The Book of Courage Part 15

Two men were going around the marvelous horseshoe curve on the Tyrone and Clearfield Division of the Pennsylvania Railroad when one called the attention of his companion to the most picturesque part of the way.

"I was looking at that precipice when I had my first understanding of the fact that the Bible is a personal message; that I had the right to appropriate its words to my own life.

"It was the summer following the end of my final year in college. A few months earlier I had reluctantly yielded to the urging, first of my physician, then of a nerve specialist, by turning my back on college at the vital portion of the year. They told me that if I persisted in remaining they would not answer for the consequences; they said I had applied myself unwisely to my books until my brain was in revolt. 'It is a grave question if you will ever be able to take the professional course to which you have been looking forward,' the specialist said.

'One thing is certain, however: if you do not do as you are told you will not do any real brain work the rest of your days.'

"That scared me, for my heart was wrapped up in my plans for the future. I felt that life would not be worth while without some sort of active brain work. So I gave myself to a real bit of vacation. For months I cut myself loose from all books except the little copy of the Testament and Psalms which I carried with me more for form's sake than for any other reason, I fear. Daily as I tramped here and there in the wilds I read a verse or two, more because I thought I ought to do this than because I had any idea of receiving help.

"Toward the close of the summer I submitted myself to a specialist who shook his head, at the same time declaring that it was doubtful if even yet I could go on with my plan. He wouldn't say it was impossible for me to do brain work, but he urged that the probabilities were against me. A second specialist told me the same thing.

"So I faced the future as all summer long I had feared to face it.

Finally my mind was made up to turn my back on professional studies.

When the decision was made a suggestion came that I go into the mountains of Pennsylvania to investigate opportunity for a sort of work that I might do.

"The journey was begun. As we left Tyrone to climb the mountains my spirits sank lower and lower. I rebelled against the idea of taking the offered opening. How I longed to enter professional school in two weeks!

But I dared not do it. To be sure, the physicians said that they saw no reason why I should not, though they feared the result. Why not try it?

I had used all available means for restoration of the brain to the old-time keenness. Yet it would be awful to try and fail. No, I did not dare.

"So I was in the depths when my hand touched the pocket Testament and Psalms. Mechanically the book was opened, probably because of the unconscious realization that the daily portion had not yet been read.

But listlessness was gone in an instant when my eyes fell on the words of Psalm 37:5:

"'Commit thy way unto the Lord; trust also in Him, and He will bring it to pa.s.s.'

"At first the words dazed me. Then I said: 'That's for me, and I'll do it! I've spent the summer as the doctors said I must. Surely I am warranted in committing myself unto the Lord in just the way the Psalm says. Of course I can't be sure that the result of going back to school will be precisely what I hope; but I can trust, and do my best. Then if the attempt results in failure, I shall have the satisfaction of knowing that I am following Him to whom I have committed my way.

"Some of my friends thought it was folly to begin my professional course. Can you imagine my joy when, from the day school opened, I had no recurrence of my trouble? Of course I was very careful until I could feel sure of my health."

"How do you explain your ability to go on with your studies?" his companion asked.

"I am not trying to explain it," was the reply. "But without question the a.s.surance that came to me with that text from the Psalm, the a.s.surance that G.o.d is my G.o.d and that I have a right to count on Him, made me strong to face things to which I had been unequal only a few months before.

"And is it strange that I have often wondered if there would have been any breakdown in college, if I had only known a little sooner of the strength that waits for those who, while putting forth their own utmost endeavor, at the same time count on G.o.d's unfailing strength?"

II

BANKING ON G.o.d'S PROMISES

Isn't it strange that so many Christians while believing, theoretically, in the reality and trustworthiness of G.o.d's promises, do not have the same sort of practical belief in Him which they show in the promise of their bank to pay them, on demand, the sum written down in their book of deposit?

And banks have been known to fail in keeping their very limited promises, while G.o.d has never failed in keeping His unlimited a.s.surances of blessing.

