perfectly matched. I do not suppose that they had ever met before; but that circumstance in itself presents no lawful impediment to their being united in a lifelong partnership.

The mating of books is a very mechanical affair. At a big publishing house you may see two huge cases side by side, just as they have come from the printer's. The one is packed with copies of _Volume One_; the other contains copies of _Volume Two_. An assistant, asked by a customer for a copy of the complete work, takes a book from the one box and a book from the other; claps them together with a bang; and they are mated for all time to come. There is no question of selection, and no question of consent. There is no '_Wilt thou have..._' and no _'I will_.' The volume in the top right-hand corner of the one box is unable to steal a shy and furtive glance at the book lying in a corresponding position in the other box. His destined partner may be a little plumper or a little thinner than himself; she may be neatly attired in a pretty cover that sets off her charms to perfection, or she may be dressed in an ill-fitting wrapper that is smudged or torn; he cannot tell. He can only wait, and she can only wait, until they are unceremoniously snatched from their respective corners, banged together, and thus, for richer for poorer, for better for worse, made partners in a bond that is indissoluble. There is no question of sexual selection such as Darwin, Wallace, and the great biologists like to portray. The books in the one box do not strut and parade and show off their beauties in order to win the admiration of the books in the other box. That may be because they are conscious that they are all so much alike; they feel that there is little to pick and choose between them; or, on the other hand, it may be because they suspect that the books in the other box are all much of a muchness, and that it matters very little which bride each bridegroom has. But, whatever the reason, there it is! There is no element of selection such as we find in the fields and the forests; there is no lovemaking and courtship such as we mortals know; the volumes are arbitrarily paired off, and the thing is done.

And, strangely enough, they appear to belong to each other from that very moment. One would feel that he was conniving at a kind of literary adultery if he were to take the second volume of _this_ set and the second volume of _that_ set and deliberately transpose them. I call the earth and the heavens to witness that, in my procedure this morning, I have been guilty of no such enormity. We are living in a rough world. With some books, as with some people, things go hardly. In the course of years a volume may be cruelly deserted by its companion; or its partner may come to an untimely end. The law of the land provides that in such sad cases, a second marriage is no shame. One does not like to think of my first volume of _Foster_ spending all its days among the lumber on _my_ top shelf, and of my friend's second volume spending all its days in the dust and neglect of _his_ top shelf. I do not often take my stand on my ministerial dignity; but I maintain that, being a minister, I have at least as good a right as any publisher's assistant to take those two sad and lonely volumes—the one from my top shelf in the city, and the other from my friend's top shelf in the country—and to unite them in the holy bond of matrimony. And as they stand before me side by side—never to perch upon a top shelf any more—I feel that I have done myself, my friend and them good service by having taken pity on their loneliness and launched them on a united career of happiness and usefulness. As things stood, neither was of any use to anybody; their union has made it possible for each to fulfill its destiny.

Let it be distinctly understood that I am not writing of _single_ volumes. A single volume is not an _odd_ volume. As I sit here at my desk and survey my shelves, I see at a glance that many of the books are complete in one volume. It would be the height of absurdity for me to take one such book, say _Pilgrim's Progress_, and another such book, say _Pickwick Papers_, and declare them _Volumes One_ and _Two_ for the mere sake of pairing them off. Neither the publisher's assistant nor the minister is vested with authority to mate the books after so arbitrary a fashion. The _Pilgrim's Progress_ is a single volume, and the _Pickwick Papers_ is a single volume; and it is better for them to do the work that they were sent into the world to do as single volumes, rather than to enter into an alliance that will make them each ridiculous and stultify them both. I am not arguing for the celibacy of the clergy or for the celibacy of the laity; how could I consistently adopt such a line of reasoning immediately after having celebrated the marriage of the _Fosters_? I am simply telling all the single volumes in my study—who are looking a little downcast and unhappy now that the excitement of the wedding is past—that _single_ volumes are not _odd_ volumes. It is very nice, of course, to be happily mated; but it is quite possible for a solitary life to be a very useful one. Robert Louis Stevenson would have gone further. In his _Virginibus Puerisque_ he as good as says that no man can be a hero after he is married. The fact that he has a home of his own, and is surrounded by love and tenderness and thoughtful care, militates against the culture of the sterner virtues. 'If comfortable,' Stevenson says, 'marriage is not heroic. It inevitably narrows and damps the spirit of generous men. In marriage a man becomes stark and selfish, and undergoes a fatty degeneration of his moral being. The air of the fireside withers up all the fine wildings of the husband's heart. He is so comfortable and happy that he begins to prefer comfort and happiness to anything else on earth, his wife included. Yesterday he would have shared his last shilling; to-day his first duty is to his family,' and is fulfilled in large measure by laying down vintages and husbanding the health of an invaluable parent. Twenty years ago this man was equally capable of crime or heroism; now he is fit for neither. His soul is asleep, and you may speak without restraint; for you will not waken him.

In his references to women, Stevenson does not speak quite so confidently. 'It is true,' he says, 'that some of the merriest and most genuine of women are old maids, and that those old maids, and wives who are unhappily married, have often most of the motherly touch. And this would seem to show, even for women, the same narrowing influence in comfortable married life.' Yet, on the other hand, he feels that marriage affects a woman differently. It makes greater demands upon her. The very comfort which is the husband's peril is largely the fruit of her thoughtfulness, her industry and her unselfishness. With wifehood, too, comes motherhood; and motherhood, side by side with felicities that only mothers know, inflicts a ceaseless discipline of suffering and self-denial. 'For women,' Stevenson admits, 'there is less danger. Marriage is of so much use to a woman, opens out so much more in life, and puts her in the way of so much freedom and usefulness that, whether she marry ill or well, she can hardly miss the benefit.' And he sums up by advising you, 'If you wish the pick of men and women, take a good bachelor and a good wife.' Since, however, if all women became good wives, all men could not remain good bachelors, it is obvious that Stevenson is crying for the moon. But he has said enough to dispel the gloomy and downcast looks that disfigured the countenances of all my single volumes immediately after the wedding. Single volumes are certainly not odd volumes; they are complete in themselves; and we are all very glad of them.

But there are odd volumes. Charles Wagner says that 'in certain shelters for old people, where husbands and wives may pass a tranquil old age together, a very expressive term is used to designate one who is left alone. The bereft solitary is called _an odd volume_. How appropriate—like a book astray from its companion tome! Odd volumes indeed, those who have hitherto been one of two inseparables! They celebrated their silver and golden weddings, and suddenly find themselves desolate. They seem like guests left behind at the end of the feast or the play; the lights are out, the curtain is down; they wander about in the emptiness like souls in torment, possessed with the idea of continually searching for something they have lost. They hardly refrain from asking "Have you seen my husband?" "Where shall I find my wife?" Odd volumes, these!' And you may find them in palaces as well as in almshouses. Did we not all hear the cry that rang through the halls of Windsor on the day on which the Prince Consort passed away? 'I have no one now to call me "Victoria"!' And there are others. They knew no golden wedding, no silver wedding, no wedding at all; and yet felt themselves mated. Some, like Evangeline and Gabriel—and like my two _Fosters_—are separated by distance and ignorance of each other's whereabouts. Some, like Drumsheugh and Marget Howe, are separated by the iron hand of circumstance; some are kept apart by cruel misunderstandings and mistaken judgments; and some—

Women there are on earth, most sweet and high, Who lose their own, and walk bereft and lonely, Loving that one lost heart until they die Loving it only.

And so they never see beside them grow Children, whose coming is like breath of flowers; Consoled by subtler loves than angels know Through childless hours.

Faithful in life, and faithful unto death, Such souls, in sooth, illume with lustre splendid That glimpsed, glad land wherein, the Vision saith, Earth's wrongs are ended.

The purest spirit that ever walked this earth of ours was—I say it reverently—an odd volume. I do not mean that He was a single volume: I mean far more than that. He felt that He was not single: He was not complete in Himself. In some wonderful and mystical way, Deity and Humanity were odd volumes; volumes that were intended to supplement and complete each other; volumes that had become alienated and torn asunder. The amazing thing about the Scriptures is that, in both Testaments, they employ the very phraseology of mating and marriage. The quest that led to the Cross is the quest of the lover for His betrothed; and the consummation of all things is to be a marriage supper—the Marriage Supper of the Lamb. And it may be that, in the larger, the lesser is included. It may be that when Deity and Humanity, so long estranged, are at length perfectly united, other odd volumes will find their mates and the isolations of this life be swallowed up in the glad reunions of the life everlasting.

II—O'ER CRAG AND TORRENT

I

Lexie Drummond had a place of her own in the hearts of the Mosgiel people. To begin with, she was lonely; and lonely folk have a remarkable way of exacting secret homage. Lexie worked at a loom in the woollen factory, and lived by herself in one of the factory cottages near by. I wish you could have seen it. The door invariably stood open, even when Lexie was away at her work. Everything was faultlessly natty and clean. An enormous tabby cat, 'Matey,' purred on the mat, while a golden canary sang bravely from his cage in the creeper just outside the door. Lexie had a trim little garden, in which she grew lavender and mignonette, roses and carnations. Lexie's white carnations always took the prize at our local Flower Show. Lexie mothered Mosgiel. If anybody was in trouble, she would be sure to drop in; and, in cases of serious sickness, she would often stay the night. Some people would deny that Lexie was beautiful; yet she had a loveliness peculiar to herself. She was tall, finely-built, and wonderfully strong. When Roger Gunton, the heaviest man on the plain, was seized with sudden illness, and his body was racked with excruciating pain, Lexie alone could turn him from side to side, and he would allow nobody else to touch him. If her face lacked the vivacity and sparkle of more voluptuous beauties, it possessed, nevertheless, a quiet gravity, a serious winsomeness, that rendered it extremely attractive. The furrows in her face, and the strands of grey in her hair, made her look older than she really was. Everybody knew Lexie's age; her name was a perpetual reminder of the number of her years. For, in an unguarded moment, she had once revealed the circumstance that she was born on the day on which the Princess of Wales—afterwards Queen Alexandra—was married, and she was named after the royal bride. Mosgiel never forgot personal details of that kind. In addition to all this, Mosgiel vaguely suspected that Lexie carried a secret in her breast. She came to Mosgiel only a few years before I did; and everybody felt that her previous history was involved in tantalizing mystery.

