 Part 1 chapter 11 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 1 chapter 11 sunset on the sea. Uncle Tom and Eva were seated on a little mossy seat in an arbor at the foot of the garden. It was Sunday evening and Eva's Bible lay open on her knee. She read, and I saw a sea of glass mingled with fire. Tom said Eva suddenly stopping and pointing to the lake. There it is. What Miss Eva? Don't you see there? Said the child pointing to the glassy water which, as it rose and fell, reflected the golden glow of the sky. There's a sea of glass mingled with fire. The exegesis of Mrs. Stowe's frail little heroine is probably as near the truth as our best expositors are likely to carry us. I have known what it is to be surrounded by magnificent and mountainous icebergs in the Southern Ocean. I have been an awe-stricken admirer of the grandeur of a thunderstorm on the equator. I have seen the seas in a passion as they responded to a gale of Cape Horn, but I must confess that one of the most splendid and impressive spectacles it has ever been my lot to witness was a tropical sunset at sea. The huge and angry sun went down like a ball of livid fire. The sky seemed to have broken into flame. The sea was a sea of blood. The very foam on the tips of the waves was tinged with crimson. The outlook from the deck of the vessel was unforgettable, the kind of thing to haunt you in your dreams. Everything was weird, awful, unearthly, and as I gazed upon the strange mingling of flood and flame, I thought of John. The exiled Apostle sat among the beatling cliffs of Patmos after having born the burden and heat of the toilsome convict today, and at evening he gazed wearily and wistfully westwards towards those teeming centres of civilisation into which he had hoped to carry the story of the cross. And even as he gazed, the colder G&C flamed with the glory of an oriental sunset, and he beheld at his feet a sea of glass mingled with fire. The fact is that the seeming antagonisms of life are not so incongruous as we, in our superficial moments, are act to suppose. We are in imminent peril of reaching false conclusions, through taking it for granted that the other side of truth is always a lie. We forget that fire and water are in greater concord than we assume. Truth consists not in a part, but in the whole, and the separate parts of that whole are often apparently inconsistent. Professor Henry Drummond has shown us that the time was when the science of geology was interpreted exclusively in terms of the action of a single force, fire. Then followed the theories of an opposing school, who saw all the earth's formations to be the result of water. Any biology, any sociology, any evolution, adds the professor, which is based on a single factor, is as untrue as the old geology. Geologians never approximated to the real truth until they saw a sea of glass mingled with fire. And from those ancient blunders of the geologians, our theologians, if they be discreet, may still learn much. Knowledge is not the monopoly of any one of her numerous schools. The fact is that truth is always and everywhere friendly to truth. It therefore follows, as the night the day, that truth need never be afraid of truth. One man may interpret truth in the terms of a sea of glass. Another may interpret truth in the terms of a flame of fire. A superficial hearer, listening to the two interpretations, will throw up his hands in horror. Fable and confusion, he will cry, which is true and which is false. But a wise man will listen reverently to both preachers and will see that a sea of glass may quite easily and quite naturally be mingled with fire. A few years ago, there awoke in Europe a spirit of scientific research. The geologist took his hammer and began to search among the strata for truth. The astronomer swept the heavens with his telescope in his quest for truth. The antiquarian and historian went off together to the east with a spade and began to dig in Palestine, Egypt, Asia Minor, and Assyria for truth. And there were excellent souls in all the churches who cried for mercy. Stop, they cried. You will find something among stones or stars that will stagger our faith or shatter our serenity. You will dig up something in some lone Syrian town that will contradict our Bibles. But science would not stop. Investigation and scrutiny hastened forward. And with what result? We see now that whilst science appeared to our grandsires, like a sea of glass, as compared with Revelation, which was like a flame of fire, the two are not contradictory or antagonistic. They carbonize and blend. And we today see a sea of glass mingled with fire. It is the glory of the Christian faith that it is immense enough to be able to contain within itself aspects and elements that at first sight seem strangely conflicting. I heard a preacher exulting in the tenderness and beauty of God's infinite love. The very same day I heard another speaker the severity and exactness of God's infinite justice. Surely he was speaking of a different God. But no, it is the same God, but such a God. There is no conflict nor confusion. We are simply gazing at a sea of glass mingled with fire. He is a just God and a Saviour. And those who know him and worship him are like unto him. Dean Stanley has a most exquisite passage in which he extols these diverse qualities in the life of Arnold. He describes the perfect ease and delicacy with which Arnold reveled in the atmosphere of the home. Those who had only seen the stern schoolmaster in the halls of rugby scarcely recognized him as he romped with the merry children by the half. And those who had only known him in the home, a man so engaging, so winsome, so delightful, listened as to a strange language when others referred to his strictness and austerity. Yet, says Stanley, both were perfectly natural to him. The severity and the playfulness expressing each in its turn the earnestness with which he entered into the business of life and the enjoyment with which he entered into its rest. In a word, his character, which was perhaps more reverence than that of any man of his time, was like a sea of glass mingled with fire. The splendor of the sunset on the sea has a very practical application to the testimony and teaching of all the Christian churches. Let us take, by way of illustration, two extreme cases. I repeat that both instances are necessarily and happily extreme. A fine church, splendidly upholstered and appointed, but only moderately attended. Its pulpit is regarded as the last word in scholarship and that is as it should be. But it is said to be cold. The ministry is forbidding. The atmosphere lacks cordiality. On the way home, the worshippers are arrested by a spectacle so remote from that which they have just departed that they might almost mistake it for a representation of a different religion. A street preacher screams and yells in a frenzied monotone. His theology is almost brutal. His illustrations are shocking. His gesticulation is terrifying. His grammar causes even the children to smile. But his arresting passion, his grim earnestness, his transparent sincerity, his vivid realization of the awful realities of which he speaks, these are beyond question. If only the other preacher had caught something of his intensity, and if only he had taken the pains to acquire something of that preacher's erudition, what scenes might have been witnessed both from the cushioned pew and from the corner of the pavement? As it is, both are largely ineffective. The one is like the sea, deep but cold. The other is like the sun, blazing but wearying. The seer at Patmos saw that the idea lies not in the lowering of the scholarship of the one, nor in the reduction of the fervour of the other. But in the mingling of the two, a sea of glass mingled with fire. The problem is not one of subtraction but of addition. It is said that young men sometimes enter theological seminaries overflowing, like volcanoes, with fires of enthusiasm that they can neither hide nor contain. And it is said too that they frequently emerge from those colleges like icebergs, very impressive but very cold. It is usually their own fault when such moral tragedies occur. At least it is a thousand shames, things should so fall out. The youthful fires ought to be fed and purified by the addition of knowledge. The minister, as he waves farewell to his alma mater, should carry with him his youthful ardour, absolutely undiminished and unabated, with all his scholastic acquirements as a clear addition. Of all the rites and ordinances of Christian worship, the same may be said. Our services and assemblies are intended to be seas of glass mingled with