 introduction of the luggage of life this is a LibriVox recording all LibriVox recordings are in the public domain for more information or to volunteer please visit LibriVox.org recording by Beth Thomas Melbourne Australia the luggage of life by Frank W. Borum introduction these leaves are of Australian growth it is both unnecessary and impossible to disguise it the breath of the bush is on them there were however so many who found them good either for food or for medicine in these Britons of the South that it was suggested that the plant might survive the ordeal of transplantation to a northern climb England is a land of noble hospitality and after all men are built pretty much the same way all the world over a thing that is true under these soft southern skies is no less true when northern constellations burn a word that awakens thought beneath the shadow of the wattle may lead a man to rub his eyes under a spreading English oak a message that brings back the smile of courage to the bronzed face of a disheartened squatter may relieve a bruised spirit in London central raw and so I venture I only hope that I may take the sob from one throat or make one song more blithe Frank W. Borum end of the introduction part one chapter one of the luggage of life this is a lip of Vox recording all the Vox recordings are in the public domain for more information or to volunteer please visit the Vox.org recording by Chad Horner from Bally Claire in County Androm Northern Ireland the luggage of life by Frank W. Borum part one chapter one the luggage of life life is largely a matter of luggage so soon as a child can total he displays an insatiable passion for carrying things he is never so happy as when he is loaded his face beams with delight when his back is burned to the point of breaking a few months later he cries for a wooden horse and cart that he may further gratify his inordinate longing for luggage and if these appetites be not humoured he will exhaust his unconsecrated energies and pushing the chairs tugging at tables and curing the cat the instinct is there you can no more deny him his load then you can deny him his lunch the craving for both is born in him in his autobiography Thomas Guthrie tells how the blood of the Scottish lads in his native village was stirred as the echoes of waterly reached that remote hamlet many a time he says did we boys trump a mile or two out of town to meet trips marching to the war and proud we were to be allowed to carry a soldier's musket which the poor fellows burdened with all the heavy accoutrements of those days and worried with a 12 hour march on a hot summer's day we're glad enough to resign to us here is the same subtle law in operation man often loves without knowing that he loves and little as he suspects that he is deeply in love with his load he groans beneath it as a man grumbles at the wife of his bosom but if it were taken from him he would be almost as disconsolate as if she were taken from him if we were boys at school we learned ludicrous lessons about the weight of the air how we laughed as we listened to the doctrines of Torricelli and heard that every square inch of surface has to sustain a weight of 15 pounds how we roared at our rollicking skepticism when our school masters assured us that we were each of us being subjected to a fearful atmospheric pressure of no less than 14 tons but Mr. H. G. Wells has drawn for us a picture of me and Leiden his heroes Mr. Kavor and Mr. Bedford have found their way to the moon the 14 tons of air are no longer on their shoulders the atmospheric pressure is removed they have lost their load and they nearly lose their lives in consequence they cannot control themselves they can scarcely keep their feet on the soil the slightest spring of the foot and they bound like a ball into mid-air if they attempt to leap over an obstructing boulder they soar into space like larks and land on a distant cliff or a light on an extinct volcano life becomes weird ungovernable terrible they are lost without their load which things are symbolic it is part of the pathos of mortality that we only discover how dearly we love things after we have lost them we behold with surprise our affections like torn and bleeding tendrils hanging desolate lamenting mutely the commonplace object about which they had entwined themselves so is it with the layering and luggage of life we never wake up to the delicious luxury of being heavily burdened until our shoulders miss the load that called them if we grasped the deepest philosophy of life a little more clearly we might perhaps fall in love with our luggage the baby instinct is perfectly true our load is as essential to us as our lunch very few people have been actually crushed in this old world of many burdens and those who have we're not the most miserable of men it will not be at all astonishing if the naturalists of tomorrow assure us that the animal world knows no transport comparable to the fierce and delirious ecstasy of the worm beneath the heel it would only be a natural and perfectly logical advance upon our knowledge of living stone sensations beneath the paw of the lion at any rate it is clear that man owes as much to his luggage as a ship goes to her and keel it seems absurd to build her delicately and then burden her dreadfully but the sailor loves the heavy keel and the full fright it is the light keel and the empty hold that have most reason to dread the storm blessed be ballast is a beatitude of the four castle such as the law of life's luggage but the New Testament gives us a still loftier and lovelier word bear ye one another's burdens and so fulfill the law of Christ and these laws and the law of nature and the law of Christ are not conflicting but concordant the one is the bud the other is the blossom for Christ came not to remove life's luggage but to multiply our burdens it is true of course that he said come on to me all ye that labor under heavy laden but he only invited them that he might offer them his joke and his burden here is something worth thinking about Christ gives rest to the heart by giving burdens to the shoulders and as a matter of fact it is in being burdened that we usually find rest the Old Testament records the sage words of an old woman in addressing two younger ones the Lord Grant said Naomi that ye may find rest each of you in the house of her husband who ever heard of a woman finding rest in the house of her husband and yet and yet the restless hearts are not the hearts of wives and of mothers as many a lonely sick must be nursed the wounded must be tended the frail must be cherished these two must be permitted to play their part in the shaping of human destiny they also may love and wed and become fathers and mothers the weaknesses of each are taken back into the blood of the race the frailty of each becomes part of the common heritage and in the last result if our men are not all apollos and if our women do not all resemble Venus de Medici it is largely because we have millions with us who but for the law of Christ operating on rational ideals would have had no existence at all in a Christian land under Christian laws we bear each other's burdens we carry each other's luggage it is the law of Christ the law of the cross a sacrificial law the difference between savagery and civilization is simply this that we have learned in our very flesh and blood to bear each other's burdens and so fulfill the law of Christ we set out with Dr. Guthrie let us return to him he is excellent company he is describing with a glow of satisfaction one of the ragged schools he established in Edinburgh I remember he says going down the high street early one morning and seeing a number of our children coming up one of them was born on the shoulders of another and on my asking the reason he said that the little fellow had burned his foot that night before and he was carrying him to school that said the doctor emphatically would not have happened in any other school in Edinburgh it is a parable it is the law of life's luggage it is the law of Christ end of part one chapter one recording by Chad Horner from Balli Clare in County Antrim Northern Ireland luggage of life this is a LibriVox recording all LibriVox recordings are in the public domain for more information or to volunteer please visit LibriVox.org recording by Chad from Balli Clare the luggage of life by Frank W. Bortham part one chapter two our desert islands in childhoods golden hours we all of us squandered a vast amount of sympathy upon Robinson Crusoe and in the later years we have caught ourselves shedding a silent tear for the sorrows of poor Enoch Arden imprisoned on his beauteous hateful isle in the imagination to we have paced with the beloved disciple the rugged hills of Patmos we have even felt a sympathetic pang for Napoleon in his cheerless exile at St Helena and all the while we have clean forgotten that we ourselves are each of us cast upon lonely seagird islands we are each one of us hopelessly cut off isolated and insulated moreover unlike the heroes of Defoe and Tennyson we shall never sight a seal our beacon fires will never bring down any passing vessel to our relief it is forever at our very birth we were chained naked like Andromeda to our rock in mid-ocean and no Perseus will ever appear to pity and deliver us the links of the chain by which we are bound are many and mighty at one or two of them it may do us good to look more particularly and by far the mightiest of these insulating factors is the mystery of our own individuality each several ego is dreadfully alone in the universe each separate I is without counterpart in all eternity in the deepest sense we are each fatherless and childless we have no Keith or Ken when God makes a man he breaks the mold heaven builds no sister ships we may establish relationships of friendship and brotherhood with other island dwellers across the intervening seas we may hear their voices shouted across the foam and read and return their signals but that is all the most intense sympathy can never bridge the gulf no man can enter into the soul of his brother man I was the aisle says John and he says it for us all in all the chief matters of life says Amil in his journal we are alone we dream alone we suffer alone we die alone we are all islands says George Elliot in one of our beautiful letters to mrs. Bray each in his hidden sphere of joy or row our hermit spirits dwell in Rome apart there is nothing more solemn says Dr. Alexander McLaren than the awful loneliness in which each soul of man lives we stretch out our hands and grasp live hands yet there is a universe between the two that are nearest and most truly one and perhaps Matthew Arnold has said the last word when he sings yes in the sea of life and I'll with the echoing streets between us through dotting the shoreless