II

It was Friday night. In the dining-room at the Mosgiel manse we were enjoying a quiet evening by the fire. I was lounging in an armchair with a novel. I could afford to be restful, for, that week, I had but one sermon to prepare. On the approaching Sunday, the anniversary of the Sunday school was to be celebrated; in the morning John Broadbanks and I were exchanging pulpits in honor of the occasion; and, availing myself of a minister's immemorial prerogative, I had decided to preach an old sermon at Silverstream. All at once we were startled by the ringing of the front door bell. It was the Sunday school superintendent.

'We are in an awful hole,' he exclaimed, after having discussed the weather, the health of our respective families, and a few other inevitable preliminaries. 'Lexie Drummond has been taken ill, and the doctor won't hear of her leaving the house for a week or two. She has been preparing the children for their part-songs, and has the whole programme at her fingers' ends; I don't know how on earth we are going to manage without her.'

I promised to run down and see Lexie about it first thing in the morning; and did so. Lexie was confined to her bed, and old Janet Davidson was nursing her. 'Matey' was curled up close to his mistress's feet, while the canary was singing blithely from his cage near the open window. I saw at a glance that Lexie had been crying, and I attributed her grief to anxiety and disappointment in connection with the anniversary. She quickly undeceived me.

'You'll never notice that I'm not there,' she said, with a watery smile. 'The children know their parts thoroughly, and Bella Christie, who has been helping me, is as familiar with the program as I am.'

I assured her that we should miss her sadly; but expressed my relief that everything had been so well arranged.

'And now, Lexie,' I said, as I took her hand in parting, 'you must worry no more about it; we will do our very best to make it pass off well.'

'Oh,' she replied, quickly, recognizing in my words a reference to her tell-tale eyes, 'it wasn't the anniversary that I was worrying about; indeed, it was silly of me to cry at all!' And, to show how extremely silly it was, she broke, with womanish perversity, into a fresh outburst of tears.

'She has something she wants to tell you,' Janet interposed, 'but she doesn't like to.'

Lexie pretended to look vexed at the old lady's garrulity; but I fancied that I detected, behind the frown, a look of real relief.

'Some other time,' she said. 'Good-bye, I shall think of you all to-morrow!' Janet opened the door and I left her.

III

The anniversary passed off happily; Lexie was soon herself again; and, a fortnight later, I saw her in her old place at church. We knew that she would insist on taking her class in the afternoon; so, to save her the long walk home, we took her to the manse to dinner.

'Several of the teachers have been telling me of the address that you gave on the evening of the Sunday school anniversary,' she said, on our way to the manse. 'I wish you would let me see the manuscript.'

'I can do better than that,' I replied. 'The address was printed in yesterday's _Taieri Advocate_. I have several copies to spare if you care to have one.'

On arrival at the manse she insisted on going round the garden and admiring the flowers before composing herself on the sofa in the dining-room. I gave her the paper I had promised her, and hurried away to prepare for dinner. When I returned a few minutes later the paper was lying on the floor beside her, and she was crying as if her heart would break. By a supreme effort she regained her self-possession, promised to explain in the afternoon, and, in obedience to the summons, took her place at table.

During dinner I mentally reviewed the address which had so strangely reopened the fountains of her grief. It was the address which, under the title 'The Little Palace Beautiful,' appears in _The Golden Milestone_. It begins: 'There are only four children in the wide, wide world, and each of us is the parent of at least one of them.' The first of the four is _The Little Child that Never Was_. 'He is,' the address says, 'an exquisitely beautiful child. He is the child of all lonely men and lonely women, the child of their dreams and their fancies, the child that will never be born. He is the son of the solitary.' And the address goes on to quote from Ada Cambridge's _Virgin Martyrs_:

Every wild she-bird has nest and mate in the warm April weather, But a captive woman, made for love, no mate, no nest, has she. In the spring of young desire, young men and maids are wed together, And the happy mothers flaunt their bliss for all the world to see; Nature's sacramental feast for them—an empty board for me.

Time, that heals so many sorrows, keeps mine ever freshly aching, Though my face is growing furrowed and my brown hair turning white. Still I mourn my irremediable loss, asleep or waking; Still I hear my son's voice calling 'Mother' in the dead of night, And am haunted by my girl's eyes that will never see the light.

As the address came back to me, I began to understand. I remembered what the gossips said about the mystery in Lexie's life. What was it, I wondered, that she meant to tell me after dinner?

IV

'You don't know me!' she cried passionately, when, once more, we found ourselves alone together. 'You treat me as if I were a good woman; you let me work at the church, and you bring me into your home; but you don't know me; really, really, you don't! I have committed a great sin, a very great sin; and I am suffering for it; and others are suffering for it.' She paused, as if wondering how to begin her story, and then started afresh.

'I was brought up in the country,' she said, 'not far from Hokitui. My parents both died when I was a little girl; my guardians followed them a few years ago; so that now I am quite alone. At school I became very fond of Davie Bannerman, and he made no secret of his partiality for me. He used to bring me something—an apple or a cake or a picture or some sweets—every day. When I was nineteen we became engaged and were both very happy about it. Everybody in the Hokitui district loved Davie; he was handsome and good-natured; I used to think his laugh the grandest music I had ever heard. But I was proud, terribly proud. And, being proud, I was selfish. And, being selfish, I was jealous. Davie was good to everybody; yet I could not bear to see him paying attention to anybody but myself. He was a member of the Hokitui church, and used to spend a good deal of time there. I had no interest in such things in those days, and I was angry with him for neglecting me. But most of all was I jealous of Sadie McKay. Sadie was his cousin; she was one of the church girls; and I hated to think, when he was not with _me_, that he was with _her_. Davie always took my scoldings merrily, and quickly coaxed me into a better mind. And I dare say that all would have gone well but for the accident that spoiled everything.

'Sadie was riding in from the farm one morning when, on the outskirts of Hokitui, she met a traction engine. Her horse bolted, and was soon out of control. As luck would have it, Davie was standing at a shop door near the township corner, and saw the horse galloping madly towards him. He rushed into the road and managed to check the animal before Sadie was thrown; but, in doing so, he was hurled to the ground, and the horse trod on his right arm, crushing it. He lay in the hospital for nearly two months; but I never went near him. When he left the hospital he wrote to me. It was a pitiful scrawl, written with his left hand; his right was amputated. "I have had a heavy loss," he said, "and I do not know how I can manage without my arm; but now I must suffer a still heavier loss, and I do not know how I can live without _you_. But it would not be right for me to burden you, and you must find somebody else, Lexie, who can care for you better than I can." I returned the engagement ring, and that was the end of it. If he had lost his arm in any other way I could have endured life-long poverty with him; but to have lost his arm for Sadie!' She paused and seemed to be looking out of the window, but I knew that her story was not finished.

'A few months later I took a situation in Ashburton. There I met, at a party, a young Englishman—Horace Latchford—who took a fancy to me. He was visiting New Zealand for the sake of his health. He told me that he owned a large estate in Devonshire, and would make me a perfect queen. During his stay—a period of about four months—life was one long frolic. Six months later he sent for me to go to him; and I went. But my eyes were soon opened. There was no estate in Devonshire; Horace was often intoxicated when he came to see me; and, instead of getting married, I returned to New Zealand in disgust. I came to Mosgiel, partly because I knew that I could get good work in the factory, and partly because I knew that nobody here would know me. Since I returned from England, ten years ago, I have only met one person who knew me in the old days at Hokitui. I was spending a holiday at Moeraki, and she was staying at the same boarding-house. I did not tell her that I had settled at Mosgiel; but she told me that none of the Bannermans were now living at Hokitui. Davie, she said, was the first to leave. He went to one of the cities to learn a profession that did not imperatively demand the use of two hands.' She paused again, and I waited.

'When I came to Mosgiel,' she went on, 'I got in the way of coming to the church. I became deeply impressed, and you received me into membership. And, every day since, as I have done little things, and taken little duties, in connection with the work, I have come to understand Davie as I never understood him in the old days. I hated his fondness for the church. And, every day now, my sin seems to be more and more terrible. Just lately it has been with me night and day. And when I read your address my punishment seemed greater than I could bear. I have prayed thousands of times that the dreadful tangle might be unravelled. I have not prayed selfishly; I could be perfectly contented if only I knew that Davie is happy, and that his faith in God and womanhood has not been shaken by my wickedness. We sang _Lead, Kindly Light_ in church this morning. Do you think that God really guides us? Does He put us right even when we have done wrong? Will He straighten things out? I would give anything to be quite sure! I seem to be in a maze, and can find no way out of it!'