For so many the strange delusion that G.o.d's promises are not to be counted on in the same literal sense as the promises of our a.s.sociates persists through life, but there are fortunate Christians who have their eyes opened to the truth. And what a difference the knowledge makes to them!

F. B. Meyer told in one of his public addresses of the transformation wrought for him when his eyes were opened to the truth. As a boy of thirteen he had been a student at Brighton College. He was timid and sensitive, and the older students soon learned that they could make his life a burden to him. With a sigh of relief he went home at the end of the first week of school. On Sunday, however, the thought that he must return came to him with oppressing force. How could he stand up against the older students? He was idly turning the pages of his Bible when he came to the 121st Psalm. "How voraciously I devoured it!" he said. "How I read it again and again, and wrapt it round me! How I took it as my shield! And the next day I walked into the great expanse in front of the college so serene and strong. It was my first act of appropriating the promises of G.o.d."

Three years later the student was agonizing because he wanted to be a minister, yet feared to plan for the work because his voice was weak, and he feared that he would not have the courage to speak. He had been asking G.o.d to show him His will, and to help him in his difficulty. Then he found Jeremiah 1:7, and read it for the first time. "With indescribable feelings I read it again and again, and even now never come on it without a thrill of emotion," he said of his experience. "It was the answer to all my perplexing questionings. Yes, I was the child; I was to go to those to whom He sent me, and speak what He bade me, and He would be with me and teach my lips."

Another man, who had learned to accept literally G.o.d's promise, "Ask, and it shall be given unto you," wrote gratefully of his experience:

"My life is one long, daily, hourly record of answered prayer. For physical health, for mental overstrain, for guidance given marvelously, for errors and dangers averted, for enmity to the Gospel subdued, for food provided at the exact hour needed, for everything that goes to make up life and my poor service, I can testify with a full and often wonder-stricken awe that I believe G.o.d answers prayer. I know G.o.d answers prayer. Cavillings, logical or physical, are of no avail to me.

It is the very atmosphere in which I live and breathe and have my being, and it makes life glad and free and a million times worth living."

A worker among his fellows in India stated the ground of his belief in G.o.d's promise to supply the needs of his people. The sentence was written while he was at home on furlough:

"Whatsoever you ask, believe that you have received it, and you shall have it. The belief is not the denial of a fact, but rather the a.s.surance that the pet.i.tion is in accordance with G.o.d's will, and that He is as disposed to give as we to receive; our reception of the gift depends on our holding on to His will. Now the practical question is, What is G.o.d's will? Am I conforming to it? Through lack of faith am I failing to receive and appropriate for myself and Satara what I and Satara need? Is it G.o.d's will that I should return and that there should be better paid work? More of it? More school-houses? New houses for workers?"

A few days later he added to these notes the word "Yes." His faith enabled him to claim G.o.d's promise.

A Christian young man in j.a.pan was accustomed to stand at the entrance to the park in Tokyo, offering Bibles and preaching the Gospel. Years pa.s.sed, and he saw no results of his work. Yet he believed in Him who had promised that His name should be exalted among the heathen. At length a Testament was bought by a young man to whom the words of John 3:16 brought life and joy. He went back to the old man from whose hand he had received the book, and told him that he had become a Christian.

The man was overcome with joy.

"Ten years," he said, "I have been selling New Testaments here at the park gates, and you are the first who has ever come to tell me you were helped."

But throughout those ten years the faithful worker was sustained by his belief in the faithfulness of Him who had promised to bless him in his work. He knew that G.o.d would not fail him.

III

PRACTICAL PRECEPTS FROM PROVERBS

There is nothing like the Bible to put heart into a man. This is not strange, for the Book was written for this purpose by men of G.o.d's choosing whose business it was to strengthen their fellows.

One of the most vivid parts of the Bible is the book of Proverbs.

"Would that our young men were saturated with its thought," Albert J.

Beveridge said of it, while he was a member of the United States Senate.

