Part 15

There is a little thing that occurred in my boyhood, that has been a great comfort to me many times in the hard work I have been called to do. When I was about fourteen years old, and my brother about twelve, my father took us out fishing on Long Island Sound. We had a poor flat-boat called a scow. We were ambitious, like all little boys, and when we turned in to go to the shore, about four miles, I was entrusted with a pair of long oars, and my brother with a shorter pair. We saw near us a boat with two boys in it about our own age, with their father, an admirably built boat, clean in her lines as a yacht. They were looking at our boat, and the man said to my father, in a sneering tone, “You have got a pretty strong crew in there, but I guess we will beat you to town.”

My father said nothing, but he straightened up and looked at his boys. How we pulled! They beat us a good deal of the way; it was their boat; I knew the boys were not any better than we, for I had thrashed the biggest one several times. We pulled away, and they were yet three or four rods ahead, when my father reached out his great hands and put them on mine, I seem to feel them to-day, and as I pulled he pushed. We beat. Many a time I have thought of it when I have been trying my best, my father pushes while I pull. “I am the Almighty God.” That is enough for me. All it means is within my reach; all the possibility it promises is within my grasp; all hope, all blessedness, all might, all victory through my Father in Heaven. “I am the Almighty God. Walk before me, and be thou perfect.”

The second thought is, the glorious independence of such a life as this. The man who walks before God, who is his with devout trust, has this as the center and circumference of his idea: “I will, I must, I shall please God, and he will help me to follow him.” He understands all. A man walks through this world with his conversation in heaven. No room for selfishness, what shall become of me? Suppose that we could interview those five smooth stones that David took out of the scrip against Goliath, that we could endow them with intelligence; every one was willing to be slung against Goliath. I don’t suppose they would have whined and said, “I wonder why he picked out such a crooked stone as that. There is something wrong about that.” But with this idea of walking before God those four stones that lay in the scrip were as happy as they lay there as the one that went whizzing against the giant. Whether we run, or wait, or stand, or go into the fight it is all one. Milton says “they also serve who only stand and wait.” The perfect independence of this life is worth all it costs. Suppose in order to do it we must have the selfish feeling in us, like a cancer, cut out. As Mrs. Browning says, “He who tears his heart in twain, and casts away the baser part, is richer for his loss.” Painful as it may be, before this wonderful and attractive idea, it is cheap.

You remember that the River Nile runs one thousand two hundred miles through a desert land without a single affluent. How do you account for it? How does that great river pour its flood through Egypt, and keep alive for one thousand two hundred miles without a single stream to feed it? It is fed away back there in Africa, by those giant lakes, and kept ever full and rich. So it is with the soul that walks with God. Its sources are in God. He draws his sustenance, not from this poor world, but far upon the hillside toward God. As the rivers of Europe, that keep it alive, are kept alive themselves by the tall mountain peaks in Switzerland, so a soul that walks with God, that pleases God, is made a wonderful and everlasting benediction to all around him, while he lives independent of all. I do not say that people who are seeking this sort of thing do not feel or have a need of human sympathy. O, no, they have a great deal of it. I do not say that this ideal is so often found, but I believe it is possible. I believe I have made a testimony for you this morning. I want you to think and remember, if you want to walk before God, he will help you.

Somebody says, “How about the profession of this thing?” The Bible don’t say anything about it. That is a matter for your individual judgment. Your wife will find out about it if you find it. When I hear a man say hallelujah very loud, I want to know always how much he pays toward the Gospel. When I hear a man say he is very happy, or holy, I want to know how he lives at home, how he carves the beefsteak. Abram did not hang out any sign, but he became so powerful that the kings all around wanted to make an alliance with him. If you are keeping step with the best ideal, it will show in the carefulness and kindness of your replies, in the grasp of your hand, in the intelligence and sweetness of your face. O, my friends, may I entreat you to set this before your eyes? I believe it is the ideal of God for man. “Walk before me, and be thou perfect.” He will help you as my father helped me to pull the boat. He will help you as every good, kind and gentle mother helps her child. He will help you every time. It will not be a flash and then over. He will make you happy, joyful and independent by day and night. Never mind the circumstances, you will be wrapped in arms so soft and hovered in a love so deep, it will not leave a desire in your souls unsatisfied; there will be such choral harmonies within, that the babel tongues of this world will not overpower them.