V

It seemed an infinite relief to Lexie to have told me her story. She was much more often at the manse after that; a new bond seemed to have sprung up between us. I fancied that there came into Lexie's face a deeper peace and a greater content. The peace was, however, rudely broken. About two years after Lexie had unburdened her soul to me, I opened the paper one morning and confronted a startling announcement. The personal paragraphs contained the statement that '_Mr. David Bannerman, the brilliant Auckland solicitor, has been appointed Lecturer in Common Law at the Otago University._' There followed a brief outline of the new professor's career which left no shadow of doubt as to his identity. I particularly noticed that there was no reference to his marriage. What, if anything, was to be done? The Otago University was in Dunedin, only ten miles from Mosgiel. Ought I to allow these two people to drift on, perhaps for years, eating their hearts out within a few miles of each other? Was it not due to Davie that he should know that Lexie was at Mosgiel? He might desire to _seek_ her; or he might desire to _avoid_ her; in either case the information would be of value. I stated the position in this way to Lexie, but she would not hear of my taking any action. After a while, however, she agreed to my writing, telling the professor-elect that I knew of her whereabouts. I added that she was universally loved and honored for her fine work in the church and in the district. I enclosed a copy of 'The Little Palace Beautiful,' and mentioned the fact that I had once caught her weeping bitterly as she read it. It took four days for a mail from Mosgiel to reach Auckland. After a long talk with Lexie, I posted my letter on a Sunday evening. On Friday afternoon I received a reply-paid telegram: '_Wire lady's address immediately._'

The new professor was married three months after entering upon the duties of his chair at the University; and, when I last saw her, Lexie was enthroned in the center of a charming little circle. I received a letter from her yesterday—the letter that suggested this record. She tells me, with pardonable pride, that her eldest boy has matriculated and also joined the church.

'I am getting to be an old woman now,' she says, 'and I spend a lot of time in looking backward. Isn't it wonderful? It all came right after all! But for the accident, Davie would never have been a professor; and, if we had been married in the old days, I should only have been a drag and a hindrance. As it is, we have passed o'er moor and fen, o'er crag and torrent; but the Kindly Light that I once doubted has led us all the way!'

III—THE PRETENDER

I

'_Let's pretend!_' cried Jean.

They were enjoying a romp after tea; but the game had been suddenly interrupted.

'How can we drown him when there's no water?' asked Ernest, looking wonderfully wise.

'Oh, let's pretend the lawn's the water!' replied Jean, brushing aside with impatience so trifling a difficulty.

_Let's pretend!_ I used to wonder why Bonnie Prince Charlie was called the Pretender, as though he enjoyed some monopoly in that regard. We are all pretenders. Some, perhaps, are more skilful than others. Jean was especially clever. One day a lady called and gave her a beautiful bunch of flowers. Ernest was particularly fond of flowers, and thought that he could capture them by guile.

'I say, Jean,' he cried, 'let's have a game! We'll 'tend the flowers are mine!'

'All right,' Jean replied, with a sly twinkle, 'and you 'tend you've got 'em!'

Precisely! There is no end to the possibilities of pretending. It is the one game of which we never grow tired. We learn to play it as soon as we are out of the cradle and it still fascinates us as we totter on the brink of the grave. Indeed, as H. C. Bunner shows, childhood and age often play the game together. Look at this!

It was an old, old, old, old lady, And a boy who was half-past three; And the way that they played together Was beautiful to see.

She couldn't go running and jumping, And the boy no more could he, For he was a pale little fellow, With a thin, little twisted knee.

They sat in the yellow sunlight, Out under the maple tree; And the game that they played I'll tell you, Just as it was told to me.

It was Hide-and-Seek they were playing, Though you'd never have known it to be— With an old, old, old, old lady, And a boy with a twisted knee.

The boy would bend down his face, close his eyes, and guess where she was hiding. He was allowed three guesses. She was in the china-closet! Wrong! Well, she was in the chest in Papa's bedroom—the chest with the queer old key! Wrong again; but warmer! Well, then, she was in the clothes-press! It was his third guess, and it was right. In the clothes-press she was! It was his turn to hide and Granny's turn to guess!

Then she covered her face with her fingers, Which were wrinkled and white and wee; And she guessed where the boy was hiding, With a one and a two and a three.

And they never had stirred from their places Right under the maple tree, This old, old, old, old lady And the boy with the lame little knee. This dear, dear, dear, old lady And the boy who was half-past three.

It is the oldest game in the world; it was played—just as it is played to-day—before any other game was dreamed of, and the children of to-morrow will be playing it when the games of to-day are all forgotten. It is the most universal game in the world; it is played in Pekin just as it is played in London; it is played in Mysore just as it is played in New York; it is played in Timbuctoo just as we play it here in Melbourne. The rules of the game never alter with the period or change with the place. It is equally popular in all grades of society. The royal children play it in the palace-grounds and the street urchins play it in the alleys and the slums. For the beauty of it is, that it needs no paraphernalia or tackle or gear; you have not to buy a bat or a ball, a racket or a net; you do not require special grounds or courts or links. The 'old, old, old, old lady,' and 'the boy with the twisted knee' take it into their heads to have a game; and, then and there, without moving an inch or getting a thing, they set to work and play it! Jean cries, 'Let's pretend!' and straightway everybody is pretending!

'Let's pretend!' cried Jean. There was nothing original in the suggestion. If the words are not actually a quotation from Shakespeare, it is perfectly certain that Shakespeare uttered them. They voice the very spirit of the drama. The play and the pantomime are all a matter of pretending. It happened last evening that I had an appointment in the city. I had promised to meet a friend on the Town Hall steps at half-past seven. I was early; it was a delicious summer's evening, and I enjoyed watching the crowd. The crowd is always worth watching, but at that hour the crowd is at its best. The strain of the day is over and the weariness of night has not yet come. The crowd is fresh, vivacious, light-hearted. As I stood upon the steps, I saw young men and maidens keeping their trysts with each other; they were making no effort to conceal their joy in each other's society; as they tripped off together, they were laughingly anticipating the entertainment to which they were hastening. Gentlemen in evening dress, accompanied by handsome women, beautifully gowned, swept by in sumptuous cars that were brightly lit and daintily adorned with choicest flowers. Here and there, in this unbroken tide of traffic, I caught a glimpse of features more quaint and of garments more fantastic. I saw a troubadour, a viking, a knight-errant, a pierrot and a Spanish cavalier. I saw a gipsy queen, a geisha-girl, a milkmaid, an Egyptian princess, and a lady of the court of Louis the Fourteenth. They were on their way to a fancy dress ball at Government House. I stood entranced as this pageant of pleasure swept past me, and a strange thought seized my fancy. I reminded myself that, in any one of ten thousand cities, I might witness, at this same hour, an identically similar spectacle. If I could have taken my stand in the Strand in London, or in Princes Street, Edinburgh, or in Sackville Street, Dublin, or in Broadway, New York, or in the main thoroughfare of any city in Christendom, I should have gazed upon a scene which would have seemed like a mere reflection of this one. And then I asked myself for an interpretation of it all. What did it all mean—this throng of happy pedestrians laughing and chatting as they surged along the pavements; this ceaseless procession of gay vehicles in the brilliantly-illumined roadway?

II

It is a tribute to our human passion for pretending. His Excellency stands in the reception hall at Government House and laughingly welcomes his guests. They are pretenders, every one. The troubadour is no troubadour; the viking, no viking; the gipsy, no gipsy; and the milkmaid, no milkmaid. They are just pretending and they have gone to all this trouble and to all this expense that the full-orbed joy of pretending may be for one crowded hour their own. And the other people—the gentlemen in evening dress; the ladies richly begowned and bejewelled; the surging crowd upon the path. They are making their way to the theatres. They are going to see the great actors and actresses pretend. One actor will pretend to be a cripple and another will pretend to be a king; one actress will pretend to be an empress and one will pretend to be a slave; and the better the actors and the actresses pretend the better these people will like it.

For the people love pretending; that is how the theatre came to be. Like Topsy, it had no father and no mother. It sprang from our insatiable fondness for make-believe. In his _Short History of the English People_ John Richard Green says that 'it was the people itself that created the stage'; and he graphically describes their initial ventures. 'The theatre,' he says, 'was the courtyard of an inn or a mere booth such as is still seen at a country fair; the bulk of the audience sat beneath the open sky; a few covered seats accommodated the wealthier spectators while patrons and nobles sprawled upon the actual boards.' In those days the audience had to do its part of the pretending. If the spectators saw a few flowers they accepted the hint and imagined that the play was being enacted in a beautiful garden. In a battle scene the arrival of an army was represented by a stampede across the stage of a dozen clumsy sceneshifters brandishing swords and bucklers. In order to assist the audience to muster appropriate emotions, the stage was draped with black when a tragedy was about to be presented and with blue when the performance was to portray life in some lighter vein. What is this but a group of children playing at charades, at dressing-up, at 'just pretending?' Children pretend in order that they may escape from the limitations of reality into the infinitudes of romance. Once they begin to pretend all life is open to them. They have uttered the magic 'Sesame' and every gate unbars. Their seniors invade the same realm for the same reason. This is the significance of those crowded streets last night.

III

Now this brings me to a very interesting point. Is it wrong to pretend? In the greatest sermon ever preached—the Sermon on the Mount—Jesus called certain people hypocrites. But, did He, by doing so, condemn all forms of hypocrisy? If so, the people upon whom I looked last night were all of them earning for themselves His malediction. And so were the people gathered in the quaint old English courtyard. And so was Jean when she called to her playmates: 'Let's pretend!' And so was 'the old, old, old, old lady' and 'the boy with the twisted knee.' For a hypocrite—as the very word suggests—is simply a pretender. A hypocrite is one who colors his face, or dresses up or acts a part. Does it follow, therefore, because Jesus condemned the Pharisees and called them hypocrites, that all pretenders fall beneath His frown? To ask the question is to answer it. Fancy Jesus frowning at Jean! Fancy Jesus frowning at 'the old, old, old, old lady' and 'the boy with the twisted knee!' Why Jesus Himself _pretended_ on occasions. He behaved towards the Syro-Phœnician woman as though He had no sympathy with her in her distress. He saw the disciples in trouble on the lake; and, walking on the water, He made as though He would have passed them by. When, after journeying with two of His disciples to Emmaus, He reached the door of their home, He made as though He would have gone further! 'He made as though!' 'He made as though!' 'He made as though!' The feints of Deity!

Let a man but keep his eyes wide open and he will see some very lovable hypocrites, some very amiable pretenders, in the course of a day's march. I have been reading _The Butterfly Man_. And here in the early part of the book is a scene in which a child and a criminal take part. Mary Virginia shows John Flint a pasteboard box. It contains a dark-colored and rather ugly grey moth with his wings turned down.

