Chapter IX: Part III: I—we Are Seven! (2)

'Dear me,' you say, 'poor old Mary Smith is dead!' The announcement brings with it, as such announcements have a way of doing, a rush of reminiscence. A simple old soul was Mary Smith. She was very good to us, five and twenty years ago, when the children were all small and sicknesses were frequent. Mary always knew exactly what to do. But we moved away, and the years went by. Letter-writing was not in Mary's line. With the obituary notice still before us, we talk of Mary and the old days for awhile, and then we suddenly remember that, when we came away, Mary gave us her photograph. It was a quaint, old-fashioned picture; it had been taken some years earlier; but we were glad to have it, and we put it with the others. We must slip up and get it! But it, too, has vanished! Somehow, Mary _living_ did not seem quite so pathetic and lovable a figure as Mary _dead_. At some spring-cleaning we must have glanced at the creased and faded portrait, and, without pausing to allow memory to do such vivid work as she has done to-day, we must have tossed it out. We feel horribly ashamed. If only we could recover the old photograph we would stand it on the mantelpiece and do it signal honor. And to think that, in the confusion of cleaning-up, we threw it out, perhaps tore it up, perhaps even burned it. We shudder at the thought, and half hope that, in her new and larger life, Mary—who seems nearer to us now than she did before we read of her passing—does not know that we were guilty of treachery so base.

Thus there come into our lives moments when photographs assert their worth and insist on being appraised at their true value. In the stirring chapter in which Sir Ernest Shackleton tells of the loss of his ship among the ice-floes, he describes an incident that must have set all his readers thinking. In the grip of the ice, the _Endurance_ had been smashed to splinters; and the entire party were out on a frozen sea at the mercy of the pitiless elements. Shackleton came to the conclusion that their best chance of eventually sighting land lay in marching to the opposite extremity of the floe; at any rate, it would give them something to do, and there is always solace in activity. He thereupon ordered his men to reduce their personal baggage to two pounds weight each. For the next few hours every man was busy in sorting out his belongings—the treasures that he had saved from the ship. It was a heart-breaking business. Men stole gloomily and silently away and dug little graves in the snow, to which they committed books, letters, and various nicknacks of sentimental value. And, when the final decisions had to be made, they threw away their little hoards of golden sovereigns and kept the photographs of their sweethearts and wives!

The same perplexity arises, sooner or later, in relation to the portraits and pictures on our walls. They become obsolete; but we find it difficult to order their removal. I had intended, long before this, devoting an essay to the whole subject of _Pictures_. Why must we smother our walls with pictures? To begin with, the pattern of the paper is often a series of pictures in itself, while the dado and the border simply add to the collection. Then, over these, we carefully arrange a multitude of others. Paintings, engravings, and photographs hang everywhere. Why do we cover the walls in this way? The answer is that we cover the walls in order to cover the walls. The walls represent an imprisonment; the pictures represent an escape. On the wall in front of me, for example, there hangs a water-color sketch of Piripiki Gorge, our New Zealand holiday resort. On a winter's night, when the rain is lashing against the windows and the wind shrieking round the house, I glance up at it, and, by some magic transition, I am roaming on a summer's evening over the old familiar hills with my gun in my hand and John Broadbanks by my side. Through the medium of those landscapes, how many tireless excursions have I taken, by copse and beach and riverbank, without so much as rising from my chair? The photographs hanging here and there around the room transport my mind to other days and other places. The apartment in which I sit may be extremely small, just as the space that I occupy on the summit of a mountain may be extremely small. But, occupying that small space upon that lofty eminence, I command a view that loses itself in infinity; and, lounging in my comfortable chair in this little snuggery of mine, the pictures transform it into an observatory, and I am able to survey the entire universe. You do not hang pictures in the cells of a jail; the reason is obvious; you do not wish the prisoners to escape; you think it good that they should feel the stern tyranny of those four uncompromising walls. Conversely, you deck the dining-room with pictures because, there, you do _not_ desire to feel imprisoned; you do _not_ wish the walls to seem tyrannical. As Mr. Stirling Bowen sings:

Four walls enclose men, yet how calm they are!
They hang up pictures that they may forget
What walls are for in part, forget how far
They may not run and riotously let
Their laughter taunt the never-changing stars.

In circus cages wolves and tigers pace
For ever to and fro. They do not rest,
But seek so nervously the longed-for place.
Our picture-jungles would not end their quest,
Or pictures of another tiger's face.

On four square walls men have their world, their strife,
Their painted, framed endeavors, joys and pain;
And two curators known as man and wife
Hang up the sunrise, wipe the dust from rain,
And gaze excitedly on painted life.

A picture on the wall is like a window—only more so! A window looks out on the garden or the street; a picture is an opening into infinity. The view from my window is controlled by circumstances. I cannot, for example, live in this Australian home of mine and command, from my window, a view of York Minster, the Bridge of Sighs, or the Rocky Mountains. And, even if I could, the darkness of each night would enfold the pleasing prospect in its sombre and impenetrable veil. But the pictures do for me what windows could never do. By means of the pictures I cut holes in the walls and look out upon any landscape that takes my fancy. And, when evening comes, I draw the blinds, illumine the room from within, and the panorama that has so delighted me in the day-time reveals fresh charms in the softer radiance of the lamps.