watery wild we mortal millions live alone we have shed our tears over the terrific solitude of Robinson Crusoe and of Enoch Arden and in return Robinson Crusoe and Enoch Arden urges to weep for ourselves for their partial and temporary solitude was as nothing compared with the absolute this impermanence of our own but there are other insulating elements in life our very circumstances being peculiar to ourselves tend of course to cut us off from others our conscience is too for there is nothing in the solar system so isolating as a secret and especially as a guilty secret a man with a secret feels that it cuts him share off from his fellows a man with a guilty secret feels lonely in the densest crowd a murderer can never find a mate civilization therefore tends to isolate us savages have but few secrets they know each other too well but we make secrets of everything our wealth or poverty or joys or sorrows are our own private affairs the simplest question becomes an impermanence to ask your next door neighbor the dimensions of his bank balance the sum of his weekly earnings or the age of his wife would stagger him more than a blow with a walking stick conventionalities of civilized etiquette all separate us from each other and we move in stately and solitary dignity through life to the watchword of my new room business but by far the most tragic contributor to your isolation is our pitiful and pitiless lack of sympathy with each other we may not altogether understand each other and we have our revenge by taking some pains to misunderstand let me cull a pair of illustrations from familiar pages of our literature one Robert Lewis Stevenson tells a famous story of two maiden sisters in the Edinburgh of long ago this pair he tells us inhabited a single room from the facts it must have been double better and it may have been of some dimensions but when all is said it was a single room here our two spinsters fell out on some point of controversial divinity you'd be like but fell out so bitterly that there was never a word spoken between them black or white from that day forward you would have thought that they would separate but no whether from lack of means or the Scottish fear of scandal they continued to keep house together where they were a chalk line drawn upon the floor separated their two domains it bisected the doorway and the fireplace so that each would go out and in and do her cooking without violating the territory of the other so for years they coexisted in a hateful silence their meals their ablutions their friendly visitors exposed to an unfriendly scrutiny and at night in the dark watches each could hear the breathing of her enemy never did four walls look down upon an uglier spectacle than these sisters rivaling in unsisterliness here are desert islands for you to the romance of religion all of an herbivane tell a strange story of two nuns they were Bernadines and lived side by side for five years in two adjoining cells and so then a partition divided them that they could even hear the sound of each other's breathing all this time they eat at the same table and prayed in the same chapel at last one of them died and according to the rule of the order the dead nun was laid in the chapel her face uncovered and the Bernadines filed past throwing holy water upon the remains as they went when it came to the turn of the next door neighbor no sooner did she catch a sight of the dead nuns face than she gave a piercing shriek and fell back in a swan she had just recognized her day her strength in the world from whom she had parted in anger years before each had misunderstood the other and thought the other unaffected by the quarrel and for five years the two friends had lived side by side neither having seen the others face or heard the other's voice so true are the tragic words of poor Tom Braggen words that have an added path to us for those of us who knew something of the poor himself not understood we move along asunder our paths grow wider as the seasons creep along the years we marvel and we wonder why life is life and then we fall asleep not understood not understood how many breaths are aching for lack of sympathy ah day by day how many cheerless lonely hearts are breaking how many noble spirits pass away not understood oh god that men would see a little clearer or judge less harshly when they cannot say oh god that men would draw a little nearer to one another they'd be near they understood we are like islands says Roger Kipling and we shout out to each other across seas of misunderstanding but there is another side to all and happily a brighter one island life has its compensations I was in the aisle says John but in the very next sentence he adds I was in the spirit insolations have their inspirations the world is not ruled by its continents wide continental areas like China and Russia count for little in the world's history the continents are ruled by the islands not the islands by the continents the ancient grecians and Phoenicians says Lamartine imbibe something of the perpetual agitation and insubordination of the sea the spectacle of the ocean renters man more free and impatient of restraint for he constantly beholds the image of liberty in its waves and his soul imbibes the independence of the element with which agrees a great American writer it is this fluid element he says that gives fluidity and progress to the institutions and opinions of the race it is only in the great inland regions of the world in Central Africa and Asia that bigotry and embedded custom have their seat in these vast regions that never saw the sea men have lived from age to age without progress or the idea of progress crushed under despotism and superstition rooted down like their trees motionless as their mountains it was never a Babylon or a Timbuktu or any city of the inland regions that was forward to change or improvement it was a tire queen of the sea a carthage sending out her ships beyond the pillars of Hercules to Britain and the northern Isles and Athens and Alexandria these were the seats of thought of art of learning and literal improvement of every sort island life has therefore compensations peculiar to itself all of which is in allegory every isolation is a preparation for the conquest of the continent think of the isolation of John Milton represented by his blindness and think at the same time of paradise lost what an island bed for jail seemed to bunion among continents has he won by his pilgrim's progress John freddit like a cage line on his rock apartments but his visions there have enriched every time and every climb we are isolated in the loneliness of our own individuality that each individual may contribute out of his peculiar experience to the wealth of the whole world there was no charge committed to our care so mysterious and so sacred as the development and diffusion of our own selves and every other insulating element is designed not as an exile for the one but as an enrichment for the whole the islands are the masters of the continents in this world and in every other and thus it has come to pass that the dreariest most desolate a most awful isolation of which men have ever heard the loneliness and dereliction of the cross is issuing a must issue in the conquest and redemption of the world and of part one chapter two recording by Chad from ballet Claire part one chapter three of the luggage of life this is a LibriVox recording all LibriVox recordings are in the public domain for more information or to volunteer please visit LibriVox.org recording by John Brandon the luggage of life by Frank W. Borum part one chapter three our highway robberies poor Mr. Little Faith was violently assaulted and robbed in Dead Man's Lane so Bunyan tells us but the remarkable thing about the crime was this that when he recovered his senses and was able to investigate his laws he found that his assailants had taken only his spending money the place where his jewels were they never ransacked so those he kept still there is a subtle philosophy about the episode in Dead Man's Lane Preventary Carlisle the head of the church army tells a delightful story of a Welch minor who in the great days of the revival avowed himself as a disciple of Jesus Christ he had previously exhibited an amazing facility in the use of expletives of the baser kind with his changed life however it became customary for him to meet the most exasperating treatment with a manly smile and a homespun benediction his mates disapproving the revolution in his behavior one day stole his dinner but all they heard their transformed comrades say was praise the Lord I've still got my appetite they can't take that the good Collier only emphasized in his own quaint way the lofty logic of Dead Man's Lane the truth is embedded in the very essence of Christian teaching the robbers always leave the best behind them they cannot help it the writer of the epistle to the Hebrews commands his readers for having taken joyfully the spoiling of their goods and he adds you are well aware that you have in your own selves a more valuable possession and one which will remain life's spoilers leave the best of the spoil after all the pilgrims to the celestial city must all of them pass through the eerie shades of Dead Man's Lane and they alone can enter that dark some avenue with a song on their lips who are first assured of the absolute security of their best possessions in one of the noblest passages of Sesame and Lily's Ruskin deals with that great saying in the sermon on the mount concerning the treasures of the court which a moth can destroy the treasures of the camp which rust can defile and the treasures of the counting house which a thief can to spoil these then are the desperados of Dead Man's Lane the moth and the rust and the thief and these are the only things that they can steal the treasures of place and of power and of health but there must as Ruskin argues be a fourth order of treasure a web made fair in the weaving by Athena's shuttle a web that no moth can destroy an armor forged in divine fire by Volcanian force an armor that no rust can defile a gold to be mind in the very sun's red heart where he sets over the Delphinian cliffs a gold that no thief can steal deep pictured treasure impenetrable armor potable gold yes there is there is and it was to his fourth order of treasure that Jesus pointed in his great sermon it was treasure of this fourth order that Mr. Little Faith safely retained after his robbery in the place where jewels were these the robbers never ransacked so these he kept still now it so happened that Peter was standing by that day and heard that great word about the robes of office that moths cannot eat about the swords of power that rust cannot defile and about the shining horde the thieves cannot steal and long afterwards the three sets