fire. Salemnity must be there and dignity but there must be emotion and deep feeling as well. Splendid music must be shot through with spiritual praise. Stately eloquence must be glorified by stirring passion. All the externals and ceremonials of worship are in themselves as cold as icicles. The most beautiful and impressive ordinances are simply seas of glass till they are mingled with fire. It is only as they are made luminous with intense spiritual significance that they reveal their glory to the eyes of men. Nothing is more flat, stale and unprofitable than an argument concerning the mere technicalities and externals of an ordinance. Yet nothing is more inflaming to all that is best within us than the actual commemoration of these lovely rites. Baptism, apart from the profound spiritual sanctions with which the scriptures invested, is a sea of glass but with the realization of those inner mysteries and experiences, the waters flame and burn. Paul tells us that the same is true of the Lord's Supper. He that eateth and drinketh unworthily eateth and drinketh damnation to himself, not discerning the Lord's body. To such a one, that is to say, the elements are dumb, the waters do not glow with fire. He sees the sea but not the sun. Little Eva and Uncle Tom were therefore unconsciously embarking on a voyage amidst the eternal verities as they gazed upon the sunlit lake at New Orleans on that buttious and tranquil Sunday evening. And we shall be permanently enriched if we catch something of the radiant significance of the vision that they saw. Our seas and suns, our floods and flames must mingle. End of part one chapter 11. Part two chapter one 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 two chapter one. Clean Bold. There is something wonderfully restful to the eye and strangely soothing to the mind about the very environment of a first-class cricket match. The green and tented field, fanned by the barmy breath of summer and fragrant with the peculiar but pleasant odour of the turf. The huge stands, musical with the hum of eager conversation and the ripple of easy laughter. The dash of colour imparted by gay dresses, fluttering flags and the creamy flannels of the players. And last but not least the immense crowd, garrulous with reminiscences of earlier contests and overflowing with geniality and good temper. And then crowning all the glorious game itself. Harold Begby does well to lilt its praise. England has played at many a game and ever her toy was a ball. But the meadow game with the beautiful name is king and lord of them all. Cricket is king and lord of them all through the sweet green English shires and hears to the bat and the ball. How's that? And the heart that never tires. Nothing is more certain than that a recreation which holds the devoted attachment of a great people must in the very nature of things be preeminently a matter of morals. In his monumental work The Rise of the Dutch Republic John Lothrop Motley says that from the amusements of a people may be gathered much that is necessary for a proper estimation of its character. And he proceeds to demonstrate with his wanted insight and sagacity the truth of this general proposition from the experience of that sturdy little people whose most distinguished historian he must forever remain. Gerta too that profound yet practical philosopher has laid it down that men show their character in nothing more clearly than by what they think laughable. And McCawley in paying tribute to Frederick of Rinesburg remarks that perhaps more light is thrown on his character by what passed during his hours of relaxation than by his battles or his laws. The evidence of three such witnesses Motley, Gerta and McCawley must be regarded as indisputable. One has only to think of the gladiators and martyrs who were butchered to make a roman holiday and to remind oneself that five thousand horses and twelve hundred bulls are annually slaughtered in Spanish ball rings to see that paganism on the one hand and popery on the other betray their characters in the very recreations of their devotees. From a gladiatorial combat in ancient Rome or a bullfight in modern Madrid to a test cricket match in England or Australia is a far far cry. The question inevitably arises what has made the difference? There is only one answer possible. It is the cross. It is not too much to claim that the gospel of Jesus Christ has transfigured and softened and beautified the very sports and past times of those who have come beneath its charm. But the thing that has most impressed me as I have watched these splendid contests is the startling suddenness with which calamity swoops down upon a player and imports a new atmosphere into the game. A man made bat most brilliantly for half a day. You watch him hour after hour. He blocks and cuts and pulls and drives with a consistency that becomes almost monotonous. Bowler after bowler is tried but their task seems hopeless. Then a dog yells behind you. You turn your head to see what is amiss and in that fraction of a second there is a click and a cry and a cheer and as you look hastily back to the field you see the scattered stumps and the hero of the hours is setting out from the crease to the pavilion. Before you turned your head you actually saw the bowler commence his delivery. He did not wave his hand and cry. This is the ball that is going to do it. The men in the field gave no signal. The batsman looked as he had looked for hours. There was absolutely nothing to lead you to suspect that the faper ball was actually leaving the bowler's hands. So suddenly, swiftly, sensationally, like a bolt from the blue calamity pounces down upon a man and there is no place for repentance though he seeks it earnestly with tears. The broken wicket is irreparable. He may explain an excuse but he cannot return. I have been reading Mr Stuart E. White's The Forest. It is a most entrancing description of travel with the Indians among the woods and waterways of North America and it contains among other fine things a splendid chapter on canoeing. He says, inter alia, that in a four hour run across an open bay you will encounter somewhat over a thousand waves no two of which are exactly alike and any one of which can swamp you only too easily if it is not correctly met. Each wave he tells us has an individuality of its own. It requires a poise and a balance and a movement quite distinct from those demanded by any other way and he adds, remember this, be just as careful with the very last wave as you were with the others. Get inside before you draw that deep breath of relief. That sentence is sage, striking, significant. It seems to matter very little whether you are canoeing in America or cricketing in Australia. The same principle is at work. In the one case the waves seem all alike yet each wave has its own peculiar peril and the Indian who for one little second is off his guard finds himself wallowing in the surging torrent. In the other case the balls seem all alike yet each has a trick of its own and the unhappy batsman who for one instant plays mechanically or carelessly is rudely recalled by the hideous rattle of the wrecked wicket behind him. In canoeing and in cricketing disaster leaps upon its astonished victim with such sensational swiftness. In canoeing and in cricketing and in everything else for that matter that is a trite and terrible verse of George McDonald's. Alas how easily things go wrong a sigh too deep or a kiss too long and then comes a mist and a weeping rain and life is never the same again. That is it. Life for most of us is wonderfully like the experience of the Australian batsman and the American boatman. It is very strenuous and full of peril. Every nerve is taught. Each wave and each ball must be negotiated as though all destinies hung trembling on our triumph over that particular wave our mastery of that particular ball. Most of us can recall pathetic instances of crushing moral disaster. Their very memory casts a heavy gloom over our spirits still. Our idols fell and we remember the shock and the stagger. Who can see worse days? asks Bacon. Then he that yet living doth follow at the funeral of his own reputation. It is absolutely the last word in human tragedy and sorrow. Yet how fearfully swiftly it all happened. The thunderbolt pounced out of a cloudless sky and stupefied us by its appalling suddenness. The morning of that moral shipwreck broke as calmly as any since the world began. The sun shone just as brightly. The birds sang just as blithely. The flowers bloomed just as sweetly and all the world was fair. It was like the fatal ball and the fatal wave. There was nothing about that day