'You wouldn't think him pretty, would you?' asked the child.

'No,' replied John Flint disappointedly, 'I shouldn't!'

Mary Virginia smiled, and, picking up the little moth, held his body, very gently, between her finger tips. He fluttered, spreading out his grey wings; and then John saw the beautiful pansy-like underwings, and the glorious lower pair of scarlet velvet, barred and bordered with black.

'I got to thinking,' said the girl, thoughtfully, lifting her clear and candid eyes to John Flint's, 'I got to thinking, when he threw aside his plain grey cloak and showed me his lovely underwings, that he's like some people. You couldn't be expected to know what was underneath, could you? So you pass them by, thinking how ordinary and uninteresting and ugly they are, and you feel rather sorry for them—because you don't know. But if you once get close enough to touch them—why, then you find out! You only think of the dust-colored outside, and all the while the underwings are right there, waiting for you to find them! Isn't it wonderful and beautiful? And the best of it all is, it's true!'

In these artless sentences, tripping, so easily from a child's tongue, Marie Oemler sums up the burden of her book. The incident is a parable. For John Flint was _himself_ the drab and ugly moth. In the opening chapters of the story, he is a horrible object—coarse, brutal, loathsome, revolting. But there were underwings. And gradually, beneath the touch of gentle influences, those underwings became visible; and, in the later stages of the story, all men admired and revered and loved the beautiful nobleness of the Butterfly Man.

IV

There are people, I suppose, who trick themselves out to make themselves appear much prettier or much nicer or—worse still—much holier than they really are. 'Let's pretend!' they cry; and there is something sinister in their pretending. It is against these people—and against them only—that the anathemas of the Sermon on the Mount are directed.

Again, there are people who, like Ian Maclaren's Drumtochty folk, go through life dreading lest their underwings should be seen, their virtues exposed, their goodness discovered. They bear themselves distantly and give an impression of aloofness; you would never dream, unless you got to know them, that their dispositions were so sweet, their characters so strong, their souls so saintly.

I am told that a great actor achieves his triumphs through contemplating so closely the character that he impersonates. His own individuality becomes, for the time being, absorbed in another. Henry Irving forgets that he is Henry Irving and believes himself to be Macbeth. I have read of One who, seeming to possess no form nor comeliness, nor any beauty that men should desire Him, was nevertheless the chiefest among ten thousand and the altogether lovely. It may be that these amiable pretenders of whom we are all so fond have contemplated so closely _His_ character that they have unconsciously caught His spirit and acquired His ways. They cleverly conceal the rainbow-tinted underwings, beneath a coat of drab; but, having once caught a glimpse of their glory, we ever after feel it shining through the grey.

IV—ACHMED'S INVESTMENT

I

Gilt-edged securities are all very well; but men do not make their fortunes out of gilt-edged securities. Gilt-edged securities may suit those whose circumstances compel them to husband jealously their meagre savings; but the big dividends are made out of the risky speculations. There are investments in which a man cannot, by any possibility, lose his treasure, and in which he must, with mathematical certainty, reap a modest margin of profit. And, on the other hand, there are investments in which a man may, quite easily, lose every penny that he hazards, but in which he may, quite conceivably, make a perfectly golden haul. An Eastern sage with a well-established reputation for wisdom urges us to venture fearlessly at times upon these more perilous but more profitable ventures, '_Cast thy bread_,' he says, '_upon the waters._' The man who believes in gilt-edged securities will prefer to cast it upon _the land_. The land is a fixture. The land does not float away or fly away or fade away. You find it where you left it. It is stable, substantial, secure. Because of its fixity, men trust it. For thousands of years it was the bank of the nations. Men hid their treasures in fields, as many a lucky finder afterwards discovered to his delight. But the waters! _Cast thy bread upon the waters!_ The waters are the very emblem of all that is fickle, variable and inconstant. They ebb and they flow; they rise and they fall; they are restless, unstable, fluctuating. They suck down into their dark depths the treasures confided to their care and leave no trace upon the surface of the hiding-place in which the booty lies concealed. The waters! _Cast thy bread upon the waters!_ The man who believes only in gilt-edged securities shakes his head. This is no investment for him. But the man who can afford to take desperate hazards pricks up his ears.

'The waters!' he exclaims. 'He tells me to cast my bread upon the waters! It is the last place in the world to which I should have thought of casting it! But I shall venture!'

And he becomes immensely rich in consequence.

II

Achmed Ali is a young Egyptian farmer. His lands are in the Nile Valley, and, in the flood-time, two thirds of his property is under water. But flood-time is also sowing-time, and what is he to do? He can, of course, sow that portion of his land that stands above the waterline. And he does. This is his gilt-edged security. He is practically certain of getting back in the late summer the grain that he sows in the spring, with a fair proportion of increase in addition. But on that narrow margin of profit Achmed Ali cannot support wife and children and pay all the expenses of his farm. He turns wistfully towards the river. He surveys the section of his farm over which the waters are sluggishly drifting. Sometimes they recede, leaving a broad strip of shining, gurgling mud. He is tempted to scatter his seed over that belt of ooze at once. He waits a few hours, however, hoping that the retreat of the waters will continue, and that, in a few days, he will be able to carry his seed-basket over the whole area that is now submerged. But his hopes are soon shattered. The swaying waters come welling in again and even lick the edges of the land he has already sown. If only he could get at those inundated fields! The land is soft and moist! It has been enriched and fertilized by the action of the flood-waters. Saturated by the moisture in the soil, and warmed by the rays of the tropical sun, the seed would germinate and spring up as if by magic; and the harvest would beggar that of the land that the river has never touched! But these are castles in the air. The flood is there. It shows no sign of withdrawing. He knows that, after it has gone, it will be a day or two before he can cross the soft, sticky, slimy soil with his basket. And by that time the season may have passed. It will be too late to sow.

It is to Achmed Ali that our Eastern sage is speaking. 'Why wait for the flood?' he asks. '_Cast thy bread upon the waters!_ Much good grain—grain that thou canst ill afford to lose—will float away and never more be seen. Much of it will be greedily devoured by fish and water-fowl. But what of that? Much of it will drift about on the shallow waters, and be deposited, as they recede, on the soft warm mud from which they ebb. With thy heavy feet and clumsy form and weighty basket thou couldst not cross the soil till long after the waters leave it. Let the waters do their work for thee! Turn thy foe into a friend! Make of the tyrant a slave! _Cast thy bread upon the waters!_'

It is no gilt-edged security; but Achmed Ali resolves to take the risk.

Among the reeds round the bend of the river his flat-bottomed boat is moored. He hurries up to the barn for his basket of seed. He gazes almost fondly, upon the precious grain that he is about to invest in such a precarious speculation. He bears it down to the boat and pushes out on to the shallow waters. A tall ibis, stalking with stately stride along the edge of the stream, is startled by the commotion and flies away, flapping its wings with slow and measured beat. Achmed is now well out upon the river. The flood that had defied him now supports him. He feels as the Philistines must have felt when they harnessed Samson to their mill. He paddles up to one end of his property and works his way down to the other, scattering the seed broadcast as he goes. Then, having disposed of every grain, he paddles back to his starting-point and ties up his boat. He stands for a moment on the bank watching the seed floating hither and thither upon the eddying waters. In some places it is still strewn evenly upon the tide; in others it has drifted into snakelike formations that curl and straighten themselves out again on the surface of the flood. It seems an awful waste. But is it?

In a day or two the waters recede, leaving the saturated seed strewn over the oozy soil. It sinks in of its own weight and is quickly lost to view. And then Achmed sees the wisdom of the counsel he has followed. And in the summer, when he garners a rich harvest from the very lands over which his boat had drifted, he blesses that Eastern sage for those wise words.

III

In my old Mosgiel days, I was often invited to address evening meetings in Dunedin. The trouble lay in the return. A train left Dunedin at twenty past nine and there was no other until twenty past ten, or, on some nights, twenty past eleven. It was sometimes difficult to leave a meeting in time to catch the first of these trains, yet, if I stayed for a later one, it meant a midnight arrival at the manse and a woeful sense of weariness next morning. On the particular night of which I am now thinking, I missed the early train. There was no other until twenty past eleven. I sat on the railway platform, feeling very sorry for myself. When at length the train started, I found myself sharing with one companion a long compartment, with doors at either extremity and seats along the sides, capable of accommodating fifty people. He sat at one end and I at the other. I expect that I looked to him as woebegone and disconsolate as he looked to me. The train rumbled on through the night. The light was too dim to permit of reading; the jolting was too great to permit of sleeping; and I was just about to record a solemn vow never to speak in town again when a curious line of thought captivated me. I could not read; I could not sleep; but I could talk! And here, in the far corner of the compartment, was another belated unfortunate who could neither read nor sleep and who might like to beguile the time with conversation! And then it occurred to me not only that I _could_ do it but that I _should_ do it. We had been thrown together for an hour in this strange way at dead of night; we should probably never meet again until the Day of Judgement; what right had I to let him go as though our tracks had never crossed at all? Was the great message that, on Sundays, I delivered to my Mosgiel people, intended exclusively for them, and was it only to be delivered on Sundays? I felt that my Sunday congregation was a gilt-edged security; but here was a chance for a rash speculation!

The train stopped at Burnside. I stepped out on to the station and walked up and down for a moment inhaling the fresh mountain air. I wanted to have all my wits about me and to be at my best. The engine whistled, and, on returning to the compartment, I was careful to re-enter it by the door near which my companion was sitting, and I took the seat immediately opposite to him. I then saw that he was quite a young fellow, probably a farmer's son. We soon struck up a pleasant conversation, and then, having created an atmosphere, I expressed the hope that we were fellow-travellers on life's greater journey.

'It's strange that you should ask me that,' he said, 'I've been thinking a lot about such things lately.'