of treasures were running in his mind when he himself wrote to scattered and persecuted Christians concerning the inheritance that is incorruptible because no moth can corrupt it and undefiable because no rust can defile it and on fading because no thieves can steal it these are the jewels that the brigands of dead man's lane can never touch all the night was dark and the night was late and the robbers came to rob him and they pick the locks of his palace gate the robbers that came to rob him they pick the locks of his palace gate seized his jewels and gems of state his coffers of gold and his priceless plate the robbers that came to rob him but loud laughed he in the morning red for of what had the robbers robbed him whole hidden safe as he slept in bed when the robbers came to rob him they robbed him not of a golden shred of the radiant dreams in his wise old head and they're welcome to all things else he said when the robbers came to rob him the lines inevitably recall the well-known story of Jeremy Taylor his house had been piteously plundered all his choicest possessions had been squandered his family had been turned out of doors yet in face of his sore trial the good man kneeled down and gave humble and hearty thanks to his god that his enemies had left him the sun and the moon a loving wife many friends to pity and relieve the providence of god all the promises of the gospel his faith his hope of heaven and his charity towards his enemies life's burglars and bandits can make but poor headway against a man of that temper but all those whose pockets have been rifled and whose houses have been robbed none have suffered more heavily than paul he knew the skill of the robbers better than any of us here is his own record in stripes above measure in prisons more frequent in deaths oft of the jews five times received i 40 stripes save one thrice was i beaten with rods once was i stoned thrice i suffered shipwreck a night and a day i have been in the deep in journeyings often in perils of waters in perils of robbers in perils by my own countrymen in perils by the heathen in perils in the city in perils in the wilderness in perils in the sea in perils among false brethren in weariness and painfulness in watchings often in hunger and thirst in fastings often in cold and nakedness yes in peril of robbers the sea had robbed him once and the land had robbed him often he knew what the robbers could steal and he knew what they could not whether there be prophecies they shall fail whether there be tongues they shall cease whether there be knowledge it shall vanish away these are life's spending money which we may lose by violent hands in dead man's lane but the apostle goes on but now abided faith hope and love these three and the greatest of these is love these are the jewels that the robbers cannot ransack i had a friend whose love no time could end that friend dits thou to thine own bosom take for this my loss i see no reparation the earth was once my home a habitation of sorrow thou hast made it for this sake i had a love this bitterest did prove a mystic love of joy on earth and sky strange fears and hopes a rainbow tear and smile a transient splendor for a little while then sudden darkness lord thou knowest why what have i left a friend and love bereft stripped bear of everything i counted dear what friend have i like that i lost what call to action nay what love lord i have all and more besides if only thou art near in florence visitors are shown the doors which michael angelo declared to be fit for the gates of paradise they are covered with exquisite pictures and picked out with noble imagery in bronze but those gates were once gilded and dante speaks of them as the golden gates the centuries have eaten away the guilt but have been unable to touch one particle of the magnificent work of the immortal master let us put on a cheerful courage therefore as we enter dead man's lane the best always abides after the gleam and the gloss have worn off that is forever and forever the strong consolation of the christian gospel the robbers steal the glitter they cannot touch the gold they take mr little faith spending money but his jewels are still his own after the brigands have decamped and of chapter three recording by john brandon part one chapter four of the luggage of life this is a libravox recording all libravox recordings are in the public domain for more information or to volunteer please visit libravox.org recording by john brandon the luggage of life by frank w borom part one chapter four two or three a blind man can always tell when there is a poor congregation in such a case the minister invariably quotes a certain text where two or three are gathered together in my name there am i in the midst of them but the text is as much out of place as the missing worshipers we have no right to drag it in drearily dolefully dismally whenever the empty pews are particularly conspicuous it is not an apology for human absence it is a triumphant proclamation of the divine presence and it raises a most interesting question who are the two and who is the possible third two or three one who are the two who can they be but aodias and centic those two rankling sisters in the church at filipi and all their still more quarrelsome daughters and all the churches of the world who can they be but paul and barnabas so sharply contending and all their contentious sons the wide world over wherever and whenever two daughters of aodias and centic poor ruffled creatures who have judged rashly and spoken hastily meet together that they may kiss each other for christ's dear sake and be of the same mind in the lord there says their great master am i in the midst of them wherever and whenever two sons of paul and barnabas poor inflamed disciples who have contended sharply and divided suddenly meet together that they may love each other for the gospel's sake until they come once more to love each other for their own there says the lord am i in the midst of them it is at such times as it is at the table of the lord there is the same real presence the same thrill of the heart the same thoughts that do lie too deep for tears he is there forgiving and teaching them the high art of forgiveness forgetting and showing them how to forget but the third the possible third two or three who is he the third if there be a third is clearly that blessed one of the seventh beatitude blessed are the peacemakers for they shall be called the children of god the possible third is some lovely and gracious spirit who has wept in secret over the pitiful estrangement of poor thin-skinned deodias and poor quick-tempered centic and by her beautiful ministry she like an angel of peace has brought them to this place of the holy presence the possible third is some strong sane saintly soul who has grieved over the sharp contensions of paul and barthubus and has tactfully helped them each to a discovery of the others excellences where aeodias and centic and such an angel meet where paul and barthubus and such a great heart kneel we take our shoes from off our feet for the place whereon we stand is holy ground it is hallowed by the presence where two or three are gathered together in my name there am i in the midst of them these words says professor simon were spoken primarily of those who were assembled for the settlement of quarrels so be it two who are the two who can they be but a husband and a wife following upon the excellent example of paul peter addresses himself to all husbands and to all wives till wedding bells shall chime no more but peter goes just one step beyond paul in that he takes all his husbands and wives into his confidence and tells them the profound reason for this earnest solicitude on their behalf that your prayers be not hindered he says i have so carefully warned and admonished and instructed you as to your attitude and behavior to each other that your prayers be not hindered happy is that bridegroom who when all the confetti has been thrown when the chattering giggling throng is at last excluded when he finds himself at length alone with his bride kneels with her and lays in prayer and adoration the foundation of the new home accept the lord build the house they labor in vain that build it wherever and whenever a man and his wife bow in the presence of the highest that they may sweeten and strengthen and sanctify their happy union by a common fellowship with god there says the strange guest who blessed the marriage at cana there am i in the midst of them these are the two but the third the possible third two or three who is he let us consult in our complexity one of the fathers of the church let clement of alexandria tell us who are the two or three gathered together in christ's name and in whose midst the lord is is it not husband and wife and child to be sure in the days of loves young dream we say that two's company threes none but when god sends a little child into a home the early theory stands exploded and three become company and two become none forever after there is hope for christianity so long as these three gather in his name and he is in the midst of them the family alter is the hub of the spiritual universe every husband who does not daily enjoy the benediction of the two or three should straightway read the fragrant life story of thomas boston and every wife whose domestic drudgeries and social niceties are not glorified by the blessing of the two or three should hasten to the nearest library for the life of susannah westley and after he has read the tale of thomas boston and after she has read the story of susannah westley not a word will be said they will rise and look into each other's faces with a glance of perfect understanding and a possible third will be brought in from a cot or from a kitchen and that home will become the gate of heaven they will meet together and read together and pray together on that day and every day that comes after it and where those two or three gather together in his name there he will be in the midst of them that was a great word which fell the other day from the lips of king george the fifth the foundations of national glory he said are set in the homes of the people they will only remain unshaken while the family life of our nation is strong and simple and pure it was right royally spoken herein lies life's wealthiest enrichment and finest fortification three who are the two who can they be but those torchbearers and testifiers whom he has sent in pairs to the uttermost ends of the earth he sent them forth two by two and whenever any two of them sit by the wayside or kneel in the shadow or like the men of Emmaus talk as they walk there will he be in the midst of them and so men have paired off ever since Paul and Silas Mark and Barnabas Luther and Melanchthon Franciscan friars Dominican monks lowlard