We all owe more to pictures than we have ever yet begun to suspect. Here is a merry young romp of a schoolboy, of tousle-head and swarthy face; loving the open-air and hating books like poison. A lady gives him a ponderous volume, and he turns away with a sneer. But one day he casually opens it. There is a colored picture. It represents Robinson Crusoe and his man Friday in the midst of one of their most exciting adventures. The boy—George Borrow—seized the book, carried it off, and never rested until he had read it from cover to cover. It opened his eyes to the possibilities of literature; and, to his dying day, he declared that, but for that colored print, the world would never have heard his name or read a line from his pen. Nor is this all. For it is probable that, in infancy, our minds receive their first bias towards—or away from—sacred things from the pictures of biblical subjects and biblical characters that are then, wisely or unwisely, exposed to our gaze. The Face that, in the secret chambers of our hearts, we think of as the Face of Jesus is, in all likelihood, the Face that we saw in the first picture-book that mother showed us.

But I fear that I have wandered. I set out to talk, not so much about pictures, as about photographs—photographs in general and old photographs in particular. Have photographs—and especially old photographs—no ethical or spiritual value? Is there a man living who has not, at some time, felt himself rebuked by eyes that looked down at him from a frame on the wall? I often feel, in relation to the photographs around the room, as Tennyson felt in relation to the spirits of those whom he had loved long since and lost awhile. It is lovely to think that those who have passed from our sight are not, in reality, far from us. And yet—

Do we indeed desire the dead
Should still be near us at our side?
Is there no baseness we would hide?
No inner vileness that we dread?

Shall he for whose applause I strove,
I had such reverence for his blame,
See with clear eye some hidden shame
And I be lessen'd in his love?

Who has not been conscious of a similar feeling under the searching glances of the eyes upon the wall? They seem at times to pierce our very souls. Tennyson came at last to the comfortable assurance that the shrinking fear with which he thought of his dead friends was not justified. For, he reflected, those who have gone out of the dusk into the daylight have acquired, not only a loftier purity, but a larger charity.

I wrong the grave with fears untrue:
Shall love be blamed for want of faith?
There must be wisdom with great Death:
The dead shall look me thro' and thro'.

Be near us when we climb or fall:
Ye watch, like God, the rolling hours
With larger other eyes than ours,
To make allowance for us all.

It is pleasant to transfer that thought to the photographs around the room. They hang there all day and every day; they hear all that we say and see all that we do; those quiet eyes seem to read us narrowly. Yet if, on the one hand, they see more in these secret souls of ours to _blame_, it is possible that, on the other, they see more to _pity_. The judgements that we most dread are the judgements of those who only partly understand. The drunkard shrinks from the eyes of those who see his debauchery but know nothing of his temptation. There is something wonderfully comforting and strengthening in the clear eyes of those who see, not a part merely, but the whole.

Charles Simeon, of Cambridge, adorned his study wall with a fine picture of Henry Martyn. It is very difficult to say which of the two owed most to the other. In the days when he was groping after the light, Henry Martyn—then a student—fell under the influence of Mr. Simeon, and no other minister helped him so much. But, later on, when Henry Martyn was illumining the Orient with the light of the gospel, his magnetic personality and heroic example exerted a remarkable authority over the ardent mind of the eminent Cambridge scholar. Mr. Simeon began to feel that, in some subtle and inexplicable way, the portrait on the wall was influencing his whole life. The picture was more than a picture. A wave of reverential admiration swept over him whenever he glanced up at it. He caught himself talking to it, and it seemed to speak to him. His biographer says that 'Mr. Simeon used to observe of Martyn's picture, while looking up at it with affectionate earnestness, as it hung over his fireplace: "There! see that blessed man! What an expression of countenance! No one looks at me as he does! He never takes his eyes off me, and seems always to be saying: _Be serious! Be in earnest! Don't trifle! don't trifle!_" Then smiling at the picture and gently bowing, he added: "_And I won't trifle; I won't trifle!_"' His friends always felt that the photograph over the fireplace was one of the most profound and effective influences in the life and work of Charles Simeon; and nobody who treasures a few reproving and inspiring pictures of the kind will have the slightest difficulty in believing it.

The photographs upon my wall are never tyrannical; else why should I prefer them to the cold, imprisoning walls? But, though never tyrannical, they are always authoritative. They speak, not harshly, but firmly. In the nature of the case, these are the faces I revere—the faces of those whom I have enthroned within my heart. Being enthroned, they command. They sometimes say _Thou shalt_: they sometimes say _Thou shalt not_. They sometimes suggest; they sometimes prohibit.

And now, before I lay down my pen, shall I reveal the circumstance that led me to this train of thought? I am writing at Easter-time. On Good Friday a lady presented me with an exquisitely sad but unspeakably beautiful picture—a picture of the Thorn-crowned Face. Where am I to hang it? It will insist, tenderly but firmly, on a suitable and harmonious environment. Henry Drummond used to tell of a Cambridge undergraduate whose sweetheart visited his room. She found its walls covered with pictures of actresses and racehorses. She said nothing, but, on his birthday, presented him with a picture like this. A year later she again called on him at Cambridge. The Thorn-crowned Face hung over the fireplace; and the other walls were adorned with charming landscapes and reproductions of famous paintings. He caught her glancing at her gift.

