The Next of Kin Part 14

So-long!' That was the style of Frank's letter. 'I don't want this poor censor to be boring his eyes out trying to find state secrets in my letters,' he said another time, apologizing for the shortness of it. 'There are lots of things that I would like to tell you, but I guess they will keep until I get home--I always could talk better than write.' ... But this letter is different. He seemed to know that he was going--west, as they say, and he wrote so seriously; all the boyishness had gone from him, and he seemed to be old, much older than I am. These boys of ours are all older than we are now,--they have seen so much of life's sadness--they have got above it; they see so many of their companions go over that they get a glimpse of the other sh.o.r.e. They are like very old people who cannot grieve the way younger people can at leaving this life."

Then I read the boy's letter.

"Dear Mother," it ran, "We are out resting now, but going in to-morrow to tackle the biggest thing that we have pulled off yet. You'll hear about it, I guess. Certainly you will if we are successful. I hope that this letter will go safely, for I want you to know just how I feel, and that everything is fine with me. I used to be scared stiff that I would be scared, but I haven't been--there seems to be something that stands by you and keeps your heart up, and with death all around you, you see it is not so terrible. I have seen so many of the boys pa.s.s out, and they don't mind it. They fight like wild-cats while they can, but when their turn comes they go easy. The awful roar of the guns does it. The silent tomb had a horrible sound to me when I was at home, but it sounds like a welcome now. Anyway, mother, whatever happens you must not worry. Everything is all right when you get right up to it--even death. I just wish I could see you, and make you understand how light-hearted I feel. I never felt better; my only trouble is that you will be worried about me, but just remember that everything is fine, and that I love you.

"FRANK."

AT THE LAST!

O G.o.d, who hears the smallest cry That ever rose from human soul, Be near my mother when she reads My name upon the Honor Roll; And when she sees it written there, Dear Lord, stand to, behind her chair!

Or, if it be Thy sacred will That I may go and stroke her hand, Just let me say, "I'm living still!

And in a brighter, better land."

One word from me will cheer her so, O Lord, if you will let me go!

I know her eyes with tears will blind, I think I hear her choking cry, When in the list my name she'll find-- Oh, let me--let me--let me try To somehow make her understand That it is not so hard to die!

She's thinking of the thirst and pain; She's thinking of the saddest things; She does not know an angel came And led me to the water-springs, She does not know the quiet peace That fell upon my heart like rain, When something sounded my release, And something eased the scorching pain.

She does not know, I gladly went And am with Death, content, content.

I want to say I played the game-- I played the game right to the end-- I did not shrink at shot or flame, But when at last the good old friend, That some call Death, came beckoning me, I went with him, quite willingly!

Just let me tell her--let her know-- It really was not hard to go!

CHAPTER XIII

THE BELIEVING CHURCH

The gates of heaven are swinging open so often these days, as the brave ones pa.s.s in, that it would be a wonder if some gleams of celestial brightness did not come down to us.

We get it unexpectedly in the roar of the street; in the quiet of the midnight; in the sun-spattered aisles of the forest; in the faces of our friends; in the turbid stream of our poor burdened humanity. They shine out and are gone--these flashes of eternal truth. The two worlds cannot be far apart when the travel from one to the other is so heavy!

No, I do not know what heaven is like, but it could not seem strange to me, for I know so many people now who are there! Sometimes I feel like the old lady who went back to Ontario to visit, and who said she felt more at home in the cemetery than anywhere else, for that is where most of her friends had gone!

These heavenly gleams have shown us new things in our civilization and in our social life, and most of all in our own hearts. Above all other lessons we have learned, or will learn, is the fallacy of hatred.

Hatred weakens, destroys, disintegrates, scatters. The world's disease to-day is the withering, blighting, wasting malady of hatred, which has its roots in the narrow patriotism which teaches people to love their own country and despise all others. The superiority bug which enters the brain and teaches a nation that they are G.o.d's chosen people, and that all other nations must some day bow in obeisance to them, is the microbe which has poisoned the world. We must love our own country best, of course, just as we love our own children best; but it is a poor mother who does not desire the highest good for every other woman's child.