preachers salvationist officers traveling evangelists and a host beside nor are the minister and his wife in their ments or the missionary and his wife at their remote outpost any exception to the rule and wherever and whenever his ambassadors persecuted as Paul and Silas were persecuted meet together in his name as Paul and Silas in their prison prayed and sang praises unto God there will he be in the midst of them as he was most manifestly in the midst of them on that never to be forgotten sight at Philippi it is ever so this great saying concerning the two or three is the watchword of the faith it is the pledge that however isolated the scene however remote the station however lonely the toilers he is always there but the third the possible third two or three who is he who can he be but the first convert Lydia for example that winsome soul who as the lady of the decoration would have said had a beautiful big house and a beautiful big heart and took us right into both Paul never forgot when he and Silas and Lydia happy three met together in his name it was the very joy that is in the presence of the angels overflowing into the hearts of mortal men there was not a shadow of doubt about it he was clearly there in the midst of them or the jailer for example Paul and Silas and their jailer what a triad but what a night was that no christian knows what christianity really means until he has experienced such days as that day of Lydia's and such nights as that night with the jailer religion catches fire and becomes sensational the moment when two weary workers kneel with their first convert has all eternity crammed and crowded into it ask Robert and Mary Moffat if that is not so wherefore let every minister and his wife and every missionary and his wife and every pair of christian comrades everywhere keep an eye open day and night for the possible number three two or three the master said three's company two's none end of chapter four recording by John Brandon part one chapter five of the luggage of life this is a LibriVox recording all LibriVox recordings are in the public domain for more information or to volunteer please visit LibriVox.org recording by John Brandon the luggage of life by Frank W. Borum part one chapter five the captain of the ship the unvarnished truth is that the skipper does not know everything he sweeps the horizon with his glasses but there are signs in the sky that elude his weary observation he may quite easily be beaten at his own game the seer in the cabin may decipher the language of the clouds more accurately than the bronzed and weather-beaten mariner on the quarter-deck that was the mistake the centurion made the centurion believed the master of the ship more than those things which were spoken by Paul it is a purely nautical matter the captain of the ship predicts fair weather and urges an early clearance Paul the prisoner and passenger foretold angry seas and advised remaining in shelter the centurion believed the captain of the ship but Paul was right the captain was wrong and the ship was lost sooner or later all life resolves itself into a desperate struggle for human credence between Paul and the captain of the ship the point is that the captain of the ship is the man who might be supposed to know he is a specialist and Paul sets over against his nautical erudition the unsatisfying words i perceive it is a case of reason on the one hand and revelation on the other and the centurion pins his faith to the vigilant captain rather than to the visionary Paul that is the exact point at which the world has always missed its way that was the trouble at the very start could it be that to eat of the fruit of the tree would be to die was it reasonable upon the face of it and adam believed the captain of the ship later no up predicted a flood where were the phenomena to warrant such an alarming forecast did it appeal to common sense and again the insistent voice of revelation was scouted visit the melancholy sites of edam and Babylon or Tyre and Sidon of Sodom and Gomorrah of Greece and Rome and everywhere on crumbling pillar and broken arch seeing eyes may discern these significant words deeply graven on the ruins that are splendid even in decay they believed the captain of the ship these magnificent empire builders of yesterday scouted the nebulous perceptions of the prophets and they fell national shipwreck always comes along that line it is wonderful how little the practical man really knows a gray headed old theorist is tapping away with his geological hammer among the stones and strata on the hillside as he leaves he remarks casually that there was coal in the mountain the practical man smiles incredulously at the poor old fellow as he packs his hammers and glasses and specimens and strolls off home for a year or two later when the hillside is riddled with shafts grimy with coal dust and black with smoke the practical man bites his lips in disgust at the failure to take the old dreamers hint the meteorologist shuts himself up in his laboratory among vials and chemicals presently he opens his door and gravely predicts a storm the masters of the craft down at the port smile knowingly and put to sea but when their ships are in the pitiless grip of the gale they grimly remember the forecast only the other day professor bellar director of the larbuck observatory warned miners of seismic unrest that seemed likely to liberate fire damp he was not taken very seriously and within a day or two all europe stood aghast at the horror of the lancashire colliery explosion all generally knows what he's talking about it would be an appalling calamity if we were left at the mercy of the captain of the ship he may be true as steel and good as gold but as in the case under notice he makes mistakes those who are inclined like the centurion to trust the captain of the ship rather than those things that are spoken by paul will do well to consult a second captain there are more ships than one and the opinion of the second captain will diverge from that of the first doctors differ i have recently been reading the biographies of some of our greatest english judges and few things are more curious than the way in which two distinguished judges equally able and equally conscientious will hear the self-same evidence and listen to the self same speeches and then arrive at diametrically opposite conclusions the same phenomenon is common in politics great and gifted men trained to wrestle with the problems of political economy developing by long experience all the instincts and functions of seismic ship will divide sharply and oppose each other hotly on the most simple issues clearly the captain of the ship is unreliable in a world like this on which so many worlds depend it would be the climax of misfortune if the captain of the ship had it all his own way there are visions perceptions revelations god speaks from without he speaks plainly so that wayfaring men may not air all rises and says grandly sirs i perceive and that centurion is foolish indeed who believes the captain of the ship more than those things that are spoken by paul the dusty and travel-stained pilgrims of eternity would be of all men most miserable if amidst the babble of many advisors no clear guidance had reached them from the haven of their desire happily the lord of the pilgrims does not leave his christians and hopefuls to find the way to the celestial city as best they may there are the things spoken by paul yet it must be admitted that there is a certain glamour and fascination about the captain of the ship it is restful to believe him rather than to venture everything upon the verdict of a visionary in one of the biographies to which we have referred an interesting situation occurs it is in the life of sir henry hawkins baron brampton at the very climax of his fame as a judge accustomed every day to weighing conflicting evidence and deciding between opposing claims the great judge gave himself to the study of religion and as a result he joined the roman church newman's apologia is a similar case how can these conversions be explained the answer is obvious considered from the strictly judicial point of view of hawkins or from the coldly intellectual standpoint of newman their decisions are perfectly intelligible they simply believe the captain of the ship in the roman church they find a commander ahead of pope he speaks plainly he is invested with the glamour of authority and his decisions are final he is the captain of the ship but there are other voices that do not yield to such icily critical investigation they are subtle silent spiritual but they satisfy and lead to safety the centurion believed the captain of the ship more than those things which were spoken by paul that is exactly what moving along purely logical and coldly intellectual lines hawkins and newman would have done but when all is said and done paul is right a leading english minister the other day drew aside the veil of squalor and filth and revealed to an eminent scientist the raw material on which he worked the very refuse and wreckage of society is there any hope for these people he asked the old professor took his time and answered sagely pathologically speaking there is none just so that is the verdict of the captain of the ship but paul cries sirs i perceive and tells a vastly different tale and which is right ask your ministers ask your city missionaries ask general booth or if you suspect these of bias consult the works of professor william james the eminent psychologist or writer haggard the eminent novelist professor james and his masterpiece confessed that in ways altogether beyond psychological explanation the activities of the church have again and again made bad men good spiritual energies have wrought the most amazing moral transformations and still more recently rider haggard raises his hat in reverence before the astonishing phenomenon of conversion as he has seen it for himself and his investigations of the work of the salvation army there can be no doubt about it the unseen world is the triumphant world the spiritual is after all the same and the safe the only way of avoiding shipwreck in church and in state is clearly to pay good heed to the things spoken by paul end of part one chapter five recording by john brandon part one chapter six of the luggage of life this is a libra vox recording all libra vox recordings are in the public domain for more information or to volunteer please visit libra vox.org recording by john brandon the luggage of life by frank w borum part one chapter six the supremacists of life life has a wonderful way of tapering majestically to its climax it narrows itself up towards its supremacists like a mountain rising to its snow capped summit in the skies our supreme interests assert themselves invincibly at the last our master