to distinguish it from any other day. Yet that day in an unwary moment the gust of temptation did what many storms have failed to do. The hero fell. In giving evidence of the memorable Tay Bridge inquiry in Spotman Admiral Dougal attributed the collapse of the Great Bridge to a sudden pressure of wind from an unaccustomed quarter. Even trees, he added, are not able to resist pressure from unusual directions. A tree spreads out its roots in the direction of the prevailing wind. The moral is obvious. I find my hand trembling as I write. My peril is so intensely real and so terribly acute. I may bat for hours and pile up the centuries upon the sporing board and then in the twinkling of an eye a ball with a slightly different break may astonish me by compassing my downfall. I may baffle for hours with the racing and foamed tipped breakers and then as suddenly as a lightning flash a wave of innocent appearance but a peculiar peril may wreck my frail little craft within sight and sound of home. A gust of temptation from an unusual quarter may work for me such havoc as the sudden squall did for the famous Scottish bridge. Wherefore, says Mr. Stuart E. White, remember this, be just as careful with the very last wave as you were with the others. Get inside before you draw that deep breath of relief and a still greater and even more experienced traveller adds, let him that thinketh he standeth take heed lest he fall. The logic of the flying bales is irresistible and it is so woefully easy to be caught in the slips. End of part two, chapter one. Part two, chapter two of The Luggage of Life. This is LibriVox Recording. All LibriVox recordings are in the public domain. For more information or to volunteer, please visit LibriVox.org. Recording by April 6090, California, United States of America. The Luggage of Life by Frank W. Bohem. Part two, chapter two. Mad Dogs and Mosquitoes. I entered a chemist shop. The polite apothecary asked me to wait a while, and to save my soul from the tedium of staring vacantly at his immense colored bottles, he very kindly handed me a copy of a magazine. It proved to be the current number of the British importer. It did not appear promising. It was scarcely in my line. The chances of a thrill seemed remote. I fancied that the colored bottles might be more exciting after all. But I suddenly revised my judgment. The word warning caught my eye. It was at the top of a production of a card issued by the incorporated Liverpool School of Tropical Medicine. It bore the signatures of the Princess Christian, the Earl of Derby, Lord Cromer, and a host of other distinguished individuals. It proclaimed as its object that it aimed at the prevention of climatic fever, malaria, yellow fever, dengue fever, coast fever, endymical fever, remittant fever, and bilious remittant fever. A truly terrible array. And it laid down as its indisputable proposition that the bite of a mosquito should be dreaded as much as that of a mad dog. I thanked her royal highness. I expressed my obligations to these noble lords and learned doctors for so interesting a statement so concisely phrased, and lying aside the British importer, from which I had imported as much as I could carry in one load, I gave myself furiously to think. The fact is, of course, that the mad dog has gone out of fashion. He had his vogue, and it was a great one while it lasted. But his day is dead. The turn of the mosquito has come. It is perhaps a little disconcerting and a little humiliating, but it is irresistibly true. And since it is so resistlessly true, it is better to face the facts. In his magnificent history of the nineteenth century, Mr. Robert McKenzie broke the news to us as gently as he could. That great chapter on the red dress of wrongs, which haunts the ear forever, like a shout of triumph, might have been entitled, The Slaughter of the Mad Dogs. I very respectfully present the suggestion to Mr. McKenzie, with an eye to future additions. In that stately chapter he marshals the hideous injustices and social tyrannies, under which men groaned, but a generation or two ago. He recites, in glowing language, the glorious story of reform. And when he has told his thrilling tale and has described the destruction of one monstrous evil after another, he brings his chapter to a conclusion with a sentence that you learn by heart, simply because you cannot help it. The injustice of ages has been cancelled, he cries triumphantly. The Hamptons of the future must be contented to occupy themselves mainly with of small and uninteresting evils. The Mad Dogs are all slaying, that is to say, the reformers of tomorrow must turn their attention, like the Princess and the Peers, whose proclamation set me scribbling, to the matter of the mosquitoes. In his heretics, Mr. G. K. Chesterton, scented this truth of the Mad Dogs and the mosquitoes. But distantly, he describes what he calls the war between the telescope and the microscope. Compared with this, he thinks, the war between Russia and Japan is but a storm in a teacup. In the past we have abandoned ourselves to the worship of bigness. We have strutted about the planet looking for big things, and the natural result is that we have found them all. Now what is to be done? The telescope is of no further use, and it is too early to go to bed. Out with the microscope, make the stones tell their story, let the leaf of every tree and the wing of every fly and the petal of every flower unfold, their lovely tails. A fig for the telescope, its pleasures are so easily exhausted, her raw for the microscope, its domain is without limit, its future is eternal. There are at least a million million mosquitoes for every Mad Dog. Then who cares for Mad Dogs? Let us get to the mosquitoes. Many years ago a singular custom prevailed in addressing children. The good man would look into the eyes of his youthful auditors, and, assuming a melodramatic tone, intended to convey the idea that he was about to impart something sensational. He would say, Her adventure, my boys, I am even now addressing some future Columbus or Captain Cook, some polar explorer or celebrated discoverer. And in these olden times the argument was very effective, but it has, of course, been blown to bits since then. The last time it was used one of the boys asked permission to submit a question. What's the good of being a Christopher Columbus? He asked, now that you have no more Americas to be discovered. What's the good of being a Captain Cook? Now that we've seen pictures of every rock and reef that pokes its head out of the ocean. What's the good of being a polar explorer when there are no more poles? That is the point. We cannot be expected to supply new Africans for every budding living stone, new Mexicos for every prospective Cortes. And the supply of poles is certainly shockingly limited. What then? Shall we put the shutters up? Not at all. When Major Leonard Darwin delivered his presidential address to the Royal Geographical Society, this matter of mad dogs and mosquitoes was evidently at the back of his mind. It is true, he said, that the South Pole is as yet uncaptured, that the map of Arabia is still largely composed of great blank spaces, and that the bend of the Brahmature is drawn by guesswork in our atlases. But it is probable that all these problems will be solved almost immediately. What then is there left for the Royal Geographical Society to do? The Society must then direct its efforts with more persistence than heretofore in the direction of encouraging travelers to make detailed and systematic examinations of comparatively small areas. Brayley said, the mad dogs are nearly all slaughtered, the learned president seems to say. Gentlemen of the Royal Geographical Society, let us turn our attention to the mosquitoes. The Hamptons of the future must be contented to occupy themselves, mainly with the correction of small and uninteresting evils. Exit the mad dog, enter the mosquito. Wouldst thou be a hero? Wait not then supinely, for fields of fine romance that no day brings. The finest work opt lies in doing, finally, a multitude of unromantic things. But we must probe more deeply yet. The greatest word ever spoken about mad dogs and mosquitoes was uttered by Paul. He always seems to have the last word about everything. We wrestle, he says, not against flesh and blood, but against spiritual wickedness. Our fiercest fight, he tells us, is not with the core sins of the flesh, mad dogs, but with sins that are as insidious and ubiquitous and invisible as mosquitoes in the night. And, as our princess and peers have told us, the bite of a mosquito is as much to be dreaded as that of a mad dog. If, says old