We became so engrossed in our conversation that the train had been standing a minute or so at Mosgiel before we realized that we had reached the end of our journey. I found that our ways took us in diametrically opposite directions. He had a long walk ahead of him.

'Well,' I said, in taking farewell of him, 'you may see your way to a decision as you walk along the road. If so, remember that you need no one to help you. Lift up your heart to the Saviour; He will understand!'

We parted with a warm handclasp. Long before I reached the manse I was biting my lips at having omitted to take his name and address. However, like Achmed Ali, I had cast my bread upon the waters.

Five years passed. One Monday morning I was seated in the train for Dunedin. The compartment was nearly full. Between Abbotsford and Burnside the door at one end of the carriage opened, and a tall, dark man came through, handing each passenger a neat little pamphlet. He gave me a copy of _Safety, Certainty, and Enjoyment_. I looked up to thank him, and, as our eyes met, he recognized me.

'Why,' he exclaimed, 'you're the very man!'

I made room for him to sit beside me. I told him that his face seemed familiar, although I could not remember where we had met before.

'Why,' he said, 'don't you remember that night in the train? You told me, if I saw my way to a decision, to lift up my heart to the Saviour on the road. And I did. I've felt sorry ever since that I didn't ask who you were, so that I could come and tell you. But, as the light came to me in a railway train, I have always tried to do as much good as possible when I have had occasion to travel. I can't _speak_ to people as you spoke to me; but I always bring a packet of booklets with me.'

I recalled the inward struggle that preceded my approach that night. I remembered bracing myself on the Burnside station for the ordeal. It seemed at the time a very rash and risky speculation.

But here was my harvest! I have invested most of my time and energy in gilt-edged securities, and, on the whole, I have no reason to be dissatisfied with the return that they have yielded me. But I have seldom obtained from my gilt-edged securities so handsome a profit as that unpromising venture ultimately brought to me.

IV

The only way to keep a thing is to throw it away. The only way to hold your money is to invest it. The only way to ensure remembering a poem is to keep repeating it to others. If you hear a good story and attempt to keep it for your own delectation, you will forget it in a week. Laugh over it with every man you meet and it will ripple in your soul for years.

It sometimes happens, when I have finished one of these screeds of mine, that I feel a fatherly solicitude concerning it. You sometimes grow fond of a thing, not because you cherish an inflated conception of its value, but because through sheer familiarity, it has become a part of you. So I look at these white sheets over which I have been bending for days and into which I have poured all my soul. I feel anxious about them. Yet it is absurd to keep them. If I store them away I shall soon forget their contents and my labor will all be lost. But the printer is six hundred miles away. I think of all the hands through which they must pass on their way from me to him. I register them at the Post Office, but still I think of all the risks. These white sheets of mine are such frail and flimsy things; an accident, a fire, and where then would they be? But one happy morning I see my screed in print! I feel that I have it at last! It is beyond the reach of fire or accident. If _this_ house is burned down, I can obtain a copy in _that_ one! I feel that nothing now can rob me of the child I brought into being. It is scattered broadcast, and, having been scattered broadcast, is at last my very, very own!

The only way to keep a thing is to throw it away. Achmed Ali knows that. He looks fondly at the grain in the basket but he knows that he cannot keep it in the barn. 'Seeds which mildew in the garner, scattered, fill with gold the plain.' And so he casts some of it on the land—his gilt-edged security—and gets it back with interest; and he casts the rest upon the water—his risky speculation—and gets it back many times multiplied.

V—SATURDAY

Saturday is the name, not so much of a day, as of a specific phase of human experience. And it is a great phase. We all catch ourselves at odd moments living over again some of the unforgettable Saturdays of long ago. In actual fact, a man may be lounging in an armchair beside his winter fire or sprawling on the lawn on a drowsy summer afternoon. But, under such conditions, the actual fact is soon relegated to oblivion. A far-away look comes into his eyes, a wayward smile flits over his face, and, giving rein to his fancy, he sees landscapes on which his gaze has not rested for many a long year. He roams at will among the golden Saturdays of auld lang syne. He feels afresh the mighty thrill that swept his soul when, after a long heroic struggle, his side won that famous match upon a certain village green; he lives again through the fierce excitement of a paper-chase that led the hare and hounds over the great green hills and down through the dark pine forest in the valley; he enjoys once more the birds'-nesting expedition in the winding lane; and he sees, as vividly as he saw them at the time, the shining trophies that rewarded his fishing excursions to the millponds and trout-streams of the outlying countryside. In those far-off days, Saturday was the wild romance of the week.

I remember being told by my first schoolmaster that Saturday was named after Saturn, and that Saturn was the planet that had rings all round it. From that hour, by a singular confusion of ideas, I always thought of Saturday as the day that had the rings round it. I somehow associated the day with the lady of the nursery rhyme who has rings on her fingers and bells on her toes, and who, therefore, has music wherever she goes. I liked to think that Saturday moved among the other days of the week in such melodious pomp and splendor. The notion intensified the zest with which I welcomed the great day. For Saturday was great; it was great in its coming and great in its going. It began gloriously and it ended gloriously. I do not mean that it ended as it began. By no means. There is one glory of the sun and another glory of the moon. The glory of Saturday's dawn was one glory; the glory of Saturday's dusk was another glory. Saturday began like a Red Indian shouting his war-whoop as he takes to the trail; it ended like a monk who, in the stillness of his cloister, chants his evening hymn.

It takes a boy a minute or two, on waking, to assure himself that it is really Saturday. He is not quite sure of himself; the notion seems too good to be true. He sits bolt upright; rubs his eyes; and stares about him for some confirmation of the joyous suspicion that is bringing the blood to his cheeks in excitement. Is it really Saturday? He distrusts—and not without cause—the confused sensations of those waking moments. He made a mistake once before; he fancied that it was Saturday; made all his plans accordingly; and discovered to his disgust a few minutes later that it was only Friday after all. That Friday, at any rate, was a most unlucky day! But Saturday! With what tingling exhilaration and boisterous delight the conviction that it was Saturday fastened upon us! Saturday was our day! We raced out after breakfast like so many colts turned loose upon the heath. We tossed up our caps for the sheer joy of it. Whatever the ordeals of the week had been, we forgave all our tyrants and tormentors on Saturday morning. And in that gracious and benignant absolution we experienced a foretaste of the saintliness with which the great day wore to its close.

For Saturday, however spent, reached its climax in a consciousness of virtue so complete and so serene and so beatific as to be almost unearthly. Such a delicious content seldom falls within the experience of mortals. Saturday night was bath-night; and few sensations in life are more delectable than the angelic self-satisfaction that overtakes the average boy after having been subjected to the magic discipline of hot water and clean sheets. The outward change is wonderful; but the inward transformation exceeds it by far. He feels good; looks good; smells good; _is_ good. A boy after a bath is at peace with all the world. The week may have gone hardly with him. Parents and teachers may have shown a vexatious incapacity to see things from a boy's standpoint; the proprietors of orchards and gardens may have exhibited—perhaps even on Saturday afternoon—a singular inflexibility in their interpretation of the laws relating to property; the world as a whole may have behaved in a manner wofully inconsiderate and unjust. But on Saturday night, under the softening influence of a hot bath and a clean bed, a boy finds it in his heart to forgive everything and everybody. A vast charity wells up in his soul. As he lays his damp head on his snowy pillow, he revokes all his harsh judgements and cancels all his stern resolves. He will not run away from home after all! Instead of abandoning his unfeeling seniors to their hatred, malice and uncharitableness, he will treat them with magnanimity and tolerance; he will give them another chance. It is possible—appearances to the contrary notwithstanding—that they do not mean to be unsympathetic. They simply do not understand. Thinking thus the young saint falls asleep in the odor of sanctity—and soap! The more wayward and troublesome he has been in the daytime, the more angelic will he appear under these new conditions. Watching him as he slumbers, one of the Saturnian rings seems to encompass his brow like a halo. Saturday has come to an end!

Now, this saintly young savage of ours will learn, as the years go by, that life itself has its Saturday phase. Dr. Chalmers used to say that our allotted span of three score years and ten divides itself into seven decades corresponding with the seven days of the week. The seventh—the stretch of life that opens out before a man on his _sixtieth_ birthday—is, the doctor used to say, a Sabbatic period. In it, he should shake himself free, as far as possible, from the toil and moil of life, and give himself to the cultivation of a quiet and restful spirit. That being so, it follows that the sixth period—the period that opens out before a man on his _fiftieth_ birthday—is the Saturday of life. It is a great time, every way. Like the Saturday of the old days, and like the Saturday of riper years, it has characteristics peculiarly its own. On his fiftieth birthday, if Mr. J. W. Robertson Scott is to be believed, a man enters the gates of a new world. It is not of necessity a better world or a worse one; it is simply a different one. We seldom enter upon a new experience without finding that the change has involved us in a few drawbacks and deprivations, as well as in some distinct benefits and advantages. The step that a man takes on his fiftieth birthday is no exception to this rule. Mr. Robertson Scott caught sight of the gates of the new era some time before he actually reached them. 'In the tram, one evening, about six months ago, a schoolboy rose and offered me his seat,' he tells us. The incident startled him. A man who is still in the forties does not expect to receive such courtesies. He consoled himself, however, with the assumption that the attentive schoolboy was probably a boy scout who had suddenly realized that the day was closing in without his having done the good deed prescribed for each twenty-four hours of the life of the perfect Baden-Powellite. Four months later, however, the same thing happened again; and then, shortly after, came the fiftieth birthday! Clearly it was Saturday morning!