passions are in it the death let us glance at a pair of extraordinarily parallel illustrations paul is awaiting his last appearance before nero the old apostle is caught and caged at last he is writing his very last letter he expects if spared to spend the winter in a roman dungeon do your very best he says to timothy to come to me before winter and he adds the cloak that i left at troas with carpas when thou comest spring with thee and the books but especially the parchment's under circumstances almost exactly similar paul's great translator william tindale was lying in his damp cell at billboard awaiting the final stroke which set his spirit free a few weeks later and as in paul's case winter was coming on bring me he writes a warmer cap something to patch my leggings a woollen shirt and above all my hebrew bible especially the parchment's above all my hebrew bible the emphasis is upon the especially and upon the above all paul knows how isolated he will feel in his horrid cellar and he twice begs his young comrade to hurry to his side he knows how cold he will be and he pleads for his cloak he knows how lonely will be his incarceration and he says bring the books yet he feels that after all these do not represent the supremacists of life it is not on these that he is prepared to make his final stand but especially the parchment's much as he yearns for the clasp of timothy's hand he is prepared if needs be to face the stern future alone much as he longs for his warm tunic to shelter his aged limbs he is prepared if needs be to sit and shiver the long winter through gladly as he would revel in his favorite authors he is prepared if needs be to sit counting the links in his chain and the stones in the wall but the parchment's these are life's supreme essential indispensable requisites these represent life's irreducible minimum especially the parchment's above all my Hebrew Bible these are the supremacists of life the hero of romance erects a pyramid upon its apex he sets out in life with one or two friends he soon multiplies the number he counts them as the years pass by the score and by the hundred and he dies at last in the possession of friendships which can be numbered by the thousand it is a false note the thing is untrue to experience the first true gentleman that ever breathed found his path wronged with friends at the outset but as time wore on they wore off many of his disciples went back and walked no more with him twelve remained such as they were but even that remnant must be sifted and of the twelve a selection had to be made and into the chamber of death and up to the mount of transfiguration and into the garden of Gethsemane Jesus takeeth with him Peter and James and John the pyramid is narrowing up towards its apex and when he passes from Gethsemane to Golgotha John alone stands by the cross and even he had wavered and Jesus sat unto John son behold thy mother it had tapered sharply to the unit at last especially john sir William Robertson nickel has a story of an old scotsman who lay a dying his little room was crowded with friends presently a number of them rose and quietly left there remained his old wife gene and the trusted companions of a long pilgrimage as his frame became more feeble and his eye more dim one after another reverently rose lifted the worn old latch silently and left the room at last the old man pressed the withered hand in which his own was clasped and whispered faintly they will a gang you will stay and at last he and she were the sole occupants of the little chamber especially gene which things are an allegory the pyramid narrows to its apex life contracts towards its supremacies especially the parchment i have hosts of friends wrote lord macaulay in one of his beautiful letters to his sister but not more than half a dozen the news of whose death would spoil my breakfast and if that half doesn't he would probably at a later stage have made a selection friendship has its supremacies the same is of course true of our libraries like the apostle we are all fond of books but our bookshelves dwindle in intensity as they grow in extensity as life goes on we accumulate more and more volumes but we set more and more store on a few selected classics of the soul the number of these favorites diminishes as the hair bleaches we have a score a dozen and at length three and if the hair gets very white we find the three too many by two especially the parchment's sir h.m stanley set out upon his great african exploration with quite a formidable library one cannot march 18 hours a day under an equatorial sun and he gave a prudent thought to the long encampments and armed himself with books but books are often heavy in a literal as well as a literary sense and one by one his native servants deserted him the pyramid towering towards its apex and as a consequence stanley was compelled to leave one treasured set of volumes at this african village and another at that until at last he had but two books left shakespeare and the bible and we have no doubt that had africa been a still broader continent than it actually is even shakespeare would have been abandoned to gratify the curiosity of some astonished hotentots or pygmies it all comes back to the pathetic entry in lockhart's diary at abertsford he sir walters scott then desired to be wheeled through his rooms in a bath chair we moved him leisurely for an hour or more up and down the hall and the great library i have seen much he kept saying but nothing like my ain hoose give me one turn more next morning he desired to be drawn into the library and placed by the central window that he might look down upon the tweed here he expressed a wish that i should read to him i asked from what book he said need you ask there is but one i chose the fourteenth chapter saint john's gospel he listened with mild devotion and when lockhart had finished reading of the father's house and the many mansions he said that is a great comfort the juxtaposition of phrases is arresting in the great library there is but one book the pyramid stood squarely upon its solid foundation but it towered grandly and tapered finely towards its narrow but majestic summit come says paul the aged for i am lonely bring the cloak for i am old and cold bring the books for my mind is hungry but oh if all these fail send the parchment especially the parchment life supremacists must always conquer and claim their own at the last end of part one chapter six recording by john brandon part one chapter seven of the luggage of life this is a libra vox recording all the bravox recordings are in the public domain for more information or to volunteer please visit libravox.org recording by larry wilson the luggage of life by frank w borne part one chapter seven the prudentialities of life beneath cloudless italian skies paul is painfully but patiently enduring in a stifling cell the suffocating fervors of the sultry summer days and with the fierce heat at its insufferable maximum he casts a prudent thought ahead of him and contemplates the severe rigors of a stern roman winter do thy best he writes to timothy to come to me before winter and the cloak which i left at troawaz bring with thee superficial observers have often considered these personal trivialities beneath the dignity of scripture the trifling is subjective it is not objective it is their criticism that lacks dignity eyes have they but they see not the microscopic is often as eloquent and as revealing as the majestic divinity often trembles in a drew drop a trifling incident may reflect a tremendous principle a psychologist would at least discover in the story of paul and his summer call for his winter cloak a fine instance of the amazing detachment of which the human mind is capable it is a strange and wonderful thing that we are able admits summer scenes to project our thoughts so realistically into the coming cold that we give an involuntary shiver and cast our eyes over our wardrobes the same power of course enables us to project our minds not merely from our summer cells to our winter wardrobes but from our own summers to other people's winters it is by this extraordinary faculty of the mind that we sympathize my lady wraps snugly in rugs and furs detaches her south from herself and projects herself into the wretched rags of her sister in the slums no one can read charles dickens without feeling that even as he sat in his comfortable room and wrote he endured all the agonies of the poverty which he so passionately portrayed mrs harry beecher stowe could never have written uncle tom's cabin unless she had first projected herself in utter most detachment from herself into the anguish of cassie in elisa the iron entered into her own soul by this weird and awful power of intellectual abandonment it makes even loftier flights it explores moral territories lovers of oliver twist will remember how the pure sweet girlhood of rose melee came into touch with the soil soul of poor nancy and for one awful moment the mind of rose projected itself into the sins and sorrows of nancy and in the presence of that marvel nancy burst into tears oh lady lady she cried clasping her hands passionately before her face if there were more like you there would be fewer like me there would there would and traveling along this road we should soon come to that culminating example of mental and moral detachment by which the redemption of a lost world was effected from the summertime of his glory and holiness he detached himself from himself emptied himself and wept with us in the winter of our raggedness and shame he had compassion the ages can know no greater miracle or mystery than that but the purely psychological phenomenon presented by paul's summer call for his winter cloak has led us a little astray a wayfaring man will recognize it as an illustration of the prudentialities of life paul anticipates in summer the demands of winter such prudentialities are everywhere the great mountain heights store up in winter their millions upon millions of tons of snow and when early summer suns have dried up the lower springs and when otherwise the planes would be scorched beneath a pitiless glare the welcome streams come flowing down from the heights and the grateful cattle quenched their thirst in the same way the soft green masses along the banks of the rivulet saturate themselves with moisture like sponges conserving and protecting it and in the later days of doubt when else the bed of the stream would be dry they release their precious birthing and the thirsty blessed them inanimate creatures the faculty is of course much more pronounced everybody knows how ants and beetles make elaborate preparations for the days as yet far ahead of them the mice and the squirrels make hay while the sun shines and lay up in store against frost and snow the bee provides her honey