William Law, we would make any real progress in a religion, we must not only abhor gross and notorious sins, but we must regulate the innocent and lawful parts of our behavior and put the most common and loud actions of life under the rules of discretion and piety. That is precisely Paul's point. But this time my reader can think of no one but Thomas Chalmers and his early ministry at Kilmoney, how he thundered at the mad dogs. He preached against adultery and robbery and murder, twice every Sabbath. But, as he himself confessed, no good ever came of it. Then came the memorable illness and his wonderful conversion. Every minister ought to give his people that great page of Scotland's spiritual history in Chalmers's own beautiful but billowy language. And after his conversion the mad dogs troubled Chalmers no more. We hear no more about sensuality, about what Paul calls flesh and blood. But instead we hear a great deal of a multitude of microscopic pests, of which we heard no single word before. He laments his impetuosity, he deplores his being bustled, he weeps over his coldness. Oh, my sinful emulations, he cries, my ambition of superiority. Over others, my lack of meekness, my wanta purity of heart. My heart is overspread with thorns. Here, too, is a record of a terrific tussle with a mosquito. Had asked John, both thorn, to supper yesterday night, he says in his diary, and told him with emphasis that we subbed at nine. He came this night at eight. All forbearance and civility left me. And with my prayers I mixed the darkness of that heart, which hated his brother. This is most truly lamentable, and reveals to me the exceeding nakedness of my heart. Yes, there's no doubt about it. These princes of the holier life, Paul and Law and Chalmers, know what they're talking about. Our real conflict is not with the mad dogs, but with the mosquitoes. Here, too, witnesses, Professor Mulmury asks, Will, you say that the man who has made your home, of very hell by his morose and sullen temper, is more righteous than the man who has stolen your handkerchief? Why, the misery caused by all the pickpockets in the world to the whole human race is less than that inflicted on your single self by the so-called little sins of your relatives detestable temper. In his lovely essay on Charles Lamb, The Right Honourable Augustine Beryl, MP, confesses that the gentle Aliyah was too fond of gin and water, but he asks if an occasional intoxication which hurt no one but himself, is to be considered a more damning offence than the pale jealousy, the speckled malice, the boundless self-conceit, the maddening petulance, and the spiteful ill will of others, who, though they lifted no glass to their lips, broke many hearts by their bitterness and envy. We find it hard to answer these questions of the learned professor and the distinguished statesman, but this much is clear. It is only a matter of mad dogs and mosquitoes. A young lady asked Charles Dickens to enter his confessions in her album. What is your petted version? One question ran. To which Dickens replied, having the calves of my legs not off by a mad dog. The experience is certainly not alluring, but then how many people have endured it, and how many have been tortured by mosquitoes. Mad dogs have slain their hundreds, but mosquitoes have slain their tens of thousands. For the venom of these tiny creatures is fearfully fatal. As witness, the long list of fevers mentioned it in the proclamation of the princess and the peers, and attributed by them to the ubiquitous mosquito. Or ask Paul, or La, or Chalmers, or the man whose face you see daily in the mirror. Wherefore, as the proclamation puts it, the bite of a mosquito should be dreaded as much as that of a mad dog. The card bears the title, a warning to wise men. That is very suggestive. There is no more to be said. Part 2 Chapter 3 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 Linda Marie Nielsen, Vancouver, B.C. The Luggage of Life by Frank W. Bohem Part 2 Chapter 3 Unfalling in Love I am attracted to my present theme by the mirrored freak of circumstance. I was shown a most interesting letter. As I read that letter, I felt as one bite feel who is suddenly transported to Mexico or Tibet. Everything was absolutely foreign to me. The language was unfamiliar, and the atmosphere was one which I had never breathed. As a matter of fact, it was the letter of an accomplished pianist concerning music and musicians. The writer lives, moves, and has her being in a world which, I blush to confess, I have never invaded. A message from Mars could not have possessed, greater novelty. But let me hasten to the point. The writer speaks of her acquaintance with a certain eminent pianist whose recitals crowd the most spacious auditoriums in Europe, with ecstatic admirers. But, our correspondent goes on to say, there is just one thing lacking. This brilliant pianist is a lonely, tack-a-turn man, and a certain coldness and aloofness steal into his play. And then the writer of our letter mentions the name of a lady pianist. That name is a household word in musical circles the wide world over. And the writer says that, to her personal knowledge, this illustrious lady one day laid her hand on the shoulder of the brilliant young performer, and said, Will you let me tell you, my boy, that your playing lacks one thing. So far you have missed the greatest thing in the world. And unless you fall in love, there will always be a certain cold perfection about your music. Unless you come to love another human, being passionately and unselfishly, you will never touch human hearts as deeply as you might. Now, I have confessed that when I read the letter in the presence of the person to whom it was addressed, I felt myself a pilgrim in a foreign climb, as much abroad as the Eskimo in Italy, but as an Eskimo in Italy would at least be interested, would look about and stare if he did not understand. I found myself similarly arrested. Then, becoming skeptical, I turned to the recipient of the letter and asked him if a very liberal discount might not be reasonably be deducted in consideration of the pardonable enthusiasm and excusable exaggeration of so attached a musical devotee. Did not imagination count for something? Well, replied he, the singular thing is that the writer of the letter was a pupil of the illustrious lady, pianist, to whom she refers. One day, at the conclusion of a lesson, the pupil looked up into the face of her teacher and told her that she had a secret to reveal. I know you have, replied the instructor, although it is no secret. The girl told of her engagement. Yes, answered the teacher, but it is not quite new. It is some time ago. That is so, but however did you know. I noticed the difference in your playing at once, and I have observed the change ever since. I was wondering when you were going to tell me. I am still a stranger in a strange land. The flowers wear strange hues. The birds are of unfamiliar plumage, and of accustomed song. I do not understand the ways of the people. I cannot speak their language. I am all abroad, and hopelessly lost. But I have been here long enough to satisfy myself that, strange as it all is, the country is a real country, the things at which I marvel are real things. I am not being tricked by a mirage. It is no illusion. I do not dream. It is worth thinking about, partly because the same sort of thing is to be met with in other realms than in that, a music. It is not merely that love lends to life, a new interest, a new rapture, or even a new outlook. Everybody recalls the lines of Tennyson's lover. Let no one ask me how it came to pass. It seems that I am happy, that for me a greener emerald twinkles in the grass, a bluer sapphire melts into the sea. But this suggestion in the letter that lies before me goes further than that. It means, if it means anything, that love liberates powers, which before were simply latent. An Arctic explorer has recently drawn our attention to a most singular phenomenon. He tells us that some years ago a party of British sailors landed on an isle in the frozen north, and, by some mischance, set fire to the stunted vegetation that scantily clothed the inhospitable place. They left it a bear and blackened rock. A few years later another party landed and found it clothed with a forest of silver birch trees, with stems that glittered in the sunlight and leaves that quivered in the wind. It was a scene of silvin' loveliness. The flames had awakened slumbering seeds, which, in the cruel grip of the icy cold, had lain dormant throughout the years. The wilderness had blossomed like the rose. Now the letter suggests that, when the soul