'It's made a great difference to the room,' he said; 'what's more, it's made a great difference _in me_!'

That is a way our pictures have. They insist on ruling everything and everybody. I have no right to enthrone a despot in my home; nor to exalt a Thorn-crowned King unless I am prepared to make Him Lord of all.

V—A BOX OF BLOCKS

I

We had a birthday at our house to-day, and among the presents was a beautiful box of blocks. Each block represented one of the letters of the alphabet. As I saw them being arranged and rearranged upon the table, I fell a-thinking. For the alphabet has, in our time, come to its own. We go through life muttering an interminable and incomprehensible jargon of initials. We tack initials on to our names—fore and aft—and we like to see every one of them in its place. As soon as I open my eyes in the morning, the postman hands me a medley of circulars, postcards and letters. One of them bids me attend the annual meeting of the S.P.C.A.; another reminds me of the monthly committee meeting of the M.C.M.; a third asks me to deliver an address at the P.S.A. In the afternoon I rush from an appointment at the Y.M.C.A. to speak on behalf of the W.C.T.U.; and then, having dropped in to pay my insurance premium at the A.M.P., I take the tram at the G.P.O., and ask the conductor to drop me at the A.B.C. I have accepted an invitation to a pleasant little function there—an invitation that is clearly marked R.S.V.P. And so on. There is no end to it. Life may be defined as a small amount of activity entirely surrounded by the letters of the alphabet.

Now the alphabet has a symbolism of its own. The man who coined the phrase '_as simple as A.B.C._' went mad; he went mad before he coined it. There are, it is true, a few simplicities sprinkled among the intricacies of this old world of ours; but the alphabet is not one of them. I protest that it is most unfair to call the alphabet simple. Nobody likes to be thought simple nowadays; see how frantically we preachers struggle to avoid any suspicion of the kind! Any man living would rather be called a sinner—or even a saint—than a simpleton. Why, then, affront the alphabet, which, as we have seen, is working a prodigious amount of overtime in our service, by applying to it so very opprobrious an epithet?

'_As simple as A.B.C._,' indeed! Macaulay's schoolboy may not have been as omniscient as the historian would lead us to believe, but he at least knew that there is nothing simple about the A.B.C. The alphabet is the hardest lesson that a child is called upon to learn. Latin roots, algebraic equations, and the _Pons Asinorum_ are mere nothings in comparison. Grown-ups have short memories. They forget the stupendous difficulties that they surmounted in their earliest infancy; and their forgetfulness renders them pitiless and unsympathetic. Few of us recognize the strain in which a child's brain is involved when, for the first time, he confronts the alphabet. The whole thing is so arbitrary; there is no clue. In his noble essay on _The Evolution of Language_, Professor Henry Drummond shows that the alphabet is really a picture-gallery. 'First,' he says, 'there was the onomatopoetic writing, the ideograph, the imitation of the actual object. This is the form we find in the Egyptian hieroglyphic. For a man a man is drawn, for a camel a camel, for a hut a hut. Then, to save time, the objects were drawn in shorthand—a couple of dashes for the limbs and one across, as in the Chinese, for a man; a square in the same language for a field; two strokes at an obtuse angle, suggesting the roof, for a house. To express further qualities, these abbreviated pictures were next compounded in ingenious ways. A man and a field together conveyed the idea of wealth; a roof and a woman represented home; and so on. And thus, little by little, our letters were evolved. But the pictures have become so truncated, abbreviated and emasculated, in the course of this evolutionary process, that a child, though notoriously fond of pictures, sees nothing fascinating in the letters of the alphabet. There is absolutely nothing about the first to suggest the sound A; nothing about the second to suggest the sound B. The whole thing is so incomprehensible; how can he ever hope to master it? An adult brain, introduced to such a conglomeration for the first time, would reel and stagger; is it any wonder that these childish cheeks get flushed or that the curly head turns at times very feverishly upon the pillow?

The sequence, too, is as baffling as the symbols. There is every reason why _two_ should come between _one_ and _three_; and that reason is so obvious that the tiniest tot in the class can appreciate it. But why must B come between A and C? There is no natural advance, as in the case of the numerals. The letter B is not a little more than the letter A, nor a little less than the letter C. Except through the operation of the law of association, which only weaves its spell with the passing of the years, there is nothing about A to suggest B, and nothing about B to suggest C. The combination is a rope of sand. Robert Moffat only realized the insuperable character of this difficulty when he attempted to teach the natives of Bechuanaland the English alphabet. Each of his dusky pupils brought to the task an observation that had been trained in the wilds, a brain that had been developed by the years, and an intelligence that had been matured by experience. They were not babies. Yet the alphabet proved too much for them. Why should A be A? and why should B be B? and why should the one follow the other? Mr. Moffat was on the point of abandoning his educational enterprise as hopeless, when one thick-lipped and woolly-headed genius suggested that he should teach them to sing it! At first blush the notion seemed preposterous. There are some things which, like Magna Charta and minute-books, cannot be set to music. Robert Moffat, however, was a Scotsman. The tune most familiar to his childhood came singing itself over and over in his brain; by the most freakish and fantastic conjunction of ideas it associated itself with the problem that was baffling him; and, before that day's sun had set, he had his Bechuana pupils roaring the alphabet to the tune of _Auld Lang Syne_!