We are sick unto death of hatred, force, brutality; blood-letting will never bring about lasting results, for it automatically plants a crop of bitterness and a desire for revenge which start the trouble all over again. To kill a man does not prove that he was wrong, neither does it make converts of his friends. A returned man told me about hearing a lark sing one morning as the sun rose over the sh.e.l.l-scarred, desolated battlefield, with its smouldering piles of ruins which had once been human dwelling-places, and broken, splintered trees which the day before had been green and growing. Over this scene of horror, hatred, and death arose the lark into the morning air, and sang his glorious song. "And then," said the boy, as he steadied himself on his crutches, "he sang the very same song over again, just to show us that he could do it again and meant every word of it, and it gave me a queer feeling. It seemed to show me that the lark had the straight of it, and we were all wrong. But," he added, after a pause, "n.o.body knows how wrong it all is like the men who've been there!"

Of course we know that the world did not suddenly go wrong. Its thought must have been wrong all the time, and the war is simply the manifestation of it; one of them at least. But how did it happen? That is the question which weary hearts are asking all over the world. We all know what is wrong with Germany. That's easy. It is always easier to diagnose other people's cases than our own--and pleasanter. We know that the people of Germany have been led away by their teachers, philosophers, writers; they worship the G.o.d of force; they recognize no sin but weakness and inefficiency. They are good people, only for their own way of thinking; no doubt they say the same thing of us.

Wrong thinking has caused all our trouble, and the world cannot be saved by physical means, but only by the spiritual forces which change the mental att.i.tude. When the sword shall be beaten into the ploughshare and the spear into the pruning-hook, that will be the outward sign of the change of thought from destructive, compet.i.tive methods to constructive and cooperative regeneration of the world! It is interesting to note that the sword and spear are not going to be thrown on the sc.r.a.p-heap; they are to be transformed--made over. All energy is good; it is only its direction, which may become evil.

It is not to be wondered at that the world has run to blind hatred when we stop to realize that the Church has failed to teach the peaceable fruits of the spirit, and has preferred to fight human beings rather than prejudice, ignorance, and sin, and has too often gauged success by compet.i.tion between its various branches, rather than by cooperation against the powers of evil.

At a recent convention of a certain religious body, one sister, who gave in her report as to how the Lord had dealt with the children of men in her part of the vineyard, deeply deplored the hardness of the sinners' hearts, their p.r.o.neness to err, and the worldliness of even professing Christians, who seemed now to be wholly given over to the love of pleasure. She told also of the n.i.g.g.ardly contributions; the small congregations. It was, indeed, a sad and discouraging tale that she unfolded. Only once did she show any enthusiasm, and that was in her closing words: "But I thank my Lord and Heavenly Master that the other church in our town ain't done no better!"

The Church is our oldest and best organization. It has enough energy, enough driving force, to better conditions for all if it could be properly applied; but being an exceedingly respectable inst.i.tution it has been rather shy of changes, and so has found it hard to adapt itself to new conditions. It has clung to shadows after the substance has departed; and even holds to the old phraseology which belongs to a day long dead. Stately and beautiful and meaningful phrases they were, too, in their day, but now their fires are dead, their lights are out, their "punch" has departed. They are as pale and sickly as the red lanterns set to guard the spots of danger on the street at night and carelessly left burning all the next day.

Every decade sees the people's problems change, but the Church goes on with Balaam and Balak, with King Ahasuerus, and the two she-bears that came out of the woods. I shudder when I think of how much time has been spent in showing how Canaan was divided, and how little time is spent on showing how the Dominion of Canada should be divided; of how much time has been given to the man born blind, and how little to a consideration of the causes and prevention of that blindness; of the time spent on our Lord's miraculous feeding of the five thousand, and how little time is spent on trying to find out his plans for feeding the hungry ones of to-day, who, we are bold to believe, are just as precious in his sight.

The human way is to shelve responsibility. The disciples came to Christ when the afternoon began to grow into evening, and said, "These people haven't anything to eat, send them away!" This is the human att.i.tude toward responsibility; that is why many a beggar gets a quarter--and is told to "beat it"! In this manner are we able to side-step responsibility. To-day's problems are apt to lead to difficulties; it is safer to discuss problems of long ago than of the present; for the present ones concern real people, and they may not like it. Hush! Don't offend Deacon Bones; stick to Balaam--he's dead.