Now, the striking thing about Mr. Robertson Scott's experience is the fact that his attainment of his jubilee appealed to him, not as an end, but as a beginning. It was not so much a premonition of senility and decay as the entrance upon a fresh phase of life. When Horace Walpole wrote to Thomas Gray in 1766, urging him to write more poetry, Gray replied that when a man has turned fifty—as he had just done—there is nothing for it but to think of finishing. He voiced the feeling of the period. In the eighteenth century, a man of fifty was classified among the veterans. A hundred years later, a very different conviction held the field. Tolstoy tells us that his fiftieth year was the year of his greatest awakening and enlightenment; and, in _The Poet at the Breakfast Table_, Dr. Oliver Wendell Holmes makes the old master witness to something of a similar kind. His friends are anxious to know how and when he acquired his wealth of wisdom; and he is able to reply with remarkable precision: 'It was on the morning of my fiftieth birthday that the solution of life's great problem came to me. It took me just fifty years to find my place in the Eternal Order of Things.' Such testimonies go a long way towards vindicating Mr. Robertson Scott's assumption that the fiftieth birthday marks rather a new beginning than a sad, regretful close. The fiftieth birthday is Saturday morning; and who, on Saturday morning, feels that the week is over?

On the contrary, Saturday morning is, to most people, more insistent than any other morning in its demands upon their energies. Walk up the street on a Saturday afternoon, and you will see your neighbors garbed and employed as they are never garbed or employed on any other day. On Saturday we weed the garden, mow the lawn and effect the week's repairs. On Saturday we attend to a multitude of minor matters for which we have had no time during the week. On Saturday we clear up. And on Saturday night we are tired. It by no means follows, therefore, that, because a man's fiftieth birthday is his Saturday morning, his week's work is done. It is indisputable, of course, that a man of fifty has left the greater part of life behind him; he may be pardoned if he pauses at times to take long and wistful glances along the road that he has trodden; it will not be considered strange if, on very slight provocation, he drops into a rapture of reminiscence. There is a subtle stage in the development of fruit at which, having attained its full size, it ripens rapidly. A man enters upon that stage on his fiftieth birthday. A shrewd observer has said that, like peaches and pears, we grow sweet for awhile before we begin to decay. The Saturday of life is sweetening time. We become less harsh in our criticisms, less overbearing in our opinions, more considerate towards our contemporaries and more sympathetic towards our juniors. The week's work is by no means finished. Much remains to be done. But it will be done in a new spirit—a Saturday spirit. And if the man of fifty be spared to enjoy octogenarian honors, he will smile as he recalls the immaturity and unripeness of life's first five decades. It is a poor week that has no Saturday and no Sunday in it. To have finished at fifty, an old man will tell you, would have meant missing the best.

It has often struck me as an impressive coincidence that it was when Dr. Johnson was approaching his fiftieth birthday—life's Saturday morning—that he discovered a significance in Saturday that, until then, had eluded him. He felt, as we all feel on Saturdays, that the time had come to clear up, to put things in their places and to overtake neglected tasks. And this is the entry he makes in his Journal:

'Having lived, not without an habitual reverence for the Sabbath, yet without that attention to its religious duties which Christianity requires: I resolve henceforth—_First_, to rise early on Sabbath morning, and, in order to that, to go to sleep early on Saturday night. _Second_, to use some more than ordinary devotion as soon as I rise. _Third_, to examine into the tenor of my life, and particularly the last week, and to mark my advances in religion, or my recessions from it. _Fourth_, to read the Scriptures methodically, with such helps as are at hand. _Fifth_, to go to church twice. _Sixth_, to read books of divinity, either speculative or practical. _Seventh_, to instruct my family. _Eighth_, to wear off by meditation any worldly soil contracted in the week.'

The significance of this heroic record lies in the resolve that Saturday, so far from unfitting him for Sunday, shall lead up to it as a stately avenue leads up to a noble entrance-hall. 'I resolve to go to sleep early on Saturday night.' Exactly a hundred years after the great doctor had inscribed this famous entry on the pages of his Journal, Charlotte Elliott wrote her well-known hymn in praise of Saturday:

Before the Majesty of heaven To-morrow we appear; No honor half so great is given Throughout man's sojourn here.

The altar must be cleansed to-day, Meet for the offered lamb; The wood in order we must lay, And wait to-morrow's flame.

I have heard scores of sermons on _The Proper Observance of Sunday_; and, somehow, I have never been impressed by their utility. One of these days some pulpit genius will preach on _The Proper Observance of Saturday_, and then, quite conceivably, the new day will dawn.

As I lay down my pen, a pair of experiences rush back upon my mind. The one befell me at sea, the other on land.

1. In the course of a voyage from New Zealand to England it became necessary—in order to harmonize the clocks and calendars on board with the clocks and calendars ashore—to take in an extra day. We awoke one morning and it was Saturday; we awoke next morning and it was Saturday again! That second Saturday was the strangest day that I have ever spent. I never realized the extent to which Saturday leads up to Sunday as I realized it that day.

2. I once numbered among my intimate friends a Jewish rabbi. I found his society extremely delightful and wonderfully instructive. He often took me to his synagogue, showed me its treasures, and initiated me into its mysteries. It was all very beautiful and very suggestive. But I invariably came away feeling dissatisfied and disappointed. I had been gazing upon the emblems and symbols of a Saturday faith. Like that weird Saturday on board the _Tongariro_, it was a Saturday that led to a Saturday, a Saturday that ushered in nothing holier or sweeter than itself.

Saturn with all his rings is grand; but the Sun is grander still! It is from the Sun that Saturn derives his brightness and his glory. Ask Saturn the secret of his splendor, and it is to the Sun that he unhesitatingly points. As it is with these mighty orbs themselves, so is it with the days that bear their names. As Samuel Johnson and Charlotte Elliott knew so well, it is the glory of Saturday to prepare the way for Sunday. Saturday belongs to the Order of St. John the Baptist. John was the greatest of all the sons of men, yet it was his mission to clear the path for the coming of a greater. The old world's Saturday-Sabbath, commemorating a completed Creation, led up to the new world's Sunday-Sabbath, commemorating a completed Redemption. The oracles and mysteries that I saw in the synagogue, the emblems and expressions of a Saturday faith, were sublime. But their sublimity lay in the fact that they pointed men to, and prepared men for, a Sunday faith, a faith that gathers about a wondrous Cross and an empty tomb, a faith from which that Saturday faith, like Saturn bathed in sunlight, derives alike its lustre and its fame.

VI—THE CHIMES

It was Christmas Eve—an Australian Christmas Eve. To an Englishman it must always seem a weird, uncanny hotch-potch. He never grows accustomed to the scorching Christmases that come to him beneath the Southern Cross. Southey once declared that, however long a man lives, the first twenty years of his life will always represent the biggest half of it. That is indisputably so. The thoughts of youth are long, long thoughts. The first twenty years of life fasten upon our hearts sentiments and traditions that will dominate all our days. I spent my first twenty Christmases in the old land. I have spent far more than twenty in the new. Yet, whenever I find old Father Christmas wiping the perspiration from his brow as he wanders among the roses and strawberries of our fierce Australian mid-summer, I feel secretly sorry for him. He looks as jolly as ever, yet he gives you the impression of having lost his way. He seems to be casting about him for snowflakes and icicles.

But, as I was saying, it was Christmas Eve—an Australian Christmas Eve. The day had been sultry and trying. After tea I sauntered off across the fields to a spot among the fir-trees, at which I can always rely upon meeting a few grey squirrels, an old brown 'possum, and some other friends of mine. I had scarcely taken my seat on a grassy knoll, overlooking a belt of bush, when the laughing-jackasses broke into a wild, unearthly chorus in the wooded valley below. And then, a few minutes later, the cool evening air was flooded with a torrent of harmony that transported me across the years and across the seas. The squirrels, the 'possum, and the kookaburras were left leagues and leagues behind. From a lofty steeple that crowned a distant crest there floated over hill and hollow the pealing and the chiming of the bells.

The magic that slept in the lute of the Pied Piper was as nothing compared with the magic of the bells. Beneath the witchery of their music, time and space shrivel into nothingness and are no more. We are wafted to old familiar places; we see the old familiar faces; we enter into fellowship with lands far off and ages long departed. Frank Bullen heard our Australian bells. He was only a sailor-boy at the time. 'Often,' he says, 'I would stand on deck when my ship was anchored in Sydney Harbor on Sunday morning, and listen to the church bells playing "Sicilian Mariners" with a dull ache at my heart, a deep longing for something, I knew not what.' The bells, according to their wont, were annihilating time and space. Beneath the enchantment of their minstrelsy he sped, as on angels' wings, away from the realities of his rough and roving sea-life, into the quiet haven of a tender past. He was back in his old seat in a little chapel in Harrow Road. Every Englishman overseas will understand.

The bells throw bridges across the yawning chasms of space, and link up hearts that stand severed by the tyrannies of time. In his _Golden Legend_, Longfellow describes Prince Henry and Elsie standing in the twilight on the terrace of the old castle of Vautsberg on the Rhine. Suddenly they catch the strains of distant bells. Elsie asks what bells they are. The Prince replies:

They are the bells of Geisenheim, That, with their melancholy chime, Ring out the curfew of the sun.

And then he adds:

Dear Elsie, many years ago Those same soft bells at eventide Rang in the ears of Charlemagne, As, seated at Fastrada's side, At Ingelheim, in all his pride, He heard their sound with secret pain.

And so, through the melodious medium of the bells, the royal lovers on the terrace cross the long centuries that intervene and enter into fellowship with those other royal lovers of an earlier time.

I remember, many years ago, spending a few days at a beautiful country home in Hampshire. My hostess was a little old lady—_very_ little and _very_ old. I can see her now with her prim little cap, her golden earrings, and her silver ringlets. It was summer-time, and one evening she invited me to accompany her on a walk across the deer-park. She was a happy little body, and that evening she was specially vivacious. Her conversation was punctuated with pretty ripples of silvery laughter. She was too proud to confess to feeling tired; but when we reached a stile with a step to it on the brow of a hill, she took a seat upon the step—to drink in, as she was careful to explain, the beauty of the view. I perched myself upon the stile itself and watched with interest the antics of a fine stag among some oak-trees not far away. Then, all at once, the bells from the village behind us rang out blithely. For a while I listened in silence, and then turned to my companion to ask a question. On glancing down at her face, however, I was astonished to notice tears upon her cheek. What could be the matter with my gay little friend? I immediately transferred my attention to the stag, who was by this time ambling away across the park, but she knew that I had seen the tear-drops. On our way back to the house she explained.