So A B C
D E F G
H I J K L M
N O P Q
R S T U
V W X Y Z.

The rhyme and metre fitted perfectly. The natives were so delighted that they strolled about the village shouting the new song at the tops of their voices; and Mr. Moffat declares that daylight was stealing through his bedroom window before the weird unearthly yells at last subsided. I have often wondered whether, in a more civilized environment, any attempt has been made to impress the letters upon the mind in the same way.

II

The symbolism of the alphabet rises to a sudden grandeur, however, when it is enlisted in the service of revelation. Long, long ago a startled shepherd was ordered to visit the court of the mightiest of earthly potentates, and to address him on matters of state in the name of the Most High. '_And the Lord said unto Moses, Come now, therefore, and I will send thee unto Pharaoh, and I will send thee also unto the children of Israel. And Moses said unto God, Behold, when I am come unto them and shall say, The God of your fathers hath sent me unto you, and they shall say What is His name? what shall I say unto them? And God said unto Moses, Thus shalt thou say unto the children of Israel, I AM hath sent me unto you!_'

'_I am——!_'

'_I am_—what?'

For centuries and centuries that question stood unanswered; that sentence remained incomplete. It was a magnificent fragment. It stood like a monument that the sculptor had never lived to finish; like a poem that the poet, dying with his music in him, had left with its closing stanzas unsung. But the sculptor of _that_ fragment was not dead; the singer of _that_ song had not perished. For, behold, He liveth for evermore! And, in the fullness of time, He reappeared and filled in the gap that had so long stood blank.

'_I am——!_'

'_I am_—what?'

'I am—_the Bread of Life_!' 'I am—_the Light of the World_!' 'I am—_the Door_!' 'I am—_the True Vine_!' 'I am—_the Good Shepherd_!' 'I am—_the Way, the Truth, and the Life_!' 'I am—_the Resurrection and the Life_!'

And when I come to the end of the Bible, to the last book of all, I find the series supplemented and completed.

'I am—_Alpha and Omega_!' 'I am—_A and Z_!' 'I am—_the Alphabet_!' The symbolism of which I have spoken can rise to no greater height than that. What, I wonder, can such symbolism symbolize? I take these birthday blocks that came to our house to-day and strew the letters on my study floor. So far as any spiritual significance is concerned, they seem as dead as the dry bones in Ezekiel's Valley. And yet—'_I am the Alphabet_!' 'Come,' I cry, with the prophet of the captivity, 'come from the _Four Winds_, O Breath, and breathe upon these slain that they may live!' And the prayer has scarcely escaped my lips when lo, all the letters of the alphabet shine with a wondrous lustre and glow with a profound significance.

III

For see, the _North Wind_ breathes upon these letters on the floor, and I see at once that they are symbols of the '_Inexhaustibility of Jesus!_' '_I am Alpha and Omega!_' '_I am the Alphabet!_' I have sometimes stood in one of our great public libraries. I have surveyed with astonishment the serried ranks of English literature. I have looked up, and, in tier above tier, gallery above gallery, shelf above shelf, the books climbed to the very roof, while, looking before me and behind me, they stretched as far as I could see. The catalogue containing the bare names of the books ran into several volumes. And yet the whole of this literature consists of these twenty-six letters on the floor arranged and rearranged in kaleidoscopic variety of juxtaposition. Which, I ask myself, is the greater—the literature or the alphabet? And I see at once that the alphabet is the greater because it is so inexhaustible. Literature is in its infancy. We shall produce greater poets than Shakespeare, greater novelists than Dickens, greater philosophers, historians and humorists than any who have yet written. But they will draw upon the alphabet for every letter of every syllable of every word that they write. They may multiply our literature a million-million-fold; yet the alphabet will be as far from exhaustion when the last page is finished as it was before the first writer seized a pen.

'_I am—the Alphabet!_' He says. He means that He cannot be exhausted.

For the love of God is broader
Than the measure of Man's mind;
And the heart of the Eternal
Is most wonderfully kind.

The ages may draw upon His grace; the men of every nation and kindred and people and tongue—a multitude that no statistician can number—may kneel in contrition at His feet; His love is as great as His power and knows neither measure nor end. He is inexhaustible.

IV

And when the _South Wind_ breathes upon these letters on the floor, I see at once that they are symbols of the _Indispensability of Jesus_. Literature, with all its hoarded wealth, is as inaccessible as the diamonds of the moon until I have mastered the alphabet. The alphabet is the golden key that unlocks to me all its treasures of knowledge, poetry and romance.

'_I am—the Alphabet!_' He says; and He says it three separate times. For the words occur thrice in the Apocalypse. In the _first_ case they refer to the unfolding of the divine revelation; in the _second_ they refer to the interpretation of historic experience; and in the _third_ they refer to the unveiled drama of the future. As the disciples discovered on the road to Emmaus, I cannot understand my Bible unless I take Him as being the key to it all; I cannot understand the processes of historical development until I have given Him the central place; I cannot anticipate with equanimity the unfoldings of the days to come until I have seen the keys of the eternities swinging at His girdle.