In some respects the Church resembles a coal furnace that has been burning quite a while without being cleaned out. There form in the bottom certain hard substances which give off neither light nor heat, nor allow a free current of air to pa.s.s through. These hard substances are called "clinkers." Once they were good pieces of burning coal, igniting the coal around them, but now their fire is dead, their heat is spent, and they must be removed for the good of the furnace.

Something like this has happened in the Church. It has a heavy percentage of human "clinkers," sometimes in the front pews, sometimes in the pulpit. They were good people once, too, possessed of spiritual life and capable of inspiring those around them. But spiritual experiences cannot be warmed over--they must be new every day. That is what Saint Paul meant when he said that the outer man decays, but the inner man is renewed. An old experience in religion is of no more value than a last year's bird's nest! You cannot feed the hungry with last year's pot-pies!

This is the day of opportunity for the Church, for the people are asking to be led! It will have to realize that religion is a "here and now" experience, intended to help people with their human worries to-day, rather than an elaborate system of golden streets, big processions, walls of jasper, and endless years of listless loafing on the sh.o.r.es of the River of Life! The Church has directed too much energy to the business of showing people how to die and teaching them to save their souls, forgetting that one of these carefully saved souls is after all not worth much. Christ said, "He that saveth his life shall lose it!" and "He that loseth his life for my sake shall find it!" The soul can be saved only by self-forgetfulness. The monastery idea of retirement from the world in order that one may be sure of heaven is not a courageous way of meeting life's difficulties.

But this plan of escape has been very popular even in Protestant churches, as shown in our hymnology: "Why do we linger?" "We are but strangers here"; "Father, dear Father, take Thy children home"; "Earth is a wilderness, heaven is my home"; "I'm a pilgrim and a stranger"; "I am only waiting here to hear the summons, child, come home." These are some of the hymns with which we have beguiled our weary days of waiting; and yet, for all this boasted desire to be "up and away," the very people who sang these hymns have not the slightest desire to leave the "wilderness."

The Church must renounce the idea that, when a man goes forth to preach the Gospel, he has to consider himself a sort of glorified immigration agent, whose message is, "This way, ladies and gentlemen, to a better, brighter, happier world; earth is a poor place to stick around, heaven is your home." His mission is to teach his people to make of this world a better place--to live their lives here in such a way that other men and women will find life sweeter for their having lived. Incidentally we win heaven, but it must be a result, not an objective.

We know there is a future state, there is a land where the complications of this present world will be squared away. Some call it a Day of Judgment; I like best to think of it as a day of explanations. I want to hear G.o.d's side. Also I know we shall not have to lie weary centuries waiting for it. When the black curtain of death falls on life's troubled scenes, there will appear on it these words in letters of gold, "End of Part I. Part II will follow immediately."

I know that I shall have a sweet and beautiful temper in heaven, where there will be nothing to try it, no worries, misunderstandings, elections, long and tedious telephone conversations; people who insist on selling me a dustless mop when I am hot on the trail of an idea.

There will be none of that, so that it will not be difficult to keep sweet and serene. I would not thank any one to hand me a sword and shield when the battle is over; I want it now while the battle rages; I claim my full equipment now, not on merit, but on need.

Everything in life encourages me to believe that G.o.d has provided a full equipment for us here in life if we will only take it. He would not store up every good thing for the future and let us go short here.

In a prosperous district in Ontario there stands a beautiful brick house, where a large family of children lived long ago. The parents worked early and late, grubbing and saving and putting money in the bank. Sometimes the children resented the hard life which they led, and wished for picnics, holidays, new clothes, ice-cream, and the other fascinating things of childhood. Some of the more ambitious ones even craved a higher education, but they were always met by the same answer when the request involved the expenditure of money. The answer was: "It will all be yours some day. Now, don't worry; just let us work together and save all we can; it's all for you children and it will all be yours some day. You can do what you like with it when we are dead and gone!" I suppose the children in their heart of hearts said, "Lord haste the day!"