'My mother died,' she said, 'while I was on my honeymoon in Italy. I was only a girl, and she was not much more. She was only twenty when I was born, and I was only eighteen on my wedding day. I never dreamed, when I left England, that I should never see her again. On the eve of my wedding she came up to me, put her arm round me, and led me away to spend one more hour alone with her. We sauntered off to the stile on which you and I rested this evening; and as we sat there, hand in hand, the bells pealed out just as they did to-night. And, as I listened to them just now, her face, her form, her voice, her words—the very _feeling_ of that other evening more than sixty years ago—came back upon me more vividly than they have ever done before. I could almost fancy that I was a girl again. My marriage, my children, my travels, and my long widowhood seemed all a dream. It was the bells that took me back again!'

I wonder if it was! I wonder if the great iron bells that hung in the dusty old belfry of that English hamlet knew anything of the sweet and sacred secrets that my little old friend kept locked up in that gentle heart of hers! I wonder if the bells of Geisenheim knew anything of the loves of Charlemagne and Fastrada, of Elsie and Prince Henry! I wonder if the bells that drove the squirrels from my mind that summer evening knew anything of the Christmas thoughts and Christmas memories with which they flooded my soul! I wonder!

And, in my wonderment, I find myself in excellent company. For here is little Paul Dombey! He has only a few days to live, although, to-day, he is slightly better and able to get about the house a little. And, in moving about the house, he finds a workman mending the great clock in the hall, and Paul sees an opportunity of asking a few questions. Indeed, Dickens says that he asked, not a few, but a long string of them. 'He asked the man a multitude of questions about chimes and clocks; as, whether people watched up in the lonely church steeples by night to make them strike, and how the bells were rung when people died, and whether those were different bells from wedding bells, or only _sounded_ different in the fancies of the living.' In this last question, Paul gets very near to our own. Do the bells say the things they seem to say, or do they only _seem_ to say those things? Did the bells of Geisenheim speak of love to the lovers on the castle terrace? Did the bells of that Hampshire village speak to the little old lady in the deer-park concerning the days of auld lang syne—her happy girlhood and her mother's face? Did the bells of that Australian steeple speak of the old-fashioned English Christmases as their delicious music fell on my delighted ears that summer night?

Of course not! The bells take us as they find us and set us to music; that is all! Paul Dombey, who died young, half suspected it; and Trotty Veck of _The Chimes_, who lived to be old, proved it from experience, and proved it up to the hilt. When things were going badly with Trotty and Richard and Meg, and the magistrate said that people like them should be 'put down' with the utmost rigor of the law, the chimes, when they suddenly pealed out, made the air ring with the refrain 'Put 'em down; Put 'em down; Facts and Figures; Facts and Figures! Put 'em down! Put 'em down!!' 'If,' says Dickens, 'the chimes said anything, they said this; and they said it until Trotty's brain fairly reeled.' Later on in the story, we have the same chimes, and the same people listening to them. But this time all is going well: Meg and Richard are to be married on the morrow: and Trotty is at the height of his felicity. 'Just then the bells, the old familiar bells, his own dear constant, steady friends—the chimes—began to ring. When had they ever rung like that before? They chimed out so lustily, so merrily, so happily, so gaily, that he leapt to his feet and broke the spell that bound him.' And, a few minutes later, Trotty and Richard and Meg were dancing with delight to the gay, glad music of the bells!

When they themselves were sad, the chimes seemed mournful; when they were glad, the chimes seemed blithe. 'Are they different bells?' asked little Paul Dombey, 'or do they only _sound_ different?' Paul was getting very near to the heart of a great truth; and, if only Trotty Veck and he could have talked things over together, they might have given us a philosophy of bells that would have immeasurably enriched our thought.

The chimes are among the things to which distance lends enchantment. The bells, as my little old lady and I heard them from the deer-park, were sweeter than the same bells heard in the churchyard under the belfry. In his _Cheapside to Arcady_, Mr. Arthur Scammell suggests that the music of the bells awakens the echoes of all the infinites and all the eternities. He finds himself up in the belltower. 'After the last stroke of the bell ceases to be heard down in the church,' he says, 'the sound is continued up here in a long diminuendo; and how long will it be before that vibrant hum is completely extinguished? All through the night, the air about the bells may still be throbbing with faint echoes and reverberations; and, if an hour or a night, why not a year or a century? May not even the sound of the first ringing of these old bells yet lisp against the walls and roof in infinitesimal vibrations? The tower may be alive with the thin ghosts of all the joyous and mournful notes that have endeared and embittered the sound of bells to hundreds of human hearts.' And if, following the same line of argument, the music of the bells falls so sweetly on my ear as I sit upon my grassy knoll two miles away from the steeple, who is to say that twenty miles away, a thousand miles away, the air is not trilling and trembling with their delicious melodies? It may be only because my perceptive faculties are so gross, my ears so heavy, that I do not, in this Australian pleasance of mine, catch the chimes of Big Ben and the echoes of Bow Bells. And if Mr. Scammell's philosophy be true of bells, why not of other sounds? As I ponder his striking suggestion, I find it more easy to understand that great saying that _whatsoever ye have spoken in darkness shall be heard in the light, and that which ye have whispered in the ear shall be shouted from the housetops_.

The deeds we do, the words we say, Into still air they seem to fleet; We count them past, But they shall last To the Great Judgment Day, And we shall meet!

The bells are not only _heard_ at a distance, they are _better heard_ at a distance. It is possible to get so near to them as to miss the music. In his autobiography, James Nasmyth tells us of a visit he paid to the tower of St. Giles, Edinburgh. He had often been charmed by the chimes, and longed to get nearer to them. But the experience brought a rude disillusionment. 'The frantic movements of the musician as he rushed wildly from one key to another, often widely apart, gave me the idea that the man was mad, while the banging of his mallets completely drowned the music of the chimes.' It is possible to get too near to things. You do not see the grandeur of a mountain as you recline upon its slopes. The disciples were too near to Jesus; that explains some of the most poignant tragedies of the New Testament. A minister, through constant association with the sublimities of divine truth, may lose the vision of their eternal grandeur. And, unless things in the manse are very carefully managed, the members of a minister's family may easily suffer through being too near to things. They do not see the mountain in its grand perspective. The banging of the mallets drowns the music of the bells.

One beautiful June evening, years ago, I was walking along the banks of the Thames. It was Saturday night; I had undertaken to preach at Twickenham on the Sunday. All at once I was arrested by the pealing of the bells. Strangers stopped each other to inquire why the belfries had become vocal at that strange hour. We learned later that the bells were proclaiming the birth of an heir to the British throne. A prince had been born at White Lodge, just across the river! Well might the bells peal that night!

Well, too, may the bells peal on Christmas Eve! I like to think that, over the birth of _that_ babe, born in Bethlehem, and cradled in a manger, more bells have been rung than over all the princes since the world began. The Chinese cherish a lovely legend concerning the great bell at Pekin. The Emperor, they say, sent for Kuan-Yin, the caster of the bells, and described the bell that he desired. It was to be larger than any bell ever made, and its tone more beautiful. Its music was to be heard a hundred miles away. Great honors were to be heaped upon the bell-maker if he succeeded; a cruel death was to follow his failure. Kuan-Yin set to work; he mixed the costliest metals; he labored night and day; and at last he finished the bell. He tested it, and was disappointed. He tried again, and was again mortified. He was at his wits' end. Then Ko-ai, his beautiful daughter, consulted an astrologer. The oracle assured her that, if the blood of a fair virgin mingled with the molten metals, the music would ravish the ears of every listener. Ko-ai returned to the foundry; and, when the glowing metal poured white-hot from the furnace, she plunged into the shining bath before her. The music of the great bell, the Easterns say, is the music of her sacrifice. It is only an Oriental myth; but it strangely helps me to interpret to my heart the solemn sweetness that I recognize in all these Christmas chimes.

VII—'BE SHOD WITH SANDALS'

Is there anything fresh to be said by way of a charge to a young minister? I confess that, until this morning, I thought not. But this morning, to my inexpressible delight, I struck a vein that, so far as I know, has never yet been exploited. On these solemn and impressive occasions, we have talked about the minister's _scholarship_ and the minister's _spirituality_ until we have come to feel that we have completely exhausted that line of things. And in the process we have given the awkward impression that the minister, so far from being made of pretty much the same stuff as the butcher, the baker, and the candlestick-maker, is a kind of biological monstrosity consisting of a very big head and a very big heart—and of _nothing else_!

But this morning I made a discovery. Before delivering a charge to a young minister, I took the precaution to have a good look at him. And I found to my surprise that, in addition to the head and the heart upon which we have always laid such inordinate emphasis, he also possesses a fine pair of legs with a substantial pair of feet at the end of them! Nobody could have supposed from the most careful perusal of all the ministerial charges in our literature, that any minister was ever before known to possess these useful appendages; but there they are! I saw them with my own eyes! Perhaps those who delivered the great classical charges only saw the young minister in the pulpit, in which case the limbs which I this morning discovered would naturally be invisible. Like the feet of the seraphim in the prophet's vision, they would be modestly concealed. But, though hidden, they exist; and it occurred to me that a few very useful things could be said concerning them. Why should it be considered _infra dig._, I should like to know, to talk about people's feet, and especially about a minister's feet? The Bible has no hesitation in talking about them. 'How beautiful upon the mountains,' said the prophet, 'are _the feet_ of him that bringeth good tidings, that publisheth peace; that bringeth good tidings of good, that publisheth salvation; that saith unto Zion, Thy God reigneth.' And did not the Master Himself, when He ordained His first disciples, deliver to them this striking charge? '_Take no shoes_,' He said, '_but be shod with sandals!_' The African natives thought of Livingstone's boots as a contrivance for carpeting all the slave-tracks of Africa with leather, so that he might walk harmlessly and painlessly along them; and when the Saviour tells His first disciples to be shod with sandals I fancy I see miles and miles of meaning in those arresting words.