when the earth is gay with flowers with the intention of living upon her horde when no blossoms are to be seen we remember reading in parkman's conspiracy apontiac of the folly of the algonquin indian who in the hour of plenty forgets the season of watt until stiff and stark with haggard cheek and shriveled lip he lies among the snow drifts till with tooth and claw the famished wildcat strives in vain to pierce the frigid marble of his limbs there is a more excellent way and paul following the example of mice and squirrels and bees thinks of winter cold while as yet he perspires beneath summer suns the most obvious application of the principle is naturally the most practical one those who are too dense to catch our meaning had better inquire for an interpretation of it at a savings bank a building society or an insurance office it is true of course that concerning many things tomorrow must not obtrude upon today but the future has its certainties and it would be both impious and absurd to neglect them since it is certain that winter must follow summer it is certain that it is the duty of paul to arrange for his cloak a man must provide for his home whilst as yet he is single he must make his will whilst in the best of health the applications are simply innumerable but the truth has its deeper aspects in the heyday of spiritual prosperity we must lay up in store against days of darkness and doubt in the days of opened heavens and answered prayers let us record the experience on the tablets of memory to feed upon when the heavens are as brass and prayer as a tinkling symbol when infidel thoughts come knocking at my door wrote good old thomas shepherd i send them away with this answer why should i question the truth which i have both seen and known in better days there is a world of sagacity and shrewdness there it was an awful night in scotland the snow was deep the wind simply shrieked around the little hut in which a good old elder lay dying his daughter brought the family bible to his bedside father she said will i read a chapter to you but the old man was in sore pain and only moaned so she opened the book nah nah lassie he said the storms of new i think it my house in the calm weather we can learn no loftier philosophy than that from the story of paul summer call for his winter cloak we must thatch our house in the calm weather and later on smile at the storm life's tourist prudentiality lies just there end of part one chapter seven part one chapter eight of the luggage of life this is a LibriVox recording all LibriVox recordings are in the public domain for more information or to volunteer please visit LibriVox.org recording by jennifer painter the luggage of life by frank w gorem part one chapter eight the face of the window we are living in a very wistful world it is all very well to say that people are irreligious callous indifferent that is true but it is not the whole of the truth when mr hg wells first men in the moon reached their lunar destination the moon seemed to them to be lifeless derelict desolate but when they probed beneath the surface they found it teeming with pulsing life and furious thought and industrial activity and the more deeply they penetrated into its cavernous tunnels and mysterious subways the more populace the place became which is as mr wells very possibly meant it to be an allegory it is when we look with superficial eyes upon the world that we are pessimists when we scratch the surface we begin to behold the truth one of those noble and graceful Hebrew metaphors which for sheer literary beauty have never been surpassed reflects most perfectly the whole position my soul doth wait for the Lord more than they that watch for the morning i say more than they that watch for the morning the image is one of exquisite tenderness and pathos the night is long and dreary and the tired watchers press their faces every now and then against the window pane eager to discover beyond the rugged ranges some gray glimmer of the coming dawn the soul of many a man has its eastward aspect there are great numbers who dwell in chambers like that in which christian was lodged in the palace beautiful whose window opened toward the sun rising the soul of the psalmist is in the darkness but his face is towards the dawn we are in grave peril in our pessimistic moods of forgetting the face at the window it is the essential feature in the present situation there are pilgrims asking the way to Zion with their faces thitherward let my meaning mirror itself in a pair of illustrations here are two such faces peering wistfully out from the dark the first is that of Frank T. Bullen in with Christ at sea he says arriving in Sydney I soon succeeded in getting a birth as lamp trimmer in one of the coasting steamers and for the next 12 months made a pretty complete circuit of the australian colonies living on the best of everything earning good wages learning all manner of things harmful to me but never by any chance coming across anyone who was christianly disposed and feeling myself less and less anxious to seek after god often I would stand on deck when anchored in Sydney harbour on Sunday morning and listen to the church bells playing Sicilian mariners with a dull ache at my heart a deep longing for something I knew not what thus ends the quotation but the tragic fact is that there were excellent people with bibles and hymn books passing along the key on the way to church who glanced at the grimy young lamp trimmer and thought him irreligious callous and indifferent they fail to see the wistful face at the window the other occurs in the memoir of Dr. H. Bratton Guinness on one of the earliest pages we read never shall I forget one evening when the ship was anchored in a calm or flow stopped near Yarmouth looking at the sun slowly setting in the west over the peaceful scene the outline of a church spy rising among trees showing distinctly against the glowing sky I was longing unutterably to be committed to dwell in some quiet spot where out of the reach of evil society and the voice of blasphemy I might worship God and walk with him in unhindered fellowship longing unutterably more than they that watch for the morning that is it the fact is that we are too superficial we glance at a man and at once tie an imaginary label around his neck we classify him as a christian or as a heretic or as a skeptic or as a backslider and we think that that settles it but our work of classification is very much more complicated than we think we forget that a saint and a skeptic can dwell together in the same skin Lord I believe there you have the saint help thou mine unbelief there you have the skeptic the prophets love to talk of a time when the wolf should lie down with the lamb but in many a heart the wolf and the lamb dwell together even now great wickedness and great wistfulness often lodge in the self same heart the room may be very dark indeed but the face is at the window looking towards the light we are slow to learn the lesson that Robert Louis Stevenson tried to teach us in his allegory of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde as the years go by we learn to economize our labels Dr. Campbell Morgan was recently asked by an interviewer for his view of the spiritual condition of London on the one hand he replied I see evidence of awful indifference but on the other I see remarkable wistfulness I find that even when I get into touch with the most indifferent men there is a great wistfulness that was absent a few years ago the man who then told me that he was an agnostic still says that he is an agnostic but he adds now that he dearly wishes he could believe as I do that testimony is significant it means that the men who sit in thick darkness are moving towards the window and longing for the dawn Dr. Douglas Adam has told us a striking story of Professor Huxley a friend of mine says Dr. Adam was acting on a royal commission of which Professor Huxley was a member one Sunday he and the great scientist were staying in a little country town I suppose you were going to church said Huxley yes replied the friend what if instead you stayed at home and talked to me of your religion no was the reply for I am not clever enough to refute your arguments but what if you simply told me of your own experience what religion has done for you my friend did not go to church that morning he stayed at home and told Huxley the story of all that Christ had been to him and presently there were tears in the eyes of the great agnostic as he said I would give my right hand if I could believe that Huxley's face was at the window in spite of everything but of course the peerless illustration of our point is the infinitely pathetic case of Professor Sidgewick has any minister ever read that life story with dry eyes if so we are sorry for his congregation to enter into the cheerless realm of Sidgewick's skepticism is a more chilling experience than to penetrate polar solitude and yet no one can read that throbbing story without seeing a tear stained face at the window long and wistfully the brilliant doctor strained his eyes looking eastward but saw not the rosy at flush of the dawn he felt through it all that his doubt was his shame and his soul ate for faith he literally longed for the light more than they that watch for the morning I say more than they that watch for the morning there was unbelief in his brain but a wonderful wistfulness shone in his yearning eyes beneath his intellectual uncertainties he carried a pitifully hungry heart others such as Mill and Tyndall Professor Clifford and Viscount Amberley might of course easily be cited to swell this cloud of witnesses but there is no need let us however before laying aside the pen cross the ocean in order to inquire whether this strange and wistful craving is confined to grimy lamp trimmers like Frank Bullen and to brilliant university professors like Henry Sidgewick or is it to be discovered also in the regions beyond and so soon as we step ashore it becomes manifest that without an exception the peoples who sit in darkness have nevertheless their faces to the window in every land there may be many that say who will show us any good on continents and on islands blind souls are everywhere groping after the light it must be so if as principal in Varagh argues in his Christian message the founder of Christianity being very deed the Son of God it is inconceivable that the human heart can find its home in mohammedanism or Buddhism only recently a great all-india convention of religions was held at Alalavad Hinduism Islamism Jainism Zoroastrianism Judaism and Theosophy were all strongly represented but it was agreed by general consent that the only message that struck warm was the witness of the Indian Christians to the love and power of Christ to that testimony a sympathetic chord of