Some one may say, “But, Mr. Adams, how?” I say in a word, go to God and ask him, get yourselves humble; be truly penitent; be honest and sincere. Lay your hand in the hand of the Lord. You need not hypothecate any experience. You can not tell whether you are going to live long or not, but you can live with your hand in his.

If a sinner has heard me this day, he knows that this life is the life he wants. I spoke to a sinner the other day, “John, why don’t you give your heart to God?” “Oh,” said he, “I am sick of you Christians.” Said I, “Don’t you think there are Christians in the world?” “Well, that is a hard question.” “But, don’t you think there are Christians?” “Well,” said he, “I am not going back on my old mother.” “Didn’t you promise her to be a Christian?” “Yes, I believe I did.” “Why don’t you do it?” “Why there are so and so that owe me. I don’t want any of their Christianity, but I believe your kind of Christianity is true.” I believe John will give his heart to God. That is the kind that everybody wants. Nobody wants these poor, barren, lean kind, but we want this royal kind, that which fits and satisfies the feeling of our hearts.

I must close with one remark. It is a great and intense age; it is such an age as has never come to the world before. Some of the preceding ages have surpassed this in some respects, it is true, but men have never achieved as they are doing to-day. This great age demands a great piety; it demands deep, wide-spread spirituality. Let me tell you it again; a great age demands great Christians, Christians like Abram, Christians like Paul, Christians like John. Who will set themselves apart to do battle of the royal sort? To keep step with the spirit of the age? It is an age of culture. Education is the cry. There is such a thing, however, as using up your heart by giving too much education to your head. If you guard your heart with this ideal it will be all right. Oh friends, have your hearts filled with God! Follow this great idea to be perfect before God, that you may stand in the advance of the age, and may even run ahead of it. I say that an age like this, an age of lightning, steam, force, and advance in every department of human knowledge, demands that the men and women of the Christian Church should rise to the loftiest ideal of the Christian life. All the sublime achievements of Christian faith lie in the line of fidelity to your advanced convictions. It is the inspiration of souls, it makes the greatness of life. It is that which has made all the grand Christians in the world. It is that which will make Chautauqua grow from year to year in spiritual development, and surround it with a great light, as an aureola, and place it at the head of this great age.

Men and women of Chautauqua, let an unworthy servant of the Master, my Master the Lord Jesus Christ, whose I am and whom I serve, get down at your feet and beseech you to meet the greatness of this ideal. It is not enough to be a ship, it must be launched. It is not enough to have all these great qualities that God may give to you, you need to be consecrated. Hear the word of God to Abram amidst the din and clatter and roar of this age, hear him say, high out of the clear heavens, “I am the Almighty God, walk before me, and be thou perfect.” And that this may be your and my happy lot, is my earnest prayer.

FOOTNOTE:

[E] A sermon delivered in the Amphitheater, at Chautauqua, Sunday, August 20, 1882.

MY OWN GIRL.

By FREDERICK LANGBRIDGE.

Fifteen shillings—no more, sir— The wages I weekly touch. For labor steady and sore, sir, It isn’t a deal too much; Your money has wings in the city, And vanishes left and right, But I hand a crown to Kitty As sure as Saturday night. Bless her, my own, my wee, She’s better than gold to me!

I must be honest and simple, I must be manly and true, Or how could I pinch her dimple, Or gaze in her frank eyes’ blue? I feel, not anger, but pity, When workmates go to the bad; I say, “They’ve never a Kitty— They’d all keep square if they had.” Bless her, my own, my wee, She’s better than gold to me!

One day she will stand at the altar, Modest, and white, and still, And forth from her lips will falter The beautiful, low, “I will.” Our home shall be bright and pretty As ever a poor man’s may, And my soft little dove, my Kitty, Shall nest in my heart for aye. Bless her, my own, my wee, She’s better than gold to me!

C. L. S. C. WORK.

By J. H. VINCENT, D. D., SUPERINTENDENT OF INSTRUCTION, C. L. S. C.