of a man is stirred and swept by life's most masterful passion, new and unsuspected powers spring into activity and fruition. Two instances leapt to mind. I suppose Scottish literature holds no lovelier gem than the famous letter of Dr. John Brown to Dr. John Cairns. It is printed in Rabb and his friends. In that letter Dr. Brown tells the pathetic story of Dr. Belfridge. Dr. Belfridge's wife was a lady of great sweetness and delicacy, after less than a year of singular and unbroken happiness, she suddenly died. The doctor was disconsolate, and his grief was intensified by the reflection that there existed no portrait of his lost love. He resolved that there should be one. He had not an idea of painting. He had never touched an easel. He went to the nearest art eporium, procured all the necessary materials, shut himself up in an unbroken solitude for fourteen days, and at the end of that time emerged from his seclusion, burying a portrait of his late bride, which became the admiration of all who were privileged to behold it. I do not know of anything, said Dr. Brown, more remarkable in the history of human sorrow and resolve. The other case is, of course, that of Quentin Mastis. He was a Flemish blacksmith. He became deeply enamored of the daughter of a painter, but the painter had vowed that his daughter should marry none, but a distinguished master of his own craft. Mastis laid down his hammer and left the forge. He entered a studio and seized the brush, and today, four centuries after his death, pilgrims and tourists cross Europe to gaze upon the mystery of his descent from the cross in Antwerp Cathedral and his two misers at Windsor. Ella Wheeler Wilcox, with her usual sublty and discernment, has sung to us in a similar strain. Though critics may bow to art and I am its own true lover, it is not art but heart which wins the wide world over. Though perfect the players touch, little, if any, he sways us. Unless we feel his heart throb through the music he plays us. It is not the artist's skill which in our souls comes stealing with a joy that is almost pain, but it is the player's feeling. I have thought, though I hesitate to say it, that all this may explain a mystery otherwise incapable of solution. I speak as to wise men. Many of us are teachers, officers, ministers, and the like. We are frequently confronted with doleful cries and still more doleful facts. Here are articles on the dearth of conversions and here are plaintive papers on the arrested progress of the church. Has my theme nothing to do with it? I fancy it has. May not the ministry of the preacher, like the music of the player, lack that subtle element of passion that makes just all the difference. I fancy I detect is my own ministry sometimes. I will not dare to speak of the work of others. That very self-same coldness and aloofness which the lack of love explained in the distinguished pianist. Though I speak with the tongues of men and of angels, and have not love, I am become a sounding brass and a tinkling cymbal. It is a very old complaint, but nonetheless tragic on that account. We take it for granted that we preach Christ because we love Christ, but is the assumption always safe? May we not rather cry with Tennyson's poor falling queen? Oh my God, what might I not have made of thy fair world? Had I but loved thy highest creature here? It was my duty to have loved the highest. The more I love Christ, exclaimed Gustave Dory, the better I can paint him, of course. The more accomplished, the more biblical, the most evangical ministry may, after all, resemble the playing of our European professor, an indescribable coldness, a strange aloofness, one thing lacking. There can be no doubt that love exercises singular influences and wields potent charms. Had I but loved, cries poor queen Buinevere in the anguish of her remorse, but no minister or teacher can afford to risk the visitation of that most poignant and pitiful regret. End of Part 3, Chapter 2, Recording by Linda Marie Nielsen, Vancouver, B.C. Part 2, Chapter 4, 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 Linda Marie Nielsen, Vancouver, B.C. The Luggage of Life, by Frank W. Bohem. Part 2, Chapter 4, Ipeca Cahuna In his scathing criticism of Bertrand Barrer, Macaulay tells us that the subject of his strictures was a man who employed phrases in which orators of his class delight, and which, on all men who have the smallest insight into politics, produce an effect very similar to that of Ipeca Cahuna. I am afraid that, if the expressive condemnation, which the historian thus sheeded home upon the world of politics, were to be aimed in the direction of the Christian Church, she could not, without some equivocation, resist the dread impeachment. There is a classical scripture example of the same phenomenon. Thousands of years ago a tortured soul sat patiently listening to the painful platitudes of his would-be comforters. They endeavored to propound to him the significance of the afflictions by which he was overwhelmed, and when the last echo of the philosophy of a life as had trembled away into silence, Job found himself impressed with nothing so much as with its utter insipid ditty, and it was then that he sighed out his immortal question. Is there any taste in the white of an egg? The discourse to which he had listened had produced an effect very similar to that of Ipeca Cahuna. But that was in the days when the world was very young, and men knew very little. Yet the same thing happens every day. Sir J. R. C. Lee says, in Ikki Homo, that the sin which Christ most vigorously denounced is the sin to which the modern Church is most prone, the sin of insipid ditty. The pious common places with which we ghibly attempt to solace the suffering are often pathetically tasteless. The man whose darling hopes have been cruelly shattered is told with a serene smile and an upward glance that it might have been worse. The man whose heart is bleeding and worse than broken is reminded that these things cannot be helped. We indonently surmise that it is all for the best. Tennyson tells us of the pallid consolations which were offered him in that awful hour when the man with whom his soul was knit was snatched away to a premature grave. One writes that other friends remain, that loss is common to the race, and common is the common place, and vacant shaft well meant for grain, that loss is common does not make, my own less bitter rather more, to common, never mourning more, to evening but some heart did break. In other words the poet asked, is there any taste in the white of an egg? The comfort was insipid, tasteless. It produced an effect very similar to that of Ipi Kahuna. Now, quite obviously, here is an evil thing and a bitter. We have no right to play with crushed spirits and breaking hearts. A man in distress, says John Foster, has peculiarly a right not to be trifled with by the application of unadapted expedance, since insufficient consolations but mock him, and deceptive consolations betray him. I remember very vividly a circumstance of my childhood. It was my first introduction to the problem of human loss, and it profoundly affected me. I chanced to be standing on a sunny afternoon by the gates of the local infirmary. It was visiting day. As I watched the relatives arriving, I was struck with the appearance of a big, brawny man from the country. He made no secret of his excitement. He had evidently counted the hours and had spruced himself up, like a village bridegroom for the occasion. He approached the porter. I've come to see my wife, Martha Jennings, he said. The porter consulted a book, and then, with what seemed to me brutal abruptness, replied, Martha Jennings is dead. I saw the bronzed face blanch. I saw the strong man's stagger. I watched him as he clung to the iron pollings for support, and bowed himself in a passion of weeping. And then, as I stood there, good-natured people, pitying, essayed to comfort him. They rang the changes on the common places. Other friends remained. Loss is common to the race, but it was of no use. All vacant shafts well meant for grain. It produced an effect very similar to that of Ipikanhana. I have never entered the chamber of death in all the years of my ministry without recalling the tragedy I witnessed that Sunday afternoon. Now, in the cases before us, what was wrong? This was wrong. In all those platitudes that were tossed to Tennyson, and to my friend at the hospital yesterday, and to Job the day before, four vital aspects of suffering were overlooked. One, our common places of comfort are insipid, because they ignore the illuminative aspect of anguish. We forget the flood of light that streams