The alphabet is, essentially, an individual affair. In order to read a single sentence, I must learn it _for myself_. My father's intimacy with the alphabet does not help me to enjoy the volumes on my shelves. The alphabet is indispensable _to me_; and so is He! There is something very pathetic and very instructive about the story that Legh Richmond tells of _The Young Cottager_. 'The rays of the morning star,' Mr. Richmond says, 'were not so beautiful in my sight as the spiritual lustre of this young Christian's character.' She was very ill when he visited her for the last time. 'There was animation in her look—there was more—something like a foretaste of heaven seemed to be felt, and gave an inexpressible character of spiritual beauty even in death.'

'Where is your hope, my child?' Mr. Richmond asked, in the course of that last conversation.

'Lifting up her finger,' he says, 'she pointed to heaven, and then directed the same finger downward to her own heart, saying successively as she did so, "_Christ there!_" and "_Christ here!_" These words, accompanied by the action, spoke her meaning more solemnly than can easily be conceived.'

In life and in death He is our one indispensability. In relation to this world, and in relation to the world that is to come, He stands to the soul as the alphabet stands in relation to literature.

V

And when the East Wind breathes upon these letters on the floor, I see at once that they are symbols of the _Invincibility of Jesus_. '_I am—A and Z!_' He is at the beginning, that is to say, and He goes right through to the end. There is nothing in the alphabet before A; there is nothing after Z. However far back your evolutionary interpretation of the universe may place the beginning of things, you will find Him there. However remote your interpretation of prophecy may make the end of things, you will find Him there. He goes right through. The story of the ages—past, present and future—may be told in a sentence: 'Christ first, Christ last, and nought between but Christ.' Having begun, He completes. He is the Author and Finisher of our faith. He sets His face like a flint. Nothing daunts, deters, or dismays Him. 'I am confident,' Paul says, 'of this very thing, that He which hath begun a good work in you will perform it unto the end.' He never halts at H or L or P or X; he goes right through to Z. He never gives up.

VI

But the greatest comfort of all comes to me on the Wings of the _West_ Wind. For, when the West Wind breathes upon these letters on the floor, I see at once that they are symbols of the _Adaptability of Jesus_. The lover takes these twenty-six letters and makes them the vehicle for the expression of his passion; the poet transforms them into a song that shall be sung for centuries; the judge turns them into a sentence of death. In the hands of each they mold themselves to his necessity. The alphabet is the most fluid, the most accommodating, the most plastic, the most adaptable contrivance on the planet. Just because, in common with every man breathing, I possess a distinctive individuality, I sometimes feel as no man ever felt before, and I express myself in language such as no man ever used. And the beauty of the alphabet is that it adapts itself to my individual need. And that is precisely the beauty of Jesus. '_I am—the Alphabet!_' I may not have sinned more than others; but I have sinned differently. The experiences of others never sound convincing; they do not quite reflect my case. But, like the alphabet, He adapts Himself to _every_ case. He is the very Saviour I need.

VI—PIECRUST

I

'What do you say to a day or two together at the Nuggets?' asked John Broadbanks one summer's evening. I was just returning from a long round of visitation among the outlying farms, and, driving into Mosgiel in the dusk, met him on his way home to Silverstream. We reined up for a moment to exchange greetings, and he made the suggestion I have just recorded. The prospect was certainly very alluring. We had neither of us been away for some time. There is no wilder or more romantic bit of scenery on the New Zealand coast; and a visit to the stately old lighthouse, perched on its rugged and precipitous cliffs, was always a delightful and bracing experience.

'We will drive down,' he continued, seeing by my hesitation that any resistance on my part would be extremely feeble. 'Sidwell of Balclutha has often urged us to spend a night at his manse. We will break our journey there. We can slip our guns into the spring-cart, and the driving and the shooting will be half the fun of the frolic. And we may have time to explore the coast a bit. I should like to see the reef on which the _Queen of the Amazons_ was wrecked last week, and, if we are lucky enough to strike a low tide, we may be able to scramble on board. Are you on?'

He found me very pliable, as, on such occasions, he usually did; and we spent a memorable week together. On the Sunday, there being no service at the Nuggets, we walked along the wet sands to Port Molyneux, and joined a little group of settlers who met for worship in the schoolhouse. We rested on the beach during the afternoon, and, in the evening, set out to walk to the lighthouse. It was a glorious moonlight night; we could see the rabbits scurrying across the road half a mile ahead. When we reached the crest of that bold promontory on the extremity of which the lighthouse stands, we found ourselves surveying a new stretch of coast. The cliffs at our feet were almost perpendicular, and, far below us, the wild waves breaking madly over her, lay all that was left of the _Queen of the Amazons_. We spread out a coat on the edge of the cliff, and sat for some time in silent contemplation of this weird and romantic spectacle.

'Well,' I said at last, 'and how did you enjoy the service this morning?'

The moon was shining full upon his face, and I could see at a glance that he was reluctant to reply.