Read all of the required books for outlook and inspiration but _study_ one of the books at least for discipline. Read it as you do the rest. Read it more carefully than you read the rest. Read it over and over. Read it to recall what you read. Read it with critical helps of every kind. Having read it _think_ about it. Think _and_ think. Think beyond it. By some thought in it be led out to some other thought not in it, but thought of because of the book. Such chosen book out of each year’s list will become dearer to you than all the rest and will make the mere reading of all the rest more profitable.

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Which book shall I select out of the “required” list for 1882, to read thus thoughtfully and critically? All need not choose the same. Follow your “bent.” Take a part of one of the larger books. Begin with a limited amount. Try pages 124-199 in Prof. Wilkinson’s preparatory “Greek Course in English,” or choose one chapter in Bishop Warren’s “Recreations in Astronomy,” or one period in “Geology,” or “Evangeline.” Try the plan.

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Have you seen Prang’s C. L. S. C. Mottoes? Three of them at one dollar each. In exquisite taste. He issues nothing finer. Friends of C. L. S. C. people could do no more graceful thing than to hang one or more of these mottoes, in Prang’s best style, on the Christmas tree. A good idea!

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A busy housewife says: “I must write you one thing I have found out, for perhaps you have never heard it, certainly no one ever told it me: If a woman wants to find time for almost everything, she must keep house and do her own work.”

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The real object of education is to give children resources that will endure as long as life endures; habits that will ameliorate in disaster; occupation that will render sickness tolerable, solitude pleasant, age venerable, life more dignified and more useful, and death less terrible.—_Sidney Smith._

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A little girl in Silver Creek, N. Y., has organized a “Good Grammar Society.” She has excluded words used by her father (who is a Presbyterian minister), 744; her mother, 107; herself, 98; a little friend, 59; her brother Edward in three days, 14.

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Remember the five o’clock Sabbath C. L. S. C. Vespers. A few members lingering at Chautauqua through the winter will sing our “Day is Dying in the West,” and join in a prayer in the “Hall in the Grove” at five o’clock every Sabbath.

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I have decided to offer a _white seal_ to those graduates of ’82 who are already striving for a _white crystal seal_. This white seal will be given for the reading of the following books:

Wilkinson’s “Preparatory Greek Course in English.”

Packard’s “First Lessons in Geology.”

“Evangeline.”

“Hampton Tracts.”

“Chautauqua Text-Book No. 34.”

“How to Make a Living.” By G. C. Eggleston. Price fifty cents.

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Let every student of the Circle work for the people who most need the C. L. S. C., to enlist them: the idle rich, the busy poor, the college graduate, the uneducated, the old, the young—all who would make head and heart and hands keep harmony in this world of sorrow and weariness and sin.

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Pardon a personal suggestion. Nothing gives to the Superintendent of Instruction greater pleasure than to greet members of the C. L. S. C. Traveling widely as I do, I often come in contact with members. I receive letters occasionally saying: “We saw you on such a train, or in such a place, but did not like to speak to you.” I earnestly ask every member of the C. L. S. C. to introduce himself or herself at once, and by simply using the magic letters C. L. S. C., you have a watchword by which acquaintance may at once be formed.

C. L. S. C. TESTIMONY.

_Michigan._—I have been teaching school in one of the burnt districts, Huron county, Michigan. The school was very large, and the school house very small, and my school work, with a three-mile walk morning and evening, made me feel too tired to study much at night; but, I am very glad to say, I have finished my second year at last, and am ready to commence my third. I commenced the course when I was sixteen, and at almost the same time began teaching. The course of study was just what I needed. It has helped me very much, and I do not intend to be discouraged, even if one year does creep into the next. I have read and studied alone. The nearest local circle, and, I think, the only one in Huron county, is at Port Hope, several miles from my school.

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_New York._—A lady writes: As I am a printer, and use my eyes all day and every day in the week, setting type, I am not sure I shall be able to stand examination, but I am enjoying the Chautauqua course very much.