"It is rich in practical wisdom for the minute affairs of practical life. It abounds in apt and pointed suggestions and pungent warnings concerning our companionship, our personal habits, our employments, our management of finance, our speech, the government of tongue and temper, and many other such things, which daily perplex the earnest soul, and daily occasion harm to the thoughtless and misguided."

Years earlier, another eminent American, Washington Irving, used what is the keynote of the book in an earnest talk with George Bancroft, later the historian of his country, then a student in Europe. The two were taking a walking excursion, when the older man said something the student remembered all his life. It was natural, then, that Bancroft's biographer should give this in his subject's own words, in "Life and Letters of George Bancroft:"

"At my time of life, he tells me, I ought to lay aside all care, and only be bent on laying in a stock of knowledge for future application.

If I have not pecuniary resources enough to get at what I would wish for, as calculated to be useful to my mind, I must still not give up the pursuit. Still follow it; scramble to it; get at it as you can, but be sure to get at it. If you need books, buy them; if you are in want of instruction in anything take it. The time will soon come when it will be too late for all these things."

More than a century ago an immigrant from Scotland landed in New York.

In the story of his life he later told how the book of Proverbs became his rock. The first night he slept in an old frame building with a shingle roof. During the night he was aroused by a storm of rain accompanied by thunder and lightning such as he had never experienced in Scotland. Homesick, terrified, unable to sleep, he rose and took from his chest the Bible his father had carefully packed with his clothes. He wrote later that as the book was opened, "My eyes fell on the words, 'My Son.' I was thinking of my father. I read on with delight. Having finished the last verse I found I had been reading the third chapter of the Proverbs of Solomon. Get a Bible and read the chapter. Then suppose yourself in my situation--sore in body, sick at heart, and commencing life among a world of strangers, and see if words more suitable could be put together to fit my case. I looked upon it as a chart from heaven, directing my course among the rocks, shoals and storms of life.... I went forth with a light heart to work my way through the world, resolved to keep this chapter as a pilot by my side."

The importance for to-day of the message in Proverbs 30:8, "Remove far from me vanity and lies," is ill.u.s.trated by several incidents told by Lucy Elliot Keeler, in "If I Were a Boy:"

"The son of a distinguished American recently entered business in New York, beginning, at his father's request, at the foot of the ladder, and receiving the princely salary of $20 a month. At a time when his father's name was in everybody's mouth the editor of a yellow journal sent for the son and invited him to join the staff. 'You need not write any articles,' he said, with a smile, 'nor do any reporting. Just sign your name to an article which I will furnish you each day, and I will pay you $200 a month....' The young man's reply was too emphatic to be accurately reported here, but it was to the effect that he would rather starve than pick untold dollars out of the gutter.

"A few years ago an American commissioner occupying a house in the West Indies hired a man to wash the windows and another to scrub the floors.

The bills submitted were for $12 and $7, respectively. 'What does this mean?' was the astonished query. '$12 for a day's work? Man, you are crazy!' 'Oh,' came the soft reply, 'of course, I only expect a dollar and a half for myself, but that was the way we always made out bills for the Spanish officers.' 'Take back your bills,' was the American's emphatic reply, 'and make them out honestly.'"

The wisdom of the warning in Proverbs 27:2, "Let another man praise thee, and not thine own mouth," has seldom been more strikingly ill.u.s.trated than at a large convention when several thousand people listened attentively as a speaker of reputation was introduced to them.

He talked fluently for several minutes, then began to ramble. He made several attempts to regain his lost hold on his hearers, then took his seat.

"I can't imagine what was wrong to-day," he said to his neighbor on the platform. "I had all ready what I felt sure would be a telling address, but somehow I couldn't say what I wanted." A sympathetic answer was given by the man to whom he had spoken, but if he had said all that was in his heart this would have been his message: "I know you had a telling argument to present, for I read your ma.n.u.script. But you spent the first three minutes in talking about yourself. It was there you lost the attention of the people; they did not come to hear about you, but to learn of your Master. And when you had put yourself in the foreground, it was impossible for you to present Him with power."