'I was afraid you would ask me that,' he said at length. 'Well, frankly, I was disappointed. It may have been because I was in a holiday mood, or perhaps our long walk on such a lovely morning had unfitted me for thinking on the sadder side of things; but, however that may be, I found the service depressing. It checked the gaiety of my spirit and deadened the exhilaration which I took to it. I went in singing; I came out sighing. I felt somehow, that the preaching was _mostly piecrust_. Obviously, the fellow was not well, and he allowed his dyspepsia to darken his doctrine. Indigestion was never intended to be an infectious disease; but he made it so by sending us all away suffering from the after-effects of his unwholesome breakfast. I usually jot down a preacher's heads or divisions, but I didn't trouble to make a note of his. It was, firstly, _piecrust_; and, secondly, _piecrust_; and, thirdly, _piecrust_; and _piecrust_ all the way through!'

John was not usually a caustic critic. He saw the best in most of us and magnified it. His outburst that night on the cliff was therefore the more startling and the more memorable. I have quite forgotten what the preacher said at Port Molyneux in the morning; but, as long as I live, I shall remember what John said as we sat in the silvery moonlight that summer's evening, looking down at the great ship being torn to pieces by the waves on the cruel reef just below.

II

'Why, bless me,' I heard a man exclaim yesterday in the course of an animated discussion at the street corner, 'if things go on like this, I shan't have a soul to call my own!' As though any man had! No man living has a soul to call his own, or a stomach to call his own. The preacher at Port Molyneux assumed, as he sat at breakfast, that his digestive organs were his own property, and poor John Broadbanks and I, as well as all the other members of the school-house congregation, were penalized in consequence. Carlyle used to argue, more or less seriously, that the whole course of human history has been repeatedly deflected by blunders of this kind. The world has never known a more decisive battle than the battle of Waterloo; but why did the Duke of Wellington win it? All authorities agree that Napoleon was the greater general. Lord Roberts declares that the schemes of Napoleon were more comprehensive, his genius more dazzling, and his imagination more vivid than Wellington's. Yet on that fateful day that decided the destinies of Europe, Napoleon descended to absolute mediocrity while Wellington rose to surpassing brilliance. The Emperor was never so agitated; the Duke was never so calm. Napoleon, with all the chances in his favor, perpetrated blunder after blunder; the Duke seemed omniscient and infallible. Why? Carlyle used to say that Napoleon threw his brain out of action by eating a hearty breakfast of fried potatoes. In one respect, at any rate, Carlyle knew what he was talking about. 'As a student,' he says, 'I discovered that I was the owner of a diabolical arrangement called a stomach; and I have never been free from the knowledge from that hour to this; and I suppose I never shall until I am laid away in my grave.' Warned, however, by the melancholy fate which he believed Napoleon to have suffered, he guarded against any overflow of his distress. His readers rarely suffer from the after-effects of his indiscreet breakfasts. We read _Sartor Resartus_, _Heroes and Hero-worship_, and _Past and Present_, and never once think of piecrust or of fried potatoes.

It is true, I dare say, that all the people in the school-house were not affected as John Broadbanks was. Indeed, I heard next day of one lady who thought the sermon very affecting. It nearly made her cry, she said; and she felt sure that the preacher was not long for this world. I would not on any consideration deprive this excellent creature of her lachrymal felicity; but if her well-meant encomiums reached the preacher's ears, I hope he did not take them too seriously. Lots of people are fond of piecrust, but it does not follow that it is good for them. The sort of sermon that would have stimulated the faith of John Broadbanks might not have brought tears to the eyes of the lady who was moved to such a compassionate ecstasy, but it might have been better for her in the long run. John Broadbanks found the piecrust sermon depressing; yet, to a certain type of mind, few things are more attractive than sadness. We all remember Macaulay's observations on the inordinate popularity of Byron. 'It is,' he says, 'without a parallel in history. To people who are unacquainted with real calamity, nothing is so dainty and sweet as lovely melancholy.' And he goes on to apply this to the pessimism of Byron. 'People bought pictures of him; they treasured up the smallest relics of him; they learned his poems by heart; they did their best to write like him and to look like him. Many of them practised in the glass in the hope of catching the curl of the upper lip and the scowl of the brow which appear in his portraits. The number of hopeful undergraduates and medical students who became things of dark imaginings, on whom the freshness of the heart ceased to fall like dew, and to whom the relief of tears was denied, passes all calculation.' Clearly, this is the lady with the tears—indefinitely multiplied.

Now, by way of contrast, turn for a moment from Byron to Browning. Professor Phelps of Yale says that Browning was too healthy to be popular. He was robust and vigorous, and therefore optimistic. But he is slowly winning his way. His star waxes as Byron's wanes. People find sooner or later that they cannot live for ever on piecrust. Mr. Chesterton says that the bravest thing about Robert Louis Stevenson is that he never allowed his manuscripts to smell of his medicines. The tortures that racked his frame never passed down his pen to the paper spread out before him. You read his sprightly and stirring romances; you live for the time being among pirates and smugglers and corsairs; you catch the breath of the hills and the tang of the sea; and it never occurs to you that you are the guest of a man who is terribly ill. You hear him laugh; you never hear him cough. You do not see his sunken eyes, his hectic cheek, his spectral form supported by a pile of pillows. You reflect with astonishment when you lay aside the book that the story was written by a creature so pitifully frail that, on all the earth's broad surface, he could only find one outlandish spot—a lonely hilltop in the Pacific—in which he could contrive to breathe. By this time we may hope that our preacher at Port Molyneux has read the _Life of Stevenson_. And, as he did so, he must have resolved that, however excruciating his dyspepsia, his congregation, at least, shall never be infected by it.