response vibrated in all hearts and at the close of the convention the Hindu secretary exclaimed one thing we could not have dispensed with was the Christian contribution it was like a streak of dawn streaming in upon the tired watches of the night the lady of the decoration tells us that she saw in Japan a wistfulness that i have never seen anywhere else except in the eyes of a dog the letters of our missionaries on every field often remind us of that unforgettable cartoon which appeared in punch in the dark days of 1885 it represented general Gordon on the roof of his palace at cartoon shading his eager eyes with his hand and gazing with a look of unutterable wistfulness towards the sandy horizon watching for that relieving column that ultimately came too late he waited for their coming more than they that watched for the morning so do the nations sudden before my inward open vision millions of faces crowded up to view sad eyes that said for us is no provision give us your savior too give us they cry your cup of consolation never to our outreaching hands to his past we long for the desire of every nation and oh we die so fast these are the faces at the window when little bilny made his historic confession to Hugh Latimer which lit that candle in England that has never been put out an image akin to this haunted his imagination oh father latimer he said pretty hear me when i read in the latin testament of the great erasmus these strange words christ jesus came into the world to save sinners it was with me as though in the midst of a dark night day suddenly broke that is the daybreak for which the faces watch at the windows of the world more than they that watched for the morning i say more than they that watch for the morning the exquisite winsomeness of the christian evangel and the wondrous wistfulness of a waiting world are the two strong pillars on which we build our serene confidence in the day after tomorrow end of chapter eight part one chapter nine of the luggage of life this is a LibriVox recording all LibriVox recordings are in the public domain for more information or to volunteer please visit LibriVox.org recording by Jennifer Painter the luggage of life by Frank W Borum part one chapter nine back moves i was enjoying the rare blessedness of an evening free from engagements i was reveling in the luxury of a glorious armchair a blazing fire and a fascinating book the children were seated at the table behind me absorbed in the desperate hazards of a game that lay between them the only noise was the rustle of the leaves of my book but at length the silence was broken you can't do that i heard one of the players cry there are no back moves i read on but had not gone far when i came upon this sentence the unseen opponent in the great game of life while scrupulously fair will allow no back moves and makes us pay in full for every blunder the words of course are huxleys i wonder if he is right i'm not at all sure that he has spoken the last word so many men find their lives entangled prejudiced compromised that unless you can promise them something in the nature of a back move the most you can offer seems so poultry and small go to an arms house for example and the old people will remind you that you can't give them their lives over again visit a jail and in some form or other the terrible question will present itself in every cell can i begin again at the point at which i went astray talk to a man who is in the grip of the drink fiend he does not doubt for a moment the willingness of god to forgive he is even inclined to think it possible that the power of god might be able to keep him from the dreadful snare but see the stain on his life he thinks with unspeakable horror of his tarnished name his humiliated wife his trembling hand have you nothing to say to him about a fresh start a clean sheet a back move if not you will lose him in spite of everything now i imagine that most of us have passed through three distinct phases of thought on this subject i confess that i have they are three inevitable stages of development first of all there was the period at which we assured men with the most sublime confidence that their sins like a dark cloud could be blotted from the face of the sky and wiped into oblivion the ugly stain we told them could be perfectly and eternally erased we boasted in our fine evangelistic fervour that a sinner might not only be pardoned but be justified for a sinful man to be justified we elaborately explained was for a wicked man to be made as though he had never been wicked at all sin is not only forgiven it is annihilated cast behind god's back hurled into the depths of the sea salvation under that first interpretation was nothing less than a magnificent back move then came doubts suspicions and the second phase we found it was not all so simple as we thought the jailbird is converted but who will trust him the old record is so damning the drunkard kneels in a tempest of tears at the penitent form but the bloated face and the palsy hand and worse still the awful craving are still there we recalled john b goff's bitter bitter cry the scars remain elementary scars never to be eradicated never to be removed in this life i have been plucked like a brand from the burning but the scar of the fire is on me and george mcdonald emphasizes with a very tender but a very telling touch another aspect of the same problem the passage occurs in wilfred cumbermeade do you know wilfred i once shot a little bird for no good but just to shoot at something i knew it was wrong yet i drew the trigger it dropped a heap of ruffled feathers i shall never get that little bird out of my head and the worst of it is that to all eternity i can never make any atonement but god will forgive you charlie what do i care for that he rejoined almost fiercely when the little bird cannot forgive me yes there is just that element in life that makes back moves very difficult and unhappily the wreckage men have wrought is not always confined to a heap of ruffled feathers what if whilst heaven absolves earth finds it hard to entertain kind thoughts of us what if instead of little birds our own flesh and blood rise up in judgment against us there is undoubtedly a good deal to give pause to our early theology a good deal to enforce the cheerless philosophy of omakayam the moving finger writes and having writ moves on nor all your piety nor wit shall lure it back to cancel half a line nor all your tears wash out a word of it we abode among these somber thoughts for many years and fancied that we had reached finality we pitched our tent in this dismal wilderness and regarded it as home we foolishly imagined that this was the last phase and that there was no more to be said and when the felon looked eagerly up into our eyes as he sat in his lonely cell and asked about the new start the clean sheet the back move we were dumb then came emancipation and the third phase and as usual the bible brought it we were browsing among the prophecies we came upon Jeremiah's story of the potter then i went down to the potter's house and behold he wrought a work on the wheels and the vessel that he made of clay was marred in the hand of the potter so he made it again another vessel as seemed good to the potter to make it then the word of the lord came to me saying oh house of israel cannot i do with you as this potter saith the lord he made it again that is surely as near to a back move as it is possible to get i remember hearing the reverend fb maya tell of a woman who on her way to commit suicide heard the singing in christ church westminster and stole into the porch she was only a poor soiled broken bit of london's outcast womanhood it happened that mr maya preached on the story of the potter the vessel marred and remade there was no further thought of suicide she was charmed at the prospect of a back move surely when jesus talked to nicodemus of being born again he was promising a back move then too in turning over these ancient prophecies i came to joel everybody knows that the entire prophecy of joel was suggested by the historic and unprecedented plague of locusts which had just devastated the entire land the very sun was darkened the fields and vineyards were a howling wilderness business in the city was paralyzed even the sacrifices in the temple were suspended in the midst of this awful visitation this fearful scourge this national calamity the prophet was commanded to cry fear not oh land be glad and rejoice for the lord will do great things i will restore to you the years that the locust has eaten and the promise royally given was royally fulfilled the sun was once more shining out of a clear sky the vines were bowing beneath the burden of wealthy and luscious clusters the hills with rich delicious grass for the capital were as green as emerald the valleys laughed and sang with their golden crops of corn the city was humming with commercial prosperity and to crown all the temple was once again crowded with devout worshippers the years that the locust had eaten were all fully restored now if only i could go to that felon's cell to that drunkard's home and to a hundred other places that occur to me with a message like that i will restore to you the years that the locust has eaten that would be grand that would be a gospel of back moves with a vengeance and may i not now let me think how was the promise fulfilled how did the most high restore the years that the locust had eaten it is very simple what the locusts took they took and there was no return but the next year why the next year the hills and valleys of palestine was such a scene of abundant harvest and prodigal growth that the people were fully compensated for the loss of the previous season now as the children say we're getting warm have we never known a life that in its later years displayed a sweetness and a purity and a grace which were the direct outcome of earlier suffering or of earlier sin can we not recall the memory of safely and fruitful lives in which both the sanctity and the fruitfulness were the natural result of hideous memories of former transgression it was the haunting nightmare of their old sins that drove both bunion and newton to such intense personal piety and to such fervent evangelistic zeal we have all known men who in days gone by lived in open and notorious chain then came the change their faith was a pattern to us all in its exquisite and childlike simplicity the very enormity of their transgressions made religion a revelry to them and the thought of pardon a perpetual luxury their faces were radiant they never referred to their experiences but with streaming eyes and faltering voices their testimony was so impressive as to carry conviction to all who heard it and as we saw how strong men were moved by their utterance we felt that God in his own