from the cross, and that has transfigured tears forever. Such frigid philosophy as that, which we have quoted, can be found in Marcus Aurelius, in Plato, and in all the Stolico philosophers, and in them it is pardonable, even admirable. But from those who live in the light, better things are hoped. Christ has come, and from his disciples, the weeping sons of Sorrow expect, not the stone that would have been flung them by the platonic schoolmaster, but the bread and wine of the kingdom of heaven. Two, the incipidity of our consolations often arises from the fact that we ignore the purgatory aspect of pain. As though the torments of his body were not enough, Eliphas tortured the soul of Job, by telling him that purity and pain were incompatible, and that his suffering was the result of his sin. Whoever suffered being innocent, he stupidly asks. It is the philosophy of the pessimists. It relates all suffering to a black past as penal. But the theology of the optimists relates all suffering to a bright, bright future as purgatorial. Poor Eliphas did not know, but we ought not to forget, that a lamb, which was ever the emblem of innocence, has become also the symbol of suffering. If the doctrine of Eliphas were sound, the sufferer can only grin and bear it, but it is not sound, and therefore the New Testament selects, as its word for suffering, the great word tribulation, which reminds us of the tribulum, the threshing machine whose work it is not to punish the wheat, but to sift it. The fires of God are never to devour, but ever to refine. It was because Eliphas failed to remind Job of this that his hearers found the sermon so tedious. It made him cry, as with Hamlet. O God, O God, how weary, stale, flat, and unprofitable! It produced an effect very similar to that of Ipicanula. 3. The incipity is always manifest, when the sacrificial aspect of suffering is ignored. There is a sense in which every sob is sacrament. The sign of the cross is stamped on all human anguish. You suffer for my good, and I bear sorrow for yours. Dickens unfolds this wonderful secret in David Copperfield. Mrs. Gummidge is the most self-centered, ill-contained, cross-grained woman in Yarmouth. Then comes the angel of sorrow. All those around her are plunged in the shadow of a terrible calamity, and in the ministering to them the whole life and character of Mrs. Gummidge was transfigured. David stood in amazement before the strange and beautiful transformation. If none were sick and none were sad, what service could we render? I think if we were always glad, we scarcely could be tender. Did our beloved never need our patient ministration? Earth would grow cold and miss, indeed, its sweetest consolation. If sorrow never claimed our heart, and every wish were granted, patience would die and hope depart, life would be disenchanted. 4. And the incipity of our consolations often arises from their neglect of the positive or possessive aspect of human loss. Whatever has been swept away in the terrible catechism, the best always remains. In Lord Beacon Phil's great novel, he tells how Conningsby, in bemoaning the loss of his fortune, is suddenly reminded that he still possesses his limbs. In the scapegoat, Hall Cain tells how Israel left his little blind and deaf and dumb daughter, Naomi, and wandered through the wilderness of this world. And he saw a slave girl sold in the marketplace, and he thanked God that his Naomi was free, and he heard a girl curse her father, and he thanked God for the deep love of poor little Naomi, and he saw a poor little girl that was a lunatic, and he thanked God that Naomi had her reason clear, and then the great deprivations of Naomi seemed swallowed up in the treasures that she still possessed. As Mrs. Browning sings, all are not taken, there are left behind, living, beloveds, tender looks to bring, and make the daylight still a happy thing, and tender voices to make soft the wind. It is a great sentence of two words that the Mohammedan always engraves on the tombstones of his departed, God remains. Let us but cast these four ingredients into the chalice of comfort that we are preparing for the quivering lips of our weeping friends, and, so far from it, producing an effect that shall resemble Ipikahuna, it shall seem to them as bracing and invigorating as a new wine of the kingdom of heaven. I am writing on a hot Australian summer afternoon. The children are home from school. The cities are sultry and stifling. The delicious seclusion of the fields and the refreshing cool of the seaside beckon us away. The bush and the beach call loudly, and even the solitudes seem to feel that their time has come. The wilderness blossoms like the rose, sediments that all through the winter have been dreary desolations of mud and monotony, become transformed into fairy lands of poetry and romance. The great bush silences are broken by shouts of merriment and peels of laughter. Columns of smoke curl upwards, and bear witness to picnics and campfires. Boats start in and out of every quiet creek and cove. Birds that have twittered and piped on, dripping boughs throughout the winter without an audience are frightened hither and thither by a rush of white blouses and straw hats. It is all very refreshing and very delightful, but with the return of the holiday season comes back the old problem of seaside lodgings and holiday accommodation. Which reminds me, lovers of Mark Rutherford and the number includes all who know him will never forget Mary Martin. She casts her tender spell over every fascinating page, and not least among her charms is her description of her visit with her father to the seaside. The railway station was in a disagreeable part of the town, and when we came out we walked along a dismal row of very plain-looking houses. There were cards in the window with lodgings written on them, and father wanted to go in and ask the terms. I said I did not wish to stay in such a dull street, but father could not afford to pay for a sea view, and so we went in to inquire. We then found that what we thought were the fronts of the houses were the backs, and that the fronts faced the bay. They had pretty gardens on the other side, and a glorious sunny prospect over the ocean. So much for Mark Rutherford and Mary Martin. I fancy this kind of thing is more common than we often think. The lodgings from which we eventually obtain our loveliest views are frequently rather forbidding than prepossessing. They ban rather than beckon. We dub those dwellings dull from whose windows we afterwards catch glimpses of radiant glory. For the most obvious application of this homely truth, we need not go beyond the delightful characters whom we have already introduced. Turn back a few pages to Mark's first meeting with Mary. Whilst he debated vigorously with her father, she sat silently by. He mentally accused her of intellectual paucity, of possessing a small mind, and of a stupid inability to discuss important things. He looked upon her exactly as she had looked upon the repulsive houses by the seaside. But he was as utterly mistaken as was she. It turned out that she was being tortured that evening by a maddening neuralgia. He then penitently reflected that, and such anguish being his, he would have let all the world know of it. And he says, thinking about Mary as I walked home, I perceived that her ability to be quiet, to subdue herself, to resist for the whole evening the temptation, to draw attention to herself by telling us what she was enduring was heroism, and that my contrary tendency was pitiful vanity. I perceived that such virtues as patience and self-denial, which clad in russet dress, I had often passed by unnoticed, when I had found them amongst the poor or the humble, were more precious and more ennobling to the possessor than poetic yearnings or the power to propone rhetorically to the world my grievances or ankenies. This experience of Mark Rutherford in relation to Mary Martin is clearly the precise social counterpart of her own experience in relation to the seaside lodgings, and later on, as every reader knows, she gave to him as a lodging scape to her many a glorious outlook upon the infinite and the sublime. All this is, of course, true of the Church. The men of Jerusalem looked up at the spacious and splendid proportions of the temple. It was a stately pile of quarried stone. That was the outside view, but those who were permitted to stand amidst the awful sanctities of the Most Holy Place saw that within all was of finest gold. It was a parable. Readers of Bunyan's immortal allegory must have noticed that the illustrious dreamer took no pains to give an attractive impression of