The parents pa.s.sed on in the fullness of time. Some of the children went before them. Those who were left fell heir to the big house and the beautiful grounds, but they were mature men and women then, and they had lost the art of enjoyment. The habit of saving and grubbing was upon them, and their aspirations for better things had long ago died out. Everything had been saved for the future, and now, when it came, they found out that it was all too late. The time for learning and enjoyment had gone by. A few dollars spent on them when they were young would have done so much.

If that is a poor policy for earthly parents to follow, I believe it is not a good line for a Heavenly Parent to take.

We need an equipment for this present life which will hold us steady even when everything around us is disturbed; that will make us desire the good of every one, even those who are intent upon doing us evil; that will transform the humblest and most disagreeable task into one of real pleasure; that will enable us to see that we have set too high a value on the safety of life and property and too trifling an estimate on spiritual things; that will give us a proper estimate of our own importance in the general scheme of things, so that we will not think we are a worm in the dust, nor yet mistake ourselves for the President of the Company!

The work of the Church is to teach these ethical values to the people.

It must begin by teaching us to have more faith in each other, and more coordination. We cannot live a day without each other, and every day we become more interdependent. Times have changed since the cave-dwelling days when every man was his own butcher, baker, judge, jury, and executioner; when no man attempted more than he could do alone, and therefore regarded every other man as his natural enemy and rival, the killing of whom was good business. Cooperation began when men found that two men could hunt better than one, and so one drove the bear out of the cave and the other one killed him as he went past the gap, and then divided him, fifty-fifty. That was the beginning of cooperation, which is built on faith. Strange, isn't it, that at this time, when we need each other so badly, we are not kinder to each other? Our national existence depends upon all of us--we have pooled our interests, everything we have is in danger, everything we have must be mobilized for its defense.

Danger such as we are facing should drive the petty little meannesses out of us, one would think, and call out all the latent heroism of our people. People talk about this being the Church's day of opportunity.

So it is, for the war is teaching us ethical values, which has always been a difficult matter. We like things that we can see, lay out, and count! But the war has changed our apprais.e.m.e.nt of things, both of men and of nations. A country may be rich in armies, ships, guns, and wealth, and yet poor, naked, and dishonored in the eyes of the world; a country may be broken, desolate, sh.e.l.l-riven, and yet have a name that is honorable in all the earth. So with individuals. We have set too high a value on property and wealth, too low an estimate on service.

Our ideas of labor have been wrong. Labor to us has meant something disagreeable, which, if we endure patiently for a season, we may then be able to "chuck." Its highest reward is to be able to quit it--to go on the retired list.

"Mary married well," declared a proud mother, "and now she does not lift a hand to anything."

Poor Mary! What a slow time she must have!

The war is changing this; people are suddenly stripped of their possessions, whether they be railroad stock, houses, or lands, or, like that of a poor fellow recently tried for vagrancy here, whose a.s.sets were found to be a third interest in a bear. It does not matter--the wealthy slacker is no more admired than the poor one.

Money has lost its purchasing quality when it comes to immunity from responsibility.

The coordination of our people has begun, the forces of unity are working; but they are still hindered by the petty little jealousies and disputes of small people who do not yet understand the seriousness of the occasion. So long as church bodies spend time fighting about methods of baptism, and call conventions to pa.s.s resolutions against church union, which would unquestionably add to the effectiveness of the Church and enable it to make greater headway against the powers of evil; so long as the channels through which G.o.d's love should flow to the people are so choked with denominational prejudice, it is not much wonder that many people are experiencing a long, dry spell, bitterly complaining that the fountain has gone dry. Love, such as Christ demonstrated, is the only hope of this sin-mad world. When the Church shows forth that love and leads the people to see that the reservoirs of love in the mountains of G.o.d are full to overflowing, and every man can pipe the supply into his own heart and live victoriously, abundantly, gloriously, as G.o.d intended us all to live, then it will come about that the sword will be beaten into the ploughshare and the spear into the pruning-hook, and the Lord will truly hear our prayer and heal our land.