I regret now that I did not ask the preacher's name. If only I knew his address, I should find pleasure in posting him a copy of _The Autocrat of the Breakfast Table_. For the autocrat knew something about piecrust. The pie at the boarding-house looked one day particularly attractive, and things happened in consequence. 'I took more of it than was good for me,' says the Autocrat, 'and had an indigestion in consequence. While I was suffering from it, I wrote some sadly desponding poems, and a theological essay which took a very melancholy view of creation. When I got better, I labelled them all _Piecrust_, and laid them by as scarecrows and solemn warnings. I have a number of books on my shelves that I should like to label with some such title; but, as they have great names on their title-pages—Doctors of Divinity, some of them—it wouldn't do!' I should have been tempted to mark this passage before posting the book to Port Molyneux.

III

But the really extraordinary thing about piecrust is that the quality with which it is most frequently taunted is its one redeeming feature, the feature that makes it sublime. Promises, they say, are like piecrust, _made to be broken_. Why, the most beautiful and sacred things in life are made to be broken! Upon all ordinary things, breakage comes as the climax of disaster; upon a select few, breakage comes as the climax of destiny. The fountain-pen that I hold in my hand—the pen with which, without so much as a change of nib, all my books have been written—will lie broken before me one of these days. It was made; it will be broken; but it was not made to be broken. The enjoyment ends with the breakage. But with those other things, the things of the pie-crust class, the enjoyment begins with the breakage. When I was a small boy, I indulged in bird-nesting. And I never looked upon a cluster of delicately-tinted, prettily-speckled eggs without feeling that each egg was the most consummate piece of workmanship that I had ever seen. Its shape, its color and its pattern were alike perfect. Indeed, I silenced my conscience as I bore the nest home by amplifying this very argument. 'If I leave the nest in the tree,' I said to myself, 'these pretty things will all be broken! When the birds are hatched, the eggs will be smashed! They are far too pretty for that! I will take them home and keep them. I am really saving them by stealing them!' I know now that I was wrong. My argument was made up of casuistry and special pleading. In reality I destroyed the eggs by preserving them. They were made to be broken, and I cheated destiny by preventing the breakage. I have travelled a good many miles since then; but, every step of the way, I have learned, in some new form, the same great lesson. And when, with reverent footsteps, I have climbed the loftiest summits of all, the truth that I first discovered in the English hedgerows has become most radiantly clear. The two greatest events in the history of this planet are the Incarnation and the Crucifixion.

It is _Christmas-time_; and we think with wonder and awe of the mystery of that holy body's making!

It is _Easter-time_; and we think with wonder and awe of the mystery of that holy body's breaking!

It is _Communion-time_! 'This is My body which is broken for you,' He said.

And in the making of that body and the breaking of that body—the body that was made to be broken—a lost world has found salvation.

VII—ALL'S WELL THAT ENDS WELL

It was a cruel winter's night; an icy wind was howling across the Plain; a glorious fire was blazing in the dining-room grate; and, happily, I had no engagements. To add to our felicity, the San Francisco mail had arrived that morning, bringing our monthly budget of news from home. The letters had, of course, been devoured upon delivery, but the papers and magazines had been laid aside for evening consumption. We had just opened the packages and arranged the journals in order of publication when there came a ring at the front-door bell. We glanced at each other meaningly and at the papers regretfully. All kinds of visions presented themselves; visions of a garrulous visitor who, with business over, would not go; visions of a long drive across the Plain in the biting wind; visions of everything but an evening with each other, a roaring fire and the English mail. As though to rebuke our inhospitable and ungracious thoughts, however, it was only Elsie Hammond. Elsie often dropped in of an evening; she usually brought her fancy-work; and, in her presence, we were perfectly at our ease. Every manse has one or two such visitors. We read, worked, or chatted when Elsie came just as we should have done if she had not dropped in.

'Why, Elsie,' I exclaimed, as soon as, divested of her hat and cloak, she entered the dining-room and took her usual chair, 'whatever brings you out on a wild night like this?'

'Well,' she replied, 'I wanted to see you about the Young People's Missionary Union. You remember that they made me Secretary last month, and we are arranging for the annual meeting. We have invited Mr. Harriford Johnson, of the North Africa Evangelization Society, to give an address; and I received his reply this morning. He will be coming out from town by the five-twenty train; and I wondered if you could let him come to the manse to tea, and, if needs be, stay the night.'

I put Elsie at her ease by telling her that she might leave the matter of Mr. Johnson's reception and entertainment entirely in my hands; and then, resuming the pile of papers, we had a royal evening with the English news.

The day of the missionary meeting arrived; and, as the clock struck five, I set out for the station. Quite a number of people were moving in the same direction, among them the Rev. J. M. McKerrow, my Presbyterian neighbor. We walked towards the station together. On the platform, however, he recognized a lady friend from a distance; he moved away to speak to her; and, in the bustle of the train's arrival, we saw each other no more.