the exterior of the palace beautiful, but like the king's daughter, it was all glorious within. And notice this, when the morning was up they had Christian to the top of the palace and bid him look south and behold at a great distance he saw a most pleasant mountainous country beautified with woods, vineyards, fruits of all sorts, flowers also with springs and fountains very delectable to behold. Then he asked the name of the country. They said it was Immanuel's land. We have no word to say in disparagement of those who devote their best efforts to the attempt to render the church attractive and alluring, but we venture to suspect that their most strenuous exertions will never meet with more than a very moderate success. After you have insisted and rightly insisted that there should be no oratory to compare with pulpit oratory and no music that can hold its own besides church music, you have still to admit that so long as the church sternly adheres to that spiritual program for which alone she stands she will always appear like Mary Martin's seaside lodgings somewhat forbidding and repellent. Christian worship is too exquisitely modest for gaudy display. Sin, righteousness and judgment are not themes that lend themselves to merriment. There is nothing wildly exciting about a prayer meeting. Yet, like the seaside lodgings and the palace beautiful, the church has her own peculiar and compensating charms. She quickly dispels all unhappy illusions caused by superficial impressions. To those who enter her portals she offers kuygings of vintage from which they may inhale the delicious fragrance of the fairest flowers and enjoy a prospect that ravishes the vision and captivates the heart. And, after all, it is just that view for which we are all hungry. I have amused myself since taking Mark Rutherford down from my shelf for the purposes of this article by turning over the pages hastily and noticing his constant references to starlit walks. Now he is worried and that sight of the stars that sense of the infinite extinguishes all mean cares. On another occasion he is oppressed by the conviction that there is nothing in him. He walks beneath the stars and feels that, in a universe of such incomprehensible immensity, there is room for every worm that crawls and, therefore, a place for him. Again, he is a flame with anger. He walks beneath the stars and, reflecting on the great idea of God, and on all that it involves, his animosities are softened, and his heat against his brother is cooled. We have found at least a dozen such passages in this one book. They are suggestive. Mark Rutherford surely means that the infinite cures everything. He means that, to conquer our besetments, to sedue our passions, to realize our best selves, we need the window open toward Jerusalem, the sunny outlook on the eternal. And he means, too, that to obtain that vision splendid, we dare not despise the most uninviting ministries. A dismal row of plain-looking houses, so they seemed. What we thought were the fronts were the backs, and the fronts faced the bay. They had pretty gardens on the other side, and a glorious sunny prospect over the ocean, so they actually were. Somebody has said that God must be very fond of commonplace folk. He makes so many of them. Life is full of dingy-looking places, and shabby-looking people. But we shall do well to think the thing all over again before. On that ground, we exclude them from our affections and our confidence. As the years come and go, we learn that the best and most satisfying springs are those from which, on their discovery, we expected least. Our most treasured friends are not always those with whom we fell in love at first sight. In his wonderful life of the bee, Mater Link tells us at least one thing to which we may do well to take heed. At one time, he says, it was almost impossible to introduce into a hive an alien queen. The mirrored toilers would at once assume that she was an enemy and set about her destruction. But now the apparist introduces the new queen in an iron cage. With a door skillfully constructed of wax and honey, the bees immediately commence to gnaw their way through the door to murder the intruder. But in the tedious process, they are compelled carefully to observe the royal prisoner. And by the time that the waxen palisade is demolished, they have learned to love her. And they finish up by doing her homage and becoming her devoted slaves. So true is it, that the foreboding may eventually become the fascinating, the repulsive may end in the romantic. The prose may kindle into poetry. The somber shadows may dissolve into radiant reality. The dingy lodgings may open to us dazzling horizons. Life's mocking marriages often pass into most satisfying strings. If it comes to attractive exteriors and enticing advertisements, theology cannot hold a candle to theatricals, nor prayer meetings to picture shows. But they have most radiant outlooks for all that. And have we not somewhere read of one who is spoken of by those who are happy enough to know him as the fairest among ten thousand and the altogether lovely? Yet when first they saw him, he was to them as a root out of a dry ground, having no beauty that they should desire him. But I have said enough by this time to show that the experiences of Mark Rutherford and Mary Martin have warnings of the gravest moment for us all. End of Part 2, Chapter 5, Recording by Linda Marie Nielsen, Vancouver, B.C. Part 2, Chapter 6, The Luckage 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 Linda Marie Nielsen, Vancouver, B.C. The Luckage of Life by Frank W. Borham. Part 2, Chapter 6, The Cliffs of Dover. Mrs. Barkley in The Rosary says a fine thing about those towering walls of chalk that guard the English coast. She describes her heroine, the honourable Jane Champion, returning to England after an absence of two years. The white cliffs of Dover, she says, gradually became more solid and distinct until at length they rose from the sea. A strong white wall, emblem of the undeniable purity of England, the stainless honour and integrity of her throne, her church, her parliament, her courts of justice, and her dealings at home and abroad, whether with friend or foe, strength and whiteness, thought Jane, as she paced the steamer's deck, and, after a two years absence, her heart went out to her native land. Strength and whiteness, those two, are inseparable. The principal holds, of course, in the realm to which Mrs. Barkley especially applies it. Nobly who has read Macaulay's essay on Lord Clive can ever forget the classic and stately sentences in which the historian pays his tribute to British rule in India. He shows that the stability of our government lies in its justice, its uprightness, its trustworthiness. English valor and English intelligence, he says, have done less to extend and to preserve our oriental empire than English veracity. All that we could have gained by imitating the dubblings, the evasions, the fictions, the perjuries, which have been employed against us is as nothing when compared with what we have gained by being the one power in India on whose word reliance can be placed. No oath which superstition can devise, no hostage, however precious, inspires a hundredth part of the confidence which is produced by the yay-yay and nay-nay of a British envoy. The greatest advantage which a government can possess is to be the one trustworthy government in the midst of governments which nobody can trust. This advantage we enjoy in Asia it would be difficult to subpoena a witness more impressive or convincing, but there is one more pertinent application of the principle for which, it seems to me, the times are clamorously and insistently calling in these lands and in these days to truce demand, ioteration, and emphasis in relation to all matters of politics and all affairs of state. Let it be said, as plainly as language can assert it, first of all that the nation needs strong men, and then that the strong men are the white men, that people has fallen on very evil days that finds itself in the grip and at the mercy of the professional politician. A pair of instances both very much to the point will enforce by meaning. The first is from Sir James Stevens essays in ecclesiastical biography. The professor points out that William Wilberforce lived his parliamentary life as a contemporary of William Pitt, Edmund Burke, Charles James Fox, and Richard Brinsley Sheridan. He was a galaxy of brilliance, the most polished and powerful orators who ever awoke the classic echoes of St. Stevens. Wilberforce's figure conveyed the inevitable impression of insignificance, yet when he rose to address