Part 8 (1/2)
You are still part of my flock, you know.”
So they talked of anything and everything. By and by Marty said he must go over to the library, and pretty soon J.W. was telling his friend the pastor all that had been disturbing him.
”It all began in the summer before I came to college, at the Inst.i.tute here, you know, when you spoke at the camp fire on Sat.u.r.day night.”
”I remember,” the pastor replied. ”You hadn't taken much interest in your future work before that?”
”No real interest, I guess,” J.W. admitted. ”I'd always taken things as they came, and didn't go looking for what I couldn't see. I was enjoying every day's living, and didn't care deeply about anything else. Why, though I've been a Methodist all my life, you remember how I knew nothing at all about the Methodist Church outside of Delafield, except what little I picked up about its Sunday schools by serving as an a.s.sistant to our Sunday school secretary. And when I began to hear, at the Inst.i.tute, about home missions and foreign missions, about Negro education and other business that the church was doing, I saw right off that it was up to us young people to supply the new workers that were always needed. But, even so, only those who had a real fitness for it ought to offer themselves, and I thought too that something else would be needed. I wasn't any duller than lots of other church members--even the older ones didn't seem to know much more about the church outside than I did. You would take up collections for the benevolences, but if you told us what they meant, we didn't pay enough attention to get the idea clearly, so as to have any real understanding. I suppose the women's societies had more. I know my mother talks about Industrial Homes in the South, and schools in India--she's in both the societies, you know--but that is about all.”
”And it seemed when I began to find out about things, Mr. Drury, that if our whole church needed workers for all these places, it needed just as much to have in the local churches men and women who would know about the work in a big way, and who would care in a big way, to back up the whole work as it should be backed up. So, when you spoke at the camp fire it was just what I wanted to hear, and when I was called on, I made that sort of a declaration the next day at the life decision services.”
”Yes I remember that too,” said Mr. Drury, ”and I remember telling Joe Carbrook that you had undertaken as big a career as any of them.”
”That's what I kind of thought too,” said J.W., simply, ”but rooming with Marty Shenk--he's going to make a great preacher too--keeps me thinking, and I know about all the students who are getting ready for special work, and lately I've been wondering----”
”About some special sort of work you'd like to do?” Mr. Drury prompted.
”No; not that at all. I'm just as sure as ever I'm not that sort. If only I can make good in business, there's where I belong. But can a fellow make good just as a Christian in the same way I expect Marty Shenk to make good as a Christian preacher?”
The pastor stood up and came over to J.W.'s chair. ”My boy, I know just what you are facing. It is a pretty old struggle, and there's only one way out of it. G.o.d hasn't any first place and second place for the people that let him guide them. A man may refuse his call, either to go or to stay, and then no matter what he does it will be a second best.
But you--wait for your call. For my part, I think probably you've got it, and it's to a very real life. If you and those like you should fail, we should soon have no more missionaries. And if the missionaries should fail, we should soon have no more church. G.o.d has little patience with a church that always stays at home, and I doubt if he has more for a church that doesn't stand by the men and women it has sent to the outposts. It is all one job.”
There was much more of the same sort, and when J.W. walked with his pastor to the train the next morning, the only doubt that had ever really disturbed him in college was quieted for good.
Walter Drury went back to Delafield and his work, surer now than ever that the Experiment was going forward. He knew, certainly, that all this was only the getting ready; that the real tests would come later But he was well content.
It was early football season of the junior year. The State University took on Cartwright College for the first Sat.u.r.day's game, everybody well knowing that it was only a practice romp for the University. Always a big time for Cartwright, this year it was a day for remembering. Joe Carbrook, who had been graduated from the University in June, and was now a medical student in the city, drove down to see the game. For loyalty's sake he joined the little bunch of University rooters on the east stand. Otherwise it was Cartwright's crowd, as well as Cartwright's day.
To the surprise of everybody, neither side scored until the last quarter, and then both sides made a touchdown, Cartwright first! A high tricky wind spoiled both attempts to kick goal, and time was called with a score at 6-6. Cartwright had held State to a tie, for the first time in history!
Joe came from the game with the chums and took supper with them. The whole town was ablaze with excitement over its team's great showing against the State, and the talk at table was all of the way Cartwright's eleven could now go romping down the schedule and take every other college into camp, including, of course, Barton Poly, their dearest foe.
The boys were happy to have Joe with them, he looked so big and fine, and had the same easy, breezy bearing as of old. Nor had he lost any of that frank att.i.tude toward his own career which never failed to interest everybody he met. After supper they had an hour together in the room.
”Those boys in the medical school surely do amuse me,” he laughed. ”When I tell 'em I'm to be a missionary doctor, which I do first thing to give 'em sort of a shock they don't often get, they stand off and say, 'What, you!' as if I had told 'em I was to be a traffic cop, or a trapeze artist in the circus. Some of 'em seem to think I'm queer in the head, but, boys, they are the ones with rooms to let. When the others talk about hanging out a s.h.i.+ngle in Chicago or Saint Louis or Cleveland or some other over-doctored place, I tell 'em to watch me, when I'm the only doctor between Siam and sunrise! Won't I be somebody? With my own hospital--made out o' mud, I know--and a dispensary and a few native helpers who don't know what I'm going to do next, and all the sick people coming from ten days' journey away to the foreign doctor!” And then his mood changed. ”That's what'll get me, though; all those helpless, ignorant humans who don't even know what I can do for their bodies, let alone having any suspicion of what Somebody Else can do for their souls! But it will be wonderful; next thing to being with him in Galilee!”
There was a pause, each boy filling it with thoughts he would not speak.
”Where do you expect to find that work, Joe?” J.W. asked him.
The answer was quick and straight: ”Wherever I'm sent, J.W., boy,” he said. ”Only I've told the candidate secretary what I want. I met him last summer in Chicago, and there's nothing like getting in your bid early. He's agreed to recommend me, when I'm ready, for the hardest, neediest, most neglected place that's open. If I'm going into this missionary doctor business, I want a chance to prove Christianity where they won't be able to say that Christianity couldn't have done it alone.
It _can_!”
Then, with one of those quick turns which were Joe Carbrook's devices for concealing his feelings, he said, ”And how's everything going at this Methodist college of yours? Your boys put up a beautiful game to-day, and they ought to have won. How's the rest of the school?”
Both the boys a.s.sured him everything was going in a properly satisfactory fas.h.i.+on, but Marty had caught one word that he wanted Joe to enlarge upon.
”Why do you say 'Methodist college'? It is a Methodist college; but is there anything the matter with that?”
Joe rose to the mild challenge. ”Don't think I mean to be nasty,” he said, ”but I can't help comparing this place with the State University, and I wonder if there's any big reason for such colleges as this. You know they all have a hard time, and the State spends dollars to the church's dimes.”