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_Illinois._—The Chautauqua readings are a great blessing to me, as well as to the world at large. I have a great many days of illness. I can not walk or use my hands or arms much, and am prevented from benefiting my kind, except by trying to be patient under my sufferings, and in learning to _wait_. The Woman’s Missionary Society of our little church meets in my room, and I preside over the few ladies as best I can, endeavoring to imbue them with the spirit of missions, and aiding them in studying the mission fields intelligently.

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_Connecticut._—I’ve had to do the most of the work during vacations, which accounts for my being behind. I thoroughly believe in the plan, as much to _quicken_ and _keep alive_ college graduates as anything else, just what _they_ need. I found that for me it bridged over many a break and filled up many an awkward opening left by a college course. And I must further avail myself of odd minutes for systematic reading in the line of special courses. An uneducated dry-goods clerk, to whom I told the plan, said he could not express his pleasure in knowing of the scheme, and that it was an incentive, such as he had never known before. He joined this term.

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_Ohio._—I find on my floor beside me now “Elizabeth’s Progress to London,” from Abbott’s book—in effigy—made from building blocks, with octagon wheels and elegant chariot, a gay dolly on a made-up chair, with dainty parasol over her. This his majesty, Master Harry, tells me is Queen Elizabeth, and he tells everybody she had a thousand dresses and ought to have been very good. At the right I see cavalry, extractions from Crandall’s menagerie, one steed mounted with an athlete in costume and the feet secured by small blocks. This they proclaim for “William’s horse stepping on embers.” They’ve been at Abbott’s book I see, and so we may be called a family as well as local circle.

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_Massachusetts._—I like the course very much and have seen many things in the CHAUTAUQUAN in praise of it by the students. But one thing, which I think will be a great help to me, I have not seen mentioned, that is the use of the books for reference. If in our hurry we are not as thorough as we would like to be, I think we can remember enough when we find things in our future reading we do not understand, to know which book and where in it to find the information we need. I feel very thankful for the privileges of membership in the C. L. S. C.

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_Tennessee._—I must send you a few words of thanks for the C. L. S. C. I have only been a member one year, but I don’t know how I could do without the reading now. I think I am growing in knowledge—yes, and in the love of our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ. With the new year’s reading I begin life with fresh hope to attain a greater height in the study of God and his works.

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_California._—The C. L. S. C. has been an unspeakable blessing and comfort to me. It has been an eye-opener, a mind-opener, and a soul-opener in the deepest and broadest sense of the word.

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_New Jersey._—The diploma received; it is a beautiful memorial of the C. L. S. C., which I shall greatly prize, and to whose value I shall seek to add, year by year, in the form of “seals” you are so good as to bestow.

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_Minnesota._—I found among my daughter’s papers—Miss Harriet A. Lathrop, a member of the C. L. S. C.—a blank for examination, with an earnest request to hear from her as to her progress. This is to inform you that she passed to her final examination and was promoted May 7th last. She struggled with disease for three years, and then, having fought a good fight, she received the crown of life. I desire, if you please, that you record on your register, not that she fell out by the way, but that she pursued the course as long as she had strength, and then entered into rest. It was through no indifference that she did not respond regularly, but from sheer physical inability. She was patient, faithful, true, tried, and trusty.

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_Massachusetts._—My letter will inform you of the death of a member of the C. L. S. C.—Miss Mary Thurber, of this place [Attleboro]. She was about twenty-three years of age, a young lady of rare value; beautiful, physically and intellectually, and of fine spiritual attainments. She was a helpful member of the M. E. Church, and a teacher in one of our public schools. She had a large circle of friends, but in her home, among her brothers and sisters, she was the fixed star whose brightness hallowed, and the special joy of her parents. She suffered intensely for a few days only, and though shut out from her friends from the contagiousness of her disease (diphtheria), she was patient to the last, and passed from this to her higher associations in peace, last March. She was very devotedly attached to the C. L. S. C., read with eager enthusiasm, and worked for and expected great results from her connection with it. How blessed that the hope of immortality opens up to those who are seeking broader fields of truth, and assures fuller development to the hedged in of time! The entire community sympathize with the sorrowing family.

LOCAL CIRCLES.

[We request the president or secretary of every local circle to send us reports of their work, of lectures, concerts, entertainments, etc. Editor of THE CHAUTAUQUAN, Meadville, Pa.]