'_Be shod with sandals!_' It is an appeal for ministerial simplicity. There were three classes of people in Palestine. The slaves went barefoot; the grandees wore elaborate shoes; the working classes wore sandals. The sandals were simple, serviceable, and strong. Therefore, said the Master to His men, '_be shod with sandals!_' The line of simplicity is invariably the line of strength. Gibbon has shown us that it is the simplest architecture that has defied both the vandalism of the barbarians and the teeth of time. Macaulay has proved that it is the simplest language that lasts longest. John Bunyan's books threaten to survive all later literature. Why? 'The style of Bunyan,' Macaulay says, 'is delightful to every reader, and is invaluable as a study to every person who wishes to obtain a wide command over the English language. The vocabulary is the vocabulary of the common people. There is not an expression which would puzzle the rudest peasant. Several pages do not contain a single word of more than two syllables. Yet no writer has said more exactly what he meant to say. For magnificence; for pathos; for vehement exhortation; for subtle disquisition; for every purpose of the poet, the orator and the divine; this homely dialect, the dialect of plain working men, was perfectly sufficient. There is no book in our literature on which we would so readily stake the fame of the old unpolluted English language, no book which shows so well how rich that language is in its own proper wealth, and how little it has been improved by all that it has borrowed.' It is ever so. The simplest language is the strongest language, and the simplest lives are the strongest lives. In his 'Ode on the Death of the Duke of Wellington,' Tennyson says that the illustrious Duke was rich in saving commonsense.

And as the greatest only are In his simplicity sublime.

Wherefore, said the Master, avoid the vulgarities of the slave market on the one hand, and the stilted affectations of the schools on the other. Let simplicity ally itself with strength. '_Be shod with sandals!_'

It is a great thing for Christ's minister to eschew this vice of extremes. All through the ages the pendulum of ecclesiastical fashion has been swinging between bare feet and golden slippers. From the excessive worship of unholy revelries, to which the Roman world was abandoned, the Christians of the first century went to the opposite extremity, and courted persecution by their rigid abstinence from, and their severe condemnation of, the most legitimate and necessary pleasures. Back again swung the pendulum, until the churches became the scenes of voluptuous luxury and extravagance. We read on, and the next chapters of our ecclesiastical histories bring us to the story of the monks and the hermits. We no sooner discover an age of unexampled self-indulgence, than we straightway come upon the Puritanism that banned _Pilgrim's Progress_ as a wanton frivolity, and that denounced the _Fairy Queen_ as a wicked and devilish invention! And so we go on. One day Christ's minister would go bare-footed like a slave; the next he must needs affect a pair of golden slippers. There was a time when the Church gloried in her poverty; her emissaries wore no shoes on their feet; they dressed in rags and tatters; they ate the berries of the hedgerow; they drank the waters of the wayside spring. And then, hey presto, the scene is changed. The Church gloried in her wealth. All the world paid tribute to the Popes. Rome rolled in riches; and her proud bishop, Innocent the Fourth, laughed as he looked upon his countless hoards and boasted that never again need the Church lament that of silver and gold she had none! Here is the Church going barefooted like a slave; and here is the Church mincing in golden slippers; and neither spectacle is an edifying one. The Master urges His men to avoid both the bare feet and the golden slippers. Let your moderation be known unto all men. _Be shod with sandals!_

It is the solemn and imperative duty of a Christian minister to conserve both the dignity and the modesty of holy things. A certain offence in the ancient law was to be punished by the deprivation of dignity. '_Thou shalt loose his shoe from off his foot, and his name shall be called in Israel, the house of him that hath his shoe loosed._' Those who have carefully read that graceful and dramatic story unfolded in the Book of Ruth know the bitterness of that reproach. The man whose shoes were publicly removed was like an officer whose stripes are taken from his arm in the sight of the whole regiment. He became an object of derision and contempt. Anyone, Dr. Samuel Cox points out, might laugh at him and call him 'Old Baresole,' and his family would be stigmatized as the family of a barefooted vagabond. _Be shod with sandals!_ says the Master. Do not expose the Church to the contempt of the multitude! Conserve her dignity! Cast not her pearls before swine! Nor is such dignity inconsistent with simplicity. Dr. Johnson penning from his modest room at Gough Square, that famous letter in which he proudly declined the patronage of the Earl of Chesterfield, makes a much more dignified picture than the gilded aristocrat who tardily fawned to the great man's fame. And George Gissing has shown that the solitaries of Port Royal, reading and praying in their poor apartments, cut a much more stately figure in history than his refulgent Majesty, King Louis the Fourteenth, strutting among the palatial chambers and the spacious gardens of Versailles. When I see the ministers of Christ organizing nail-driving competitions for women, and hat-trimming competitions for men, in order to replenish a depleted treasury, I remember what Jesus said about the sandals. He pleaded with His men not to expose His Church to contempt. It is better to do things modestly and preserve the Church's dignity than to swell her funds and make her an object of derision. It is better to wear sandals and be respected than to wear golden slippers and provoke disgust.

Modesty and dignity invariably go together. Every man who aspires to the Christian ministry should read every word that Charles Dickens ever wrote. In the course of that humanizing process he will then come upon that terrible fourth chapter of _The Uncommercial Traveller_. It is the most powerful appeal for ministerial modesty in our literature. Can any man read without a shudder that revolting description of evangelistic bluster? And who is he that can read without tenderness that closing appeal of the novelist to preachers? He entreats us to remember the twelve poor men whom Jesus chose, and to model our behavior, our language, our style, and our choice of illustration on the exquisite simplicity and charming grace of the New Testament records.

But we must sound yet a deeper depth. '_Be shod with sandals!_' said the Master. Now sandals are easily slipped _off_ and easily slipped _on_. And why should the minister be ready, at a moment's notice, to bare his feet? The man who has read his Bible knows. There came to Moses the Vision of the Burning Bush. 'And the Lord said unto Moses, I am the God of thy father, the God of Abraham, the God of Isaac, and the God of Jacob. Draw not nigh hither; _put off thy shoes_ from off thy feet, for the place whereon thou standest is holy ground.' And when Moses the servant of the Lord died, the Vision of the Captain of the Lord's Host came to Joshua. 'And Joshua fell on his face to the earth, and did worship, and said unto him, What saith my Lord unto his servant? And the captain of the Lord's host said unto Joshua, _Loose thy shoe_ from off thy foot; for the place whereon thou standest is holy. And Joshua did so.' '_Be shod with sandals_,' said the Master, so that, the moment the vision comes, you may be ready adoringly to welcome it. Nothing in the ministry is more important than that the minister should keep in touch with his dreams, with his visions, with his revelations. The tragedy of the ministry is reached when we lace up our elaborate shoes and say good-bye to the place of open vision. We never expect again to behold the glory. The ashes are black on the altar of the soul, the altar on which the sacred fires once blazed. The light has gone out of the eye and the ring of passion has forsaken the voice. '_Be shod with sandals!_' said the Master to His men. 'Take no shoes, but be shod with sandals.' The vision that led you into the ministry may come again and again and again. _Be shod with sandals_ that you may be ready for the revelation!

Yes, ready for the _Revelation_ and ready, also, for the _Road_! For sandals are easily _slipped on_. And the minister must expect the call of the road at any moment. He must be at home in the silence; he must be ready for the revelation, but he must not become a recluse. That was what Longfellow meant by his _Legend Beautiful_. The vision appeared to the monk in his cell, and he worshipped in its wondrous presence. Then he remembered the hungry at the convent gate.

Should he slight his radiant guest, Slight his visitant celestial, For a crowd of ragged, bestial Beggars at the convent gate? Would the Vision there remain? Would the Vision come again?

A voice within bade him go and feed the hungry in the road outside,

Do thy duty; that is best Leave unto thy Lord the rest.

He went; and when he returned he found to his delight that the Vision was still there.

Through the long hours intervening, It had waited his return, And he felt his bosom burn, Comprehending all the meaning, When the blessed Vision said: 'Hads't thou stayed, I must have fled!'

'_Be shod with sandals!_' said the Master; so that at a moment's notice, you may slip them _off_ to welcome the vision or slip them _on_ to take to the road. The crest of the Baptist Missionary Society is a picture of an ox between a plough and an altar, while, underneath the symbols, are the words '_Ready for Either!_' The ox is ready for service in the field or for sacrifice in the temple. Christ's minister stands between the glory and the majesty of things divine on the one hand and all the paths and the prose of human life on the other. He must be ready at any moment to enter into fellowship with the skies; and he must be ready at any moment to hurry forth to see a sick child, to comfort a broken-hearted woman or to share the burden of a man whose load is greater than he can bear. '_Be shod with sandals_'; so that, whether the Revelation or the Road shall call, you are ready for either. The ministry is neither mundane nor monastic; the minister wears sandals that he may keep in touch with two worlds.

Let me live in my house by the side of the road, Where the race of men go by; They are good, they are bad, they are weak, they are strong, Wise, foolish. So am I.

Let me turn not away from their smiles nor their tears,— Both parts of an infinite plan,— Let me live in my house by the side of the road, And be a friend to man!

And there, in his house by the side of the road, the minister will welcome his wondrous visions, and will take good care to _be shod with sandals_. Gurnall concludes the first volume of his great work in _The Christian Armour_ with 'Six Directions for the Helping On of this Spiritual Shoe'; but the man who is wise enough to wear sandals stands in no need of any such elaborate instructions.