wise and wonderful way was restoring to them the years that the locust had eaten in the familiar lines of Hezekiah Butterworth there are two significant buts and we are in danger of noticing only the one but the bird with the broken pinion never soared so high again this is the first that is the truth that Huxley saw but it is not the whole truth there is another but the bird with the broken pinion kept another from the snare and the life that sin had stricken raised another from despair each loss has its compensations there is healing for every pain though the bird with the broken pinion never saws so high again and surely surely to save another from the snare or to raise another from despair is the very best of back moves I do not regret the past cried the lady of the decoration at the close of her story for through it the present is all the loneliness the heartaches and the pains are justified now I believe that whilst I have been struggling out here in Japan God has restored to me the years that the locust had eaten and that I shall be permitted to return to a new life a life given back by God who shall say that life has no back moves after that end of chapter nine part one chapter 10 of the luggage of life this is a LibriVox recording all LibriVox recordings are in the public domain for more information or to volunteer please visit LibriVox.org recording by Larry Wilson the luggage of life by Frank W. Borum part one chapter 10 the tireless trudge whilst the fire crackled cheerly between them two friends of mine discussed a naughty point the question under debate was briefly this which is the most trying part of a long journey one argued for the initial steps on setting out the weary road he said stretches out interminably before you every stick and stone seems to be shouting at you to turn back and to take your ease his friend on the other side of the hearth thought quite differently he contended stoutly for the final stage of the pilgrimage he vividly pictured the exhausted pedestrian at the end of his journey scarcely able to drag one blistered and bleeding foot in front of the other it is certainly rather a fine point but after all it was really not worth discussing for nothing is more absolutely clear that they are both wrong which of course is the usual fate of controversial lists now the worst part of the journey is neither at his beginning nor at its close there is a certain indescribable exhilaration arising from the making of the effort which imparts elasticity to the muscles encouraged to the mind at starting the road seems to dare and challenge the pilgrim and he swings off along the taunting trail with a keen relish and a buoyant stride and at the other end the twinkling lights of the city that he seeks help him to forget that he is foot sore and choked with the dust of the road his blood tingles with the triumph of his achievement and the delight of nearing his goal but there is another stage concerning which neither of my friends had a word to say what of the intermediate stage what of the long and lonely tramp what of the hours through which no applauding voices from behind can encourage and no familiar fingers from before came back in this surely is the worst part of the way there is no intellectual stimulant so intoxicating as the formation of a noble purpose the conception of a sudden resolve the making of a great decision and in the luxurious revelry of that stimulus the prodigal finds it easy to rise from the degradations of the far country and to fling himself with the will along the great Phoenician road and at the other end surely the most overpowering of all human instincts and emotions is that which holds captive every nerve at the dear sight of home no neither the first nor the last steps of that familiar journey were very hard to take but between the one and the other what questionings and forebodings what haltings and backward glances what doubts and fears yes there can be no doubt about it both my friends were wrong it is the intermediate stage that tests the metal of the man it is the long fatiguing trudge out of sight of both starting point and destination that puts the heaviest strain on heart and brain that is precisely what Isaiah meant in the best known and most quoted of all his prophecies he promises that on the return from Babylon to Jerusalem they that wait upon the Lord shall renew their strength they shall mount up with wings as eagles they shall run and not be worry and they shall walk and not faint israel is to be released at last from her long captivity imagine the departure from Babylon its fond anticipations its rapturous ecstasies its delirious transports those first steps of the journey were not trying they were more like flying the delighted people walked with winged feet and the last steps with Jerusalem actually in sight the pilgrims actually climbing the mountains that surrounded the holy and beautiful city what rush of noble and tender emotions would expel and banish all thoughts of weariness but isai is thinking of the long long tramp between the drag across the desert and the march all void of music it is with this terrible test in mind that he utters his hearty promise they shall walk and not faint they would fly as on wings of eagles out of Babylon at the beginning they would run forgetful of fatigue into Jerusalem at the end but they should walk and not faint that is life's crowning comfort the very climax of divine grace is the grace that nerves us for the least romantic stage of the journey farewells and welcomes departures and arrivals have adjusting compensations peculiar to themselves but it is the glory of the gospel that it has something to say to the lonely traveler on the dusty track religion draws nearer when romance deserts grace holds on when the guilt wears off two cases come to mind I know a man whose whole delight was in his boy a little fellow of six or so then suddenly like lamps blown out by a sudden gust the lads eyes failed him and he was blind the father was the recipient of scores of touchingly sympathetic letters all sorts of people called condi references were made in press and pulpit the man had no idea until that moment that he had so many friends all the world seemed to be paying homage to his sorrow that was the beginning after many years the boy had been taught to interpret the world again by means of his remaining senses there was nothing he could not do he earned his own living and his sightlessness seemed no real hindrance to him that was the end but the father told me that in the strain of it all came between these two there came a time when the postman brought no cheering letters friends uttered no heartening words the world had transferred his boys blindness into the realm of normal and common place nobody noticed but in the home the little fellow staggered about and his parents hearts ached for him what was to become of him it was during those intervening years lying between the first crushing blow and the final relief that the real strain came that was by far the worst stretch of the road i knew a woman without a moment's warning she was plunged into widowhood and left a battle for her five little children and herself there was an extraordinary outburst of affectionate sympathy on the part of all who knew her then came the funeral after that the world went on its way again as though nothing had happened that was the beginning after the years the battle had been well fought and well won the children had been clothed educated and placed in positions of usefulness and honor that was the end but my widow friend told me that she did not forget when the world forgot every morning her grief woke up with her and every night it followed her to rest every day she struggled for her little ones the haunting question tortured her what would become of them if sickness or death seized upon her that was the killing time that intermediate stretch was the worst part of the desolate way as it is with individuals so it is with great causes a crusade is launched amid a vituperation derision and execration and there is enough fight in most of us to lend a certain enjoyment to the very bitterness of antagonism and at last the self-same movement is crowned with triumph but the real inwardness of the struggle lies midway William Wilberforce used to say that he was less dismayed by the storm that broke upon him when first he pleaded the cause of the slave then by the long lull that followed when the country accepted his principles but did nothing to hasten their realization in America the same thing happened the war against slavery was undertaken with a light heart young men sprang to the front in thousands with the refraining of John Brown's body on their lips but the real struggle was not then nor towards the close when victory and emancipation were in sight but who can forget the long agony of disaster that intervened between those two it was when the nation was trudging tearfully along that bloodmarked track that the real suffering took place the same experience repeats itself in the history of every great reform someone has said that every movement has its bow wow stage its poo poo stage and its here here stage of those three phases the central one is infinitely the most difficult to negotiate between the howl of execration that greets the suggestion of a reform and the shout of applause that announces its final triumph there is a long and tiresome stretch of steep and stony road that is very hard to tread they are God's heroes who set a stout heart to that stiff bray and walk and not faint in his autobiography Mark Rutherford tells of his fierce struggle with the drink fiend on one never to be forgotten night he resolutely put the glass from him and went to bed having drunk nothing but water but he continues the struggle was not felt just then it came later when the first enthusiasm of new purpose had faded away and in his deliverance he applies the same principle in a more general way he is telling of the stress of his life as a whole neither the first nor the last he says has been the difficult step with me but rather what lies between the first is usually helped by the excitement and promise of new beginnings and the last by the prospect of triumph but the intermediate path is unassisted by enthusiasm and it is here we are so likely to faint i cannot close more fittingly than by setting these two striking sentences over against each other it is here we are so likely to faint says mark rutherford speaking of the long and tiresome intermediate phase they shall walk and not faint says the prophet in reference to precisely the same circumstances and conditions wherefore let all those who are feeling the toilsome drudgery of the long unromantic trail pay good heed to such comfortable words into part one chapter ten the tireless trudge