Part 4 (1/2)

He it is that ”worketh in you.” The buds of our nature are not all out yet; the sap to make them comes from the G.o.d who made us, from the indwelling Christ. Our bodies are the temples of the Holy Ghost, and we must bear this in mind, because the sense of G.o.d is kept up, not by logic, but by experience.

Until she was seven years of age the life of Helen Keller, the Boston girl who was deaf and dumb and blind, was an absolute blank; nothing could go into that mind because the ears and eyes were closed to the outer world. Then by that great process which has been discovered, by which the blind see, and the deaf hear, and the mute speak, that girl's soul became opened, and they began to put in little bits of knowledge, and bit by bit they began to educate her. They reserved her religious instruction for Phillips Brooks.

After some years, when she was twelve years old, they took her to him and he began to talk to her through the young lady who could communicate with her by the exceedingly delicate process of touch.

He began to tell her about G.o.d and what He had done, and how He loved men, and what He is to us. The child listened very intelligently, and finally said:

”Mr. Brooks, I knew all that before, but I didn't know His name.”

How often we have felt something within us impelling us to do something which we would not have conceived of by ourselves, or enabling us to do something which we could not have done alone.

”It is G.o.d which worketh in you.” This great simple fact

Explains many of the mysteries of life,

and takes away the fear which we would otherwise have in meeting the difficulties which lie before us.

Two Americans who were crossing the Atlantic met on Sunday night to sing hymns in the cabin. As they sang the hymn, ”Jesus, Lover of my Soul,” one of the Americans heard an exceedingly rich and beautiful voice behind him. He looked around, and although he did not know the face he thought that he recognized the voice. So when the music ceased he turned and asked the man if he had not been in the Civil war. The man replied that he had been a Confederate soldier. ”Were you at such a place on such a night?” asked the first. ”Yes,” he said, ”and a curious thing happened that night; this hymn recalled it to my mind. I was on sentry duty on the edge of the wood. It was a dark night and very cold, and I was a little frightened because the enemy was supposed to be very near at hand. I felt very homesick and miserable, and about midnight, when everything was very still, I was beginning to feel very weary and thought that I would comfort myself by praying and singing a hymn. I remember singing this hymn,

'All my trust on Thee is stayed, All my help from Thee I bring, Cover my defenceless head With the shadow of Thy wing.'

After I had sung those words a strange peace came down upon me, and through the long night I remember having felt no more fear.”

”Now,” said the other man, ”listen to my story. I was a Union soldier, and was in the wood that night with a party of scouts. I saw you standing up, although I didn't see your face, and my men had their rifles focused upon you waiting the word to fire, but when you sang out,

'Cover my defenceless head With the shadow of Thy wing.'

I said, 'Boys, put down your rifles, we will go home.' I couldn't kill you after that.”

G.o.d was working in each of them, in His own way carrying out His will. G.o.d keeps his people and guides them and without Him life is but a living death.

III.

The third element in life about which I wish to speak is LOVE.

In this picture we notice the delicate sense of companions.h.i.+p, brought out by the young man and the young woman. It matters not whether they are brother and sister, or lover and loved; there you have the idea of friends.h.i.+p, the final ingredient in our life, after the two I have named. If the man or the woman had been standing in that field alone it would have been incomplete.

Love is the divine element in life, because ”G.o.d is love.” ”He that loveth is born of G.o.d,” therefore, as some one has said, let us ”keep our friends.h.i.+ps in repair.” Let us cultivate the spirit of friends.h.i.+p, and let the love of Christ develop it into a great love, not only for our friends, but for all humanity. Wherever you go and whatever you do, your work will be a failure unless you have this element in your life.

These three things go far toward forming a well-rounded life. Some of us may not have these ingredients in their right proportion, but if you are lacking in one or the other of them, then pray for it and work for it that your life may be rounded and complete as G.o.d intended it should be.

Pax Vobisc.u.m.

I once heard a sermon by a distinguished preacher upon ”Rest.”

It was full of beautiful thoughts; but when I came to ask myself, ”How does he say I can get Rest?” there was no answer. The sermon was sincerely meant to be practical, yet it contained no experience that seemed to me to be tangible, nor any advice that I could grasp--any advice, that is to say, which could help me to find the thing itself as I went about the world.

Yet this omission of what is, after all, the only important problem, was not the fault of the preacher. The whole popular religion is in the twilight here. And when pressed for really working specifics for the experiences with which it deals, it falters, and seems to lose itself in mist.

The want of connection between the great words of religion and every-day life has bewildered and discouraged all of us. Christianity possesses the n.o.blest words in the language; its literature overflows with terms expressive of the greatest and happiest moods which can fill the soul of man. Rest, Joy, Peace, Faith, Love, Light--these words occur with such persistency in hymns and prayers that an observer might think they formed the staple of Christian experience.

But on coming to close quarters with the actual life of most of us, how surely would he be disenchanted. I do not think we ourselves are aware of how much our religious life is