I had never met Mr. Johnson, nor had any description of his personal appearance been given me. For some reason, I had pictured to myself a tall, cadaverous man in a severe garb, bearing upon him the signs of the ravages wrought by a variety of tropical diseases; and, contrary to one's usual experience, a gentleman roughly according with this prognostication stepped from the train and began to look aimlessly about him.

'Mr. Johnson?' I inquired, approaching him.

'Ah!' he replied, 'and you're from the manse!'

I admitted the impeachment, and we set off together for home. On the way we chatted about the weather, the place, the crops, the people, the church, the services, and things in general. He was a vivacious conversationalist, and exhibited a remarkably alert and hungry mind. He wanted to know all about everything; and when we discussed my own work, its difficulties, and its encouragements, he showed a genuine interest and a delightful sympathy. We had invited several of the leading missionary spirits of the congregation to meet him at tea. In order that the conversation at table might be generally enjoyable, I had stored my mind with a fine assortment of questions concerning conditions in Northern Africa which, like a quiver-full of arrows, I intended firing at our guest as opportunity offered. But opportunity did not offer. Mr. Johnson was so interested in the work of the various organizations represented round the table that he made it impossible for us to inquire about his own. Moreover, our visitor chanced to discover that one of our guests had in his home a little boy who was afflicted with blindness. On eliciting this information, Mr. Johnson lapsed into sudden silence, and looked, I thought, as though he had been hurt. But, after tea, he drew the father of the blind boy aside and explained to him that he himself had but one child, a little girl of ten, and she was similarly afflicted. As he spoke of her, his vivacity vanished, and a great depth of tenderness revealed itself. I wondered, but did not care to ask, if the blindness of his child was part of the price that he had been compelled to pay for residence in tropical Africa. After telling us of his little daughter, and of the comfort that she was to him, Mr. Johnson looked at his watch.

'We have nearly an hour,' he said, 'before meeting time; may I peep into your sanctum? I love to glance over a man's books.'

Rarely have I spent an hour in the study so delightfully. All his enthusiasm awoke again at sight of the shelves. He took down volume after volume, handling each with affectionate reverence, and making each the text of a running comment of a most fascinating character. Amusing anecdotes about the author; an outline of the singular circumstances under which certain of the books were written; illuminating criticisms by eminent authorities; sparkling quotations of out-of-the-way passages—there seemed to be no end to his fund of lively and original observations.

'But I say,' he suddenly ejaculated, 'that conversation at table was most interesting and valuable. I had no idea that so much excellent work was being done. I have often wondered——'

But at that moment the mistress of the manse intervened.

'Excuse me,' she said, as she opened the study door, 'but Mr. McKerrow and another gentleman wish to see you at once in the drawing-room.'

To the drawing-room I accordingly repaired; and there I found my companion of the afternoon, accompanied by a short, ruddy, thick-set man, who was laughing very heartily.

'This is an extraordinary situation,' my friend began. 'You will have discovered by this time that we jumped to conclusions too hurriedly this afternoon. _This_ is Mr. Harriford Johnson, of the North Africa Evangelization Society, who is, I believe, to lecture for you to-night, and I think you must have walked off with Mr. Douglas E. Johnson, M.A., who is to address our teachers this evening on the kindergarten method as applied to Sunday-school work. Mrs. McKerrow and I had invited the superintendent of our Sunday-school and the teachers of the primary classes to meet Mr. Johnson at tea at the manse, and we got into a beautiful tangle. It was like playing a game of cross questions and crooked answers. The young people were asking Mr. Johnson's advice on technical matters connected with their classes; and Mr. Johnson was modestly disclaiming all knowledge of the subject, and was telling us of his experiences in Central Africa. We were all beginning to feel that the world had suddenly turned topsy-turvy, when Mr. Johnson suddenly asked how long ago the Young People's Missionary Union was established, and seemed surprised that a Miss Elsie Hammond was not present. Then the truth broke upon us, and we have all been laughing ever since.'

I cordially welcomed Mr. Johnson, and then we all three went through to the dining-room, in which, by this time, the whole of our party was assembled. Mr. Johnson was holding the company spell-bound. I briefly introduced our two visitors, and explained the position. The announcement was received with bursts of merriment, although our tea-table guest was covered with confusion and full of apologies. However, he quickly entered into the humor of the situation, and, after promising to return to lunch with the African Mr. Johnson next day, he went off with Mr. McKerrow laughing heartily.

Both meetings were a great success. The comedy of errors may have had something to do with it. In comparing notes next morning, both speakers declared that they felt very much at home with their audiences. The joke had quickly spread, and created an atmosphere of sympathy and familiarity. Henry Drummond used to say that he could never get on with people until he had laughed with them. Both meetings opened that evening with a bond already established between speaker and audience; and that stands for a good deal.

We had a very happy time, too, at lunch next morning. Our visitors were both pleased that the mistake had been made.

'It's very nice,' said Mr. Harriford Johnson, 'to have got into touch with two ministers and two congregations instead of one. I am thankful to have been able to say a word for Africa to the young people with whom I had tea at Mr. McKerrow's.'