the commons, the house instantly crowded. Members held their breaths to listen. The little reformer spoke with an authority rarely wielded by the greatest masters. He was heard in silence and with a respect which were never accorded to those illustrious statesmen whose utterances are to this day read in schools and colleges as models of rhetoric and why there is only one reason for it, like Sir Gallahad. His strength was as the strength of ten because his heart was pure. The second of these companion pictures is from Sir Henry W. Lucy's 60 Years in the Wilderness. In the last chapter of this fascinating book, the author draws a striking contrast between John Bright and Benjamin Disrally. Disrally, he says, lack two qualities, failing which true eloquence is impossible. He was never quite in earnest, and he was not troubled by dominating conviction. Now, for the contrast, John Bright, perhaps the finest orator known to the House of Commons in the last half of the nineteenth century, was morally and politically the emphesis of Disrally. To a public man this atmosphere of acknowledged sincerity and honest conviction is a mighty adjunct of power. Here, then, in both pictures we have the conjunction of whiteness and strength, incorruptibility wedded to omnipotence. This marriage was made in heaven. These two God hath joined together. I have emphasized the national and political aspect of the truth, because the conviction grows upon me that we sadly need the reminder. But I should be exceedingly sorry to leave the impression that the application was by any means exclusive. It is just as true of every walk of life and of every department of service. I turn the lantern on my own heart and study and pulpit, and upon those of my brethren, in a recently published work, the Reverend J. D. Jones of Bournemouth says a very gracious thing concerning a ministerial friend of his. In print his sermons are almost dull, as they are certainly lacking in literary style. But when you come into his presence, the transparent honesty and obvious saintliness of the man lend to his words compelling and subduing force, I cannot understand your minister's power, said a visitor to a friend of mine, who was a member of a midland church to which a man ministered, who was not a great preacher, perhaps, but who was a great saint. I cannot understand your minister's power, he said. I do not see very much in him. Ah! replied the host. You see, there are thirty years of holy life behind every sermon. There is no doubt about it. Whiteness is strength. The white man wheeled the scepter, and we are all their slaves. But the last word has yet to be said. A most interesting play of language occurs in the last book of the Bible. I saw a strong angel proclaiming with a loud voice, who is worthy to open the book and to lose the seals thereof. And no man in heaven nor in earth, neither under the earth, was able to open the book, neither to look therein. It will be noticed that the words worthy and able are treated as though they were interchangeable and synonymous, as indeed they are. The worthy are the able. Whiteness is strength. Might is not always right, but right is always might. God is not always on the side of the big battalions, but the big battalions are always on the side of God. That is why the meek inherit the earth, and I beheld and lo a lamb, sublime as symbol of innocence, whiteness, meekness, and he came and took the book, and they sang a new song, saying, Thou art worthy, worthy is the lamb. And just because he was worthy, it followed, as the night, the day, that he was able. We have traced this truth from the cliffs of Dover, right up to the dizziest pinnacle to which human eyes can peer. From the great white stone to the great white throne, this thing holds grandly true. Whiteness and strength, innocence and omnipotence, right and might, they go side by side, and hand in hand, both in the heavens above and on the earth beneath. That is what Mrs. Barclay's heroine saw in simple, as she gazed upon the white walls of old England, and the seer who, from the isle that is called Patmos, beheld the gleaming powers and shining turrets of the celestial city, saw nothing greater. The Luggage of Life by Frank W. Borum Part 2 Chapter 7 THE ORGANIST The organist is an ecclesiastical vagabond. He is a nomad and a nondescript. He lives in a kind of no-man's land. In the rationale of our spiritual economy, he has never been provided with a home. We have never taken the trouble to place him. We have ministers, and we know why we have them. Deacons and teachers inquires we have, and their contribution to our worship is well-defined and clearly understood. But we allow the organist, as organist, to hover spectrally on the frontiers of our religious domain. We have never made up our minds as to whether he is simply a cogwheel in the cold mechanism of our church organization, or one of the controlling forces of the inner life of the sanctuary. Is he, in a word, one of those reviving, quickening, spiritual factors that are an essential part of our worship and testimony, or is he merely a necessary appendage, a convenient adjunct, an entertaining auxiliary? Is he a member of the family, or merely a distant relative, or perchance, a nodding acquaintance? We offer him a chair, or at any rate a stool, on Sundays and at choir practices. Then he folds his tent like the Arab, and silently steals away. We scarcely know where to place him. Is he inside or outside? Is he a partner or a passenger? In fairness to him, and injustice to ourselves, we ought to face the problem. We must classify and locate him. Too long the church has said to the organist, the minister we know, and the choir we know, but who are you? Now there are very few subjects that have betrayed their exponents into more obvious confusion of thought than the attempt to define the exact relationship existing between minstrelsy and ministry. The case for the organist has never yet been satisfactorily stated, either from the purely musical or from the purely ecclesiastical viewpoint. Here, for example, Charles Saintly in his reminiscences tells us that his master, Navar at the conservatoire at Milan, used to insist that the object of music was to give greater expression and emphasis to the words, which, of course, is unadulterated nonsense. It is true enough of certain forms of vocal music, but the sweeping and merciless dictum ruthlessly excommunicates the blackbird and the thrush, the nightingale and the canary, and at the same time cuts the throat of our unhappy organist. If we subscribe to the daring proposition, we condemn the dead march and the wedding march as inanities, and all our organist's wordless voluntaries become impertinences of the worst kind. It is clear, therefore, that whilst our Milanese master is indisputably right in insisting on the clear enunciation of every syllable, when there are syllables to enunciate, he has not spoken the whole truth. He has failed to supply us with a practical theory that will include both the goldfinch and the organist, the two great wordless minstrels in the temples of nature and grace. Now, if our theologians had read their bibles as carefully as our organists have read their music, they would most certainly have discovered that the scriptures have some very fine things to say about the organist. Here, for instance, is quite a cluster of great Old Testament stories which should have helped us to solve our problem long ago. Look at this one. Jehoram, the wicked king of Israel, and Jehoshaphat, the good king of Judea, have for a while joined forces that they might fight side by side against the Moabites. But in the course of the campaign, their united armies fall into sore straits, and Jehoshaphat longs to hear some guiding voice. In his perplexity he hungers for fellowship with the skies, his soul ached to speak with God. Is there not a prophet, he inquired? Elisha is found, and three kings stand before him and beg him to prophesy. But the lips of the seer are sealed. He has no message. He is dumb. Then he cried, bring me a minstrel! And it came to pass, when the minstrel played, that the hand of the Lord came upon Elisha, and he prophesied. Now, here is a clear-cut case in which the organist was simply indispensable to the minister. The prophet could not prophesy without the minstrel. The player was the preacher's inspiration, a minister to the minister. The music of the minstrel directly contributed to a magnificent spiritual result. When the minstrel played, the hand of the Lord came upon Elisha, and he prophesied. Two other instances of a similar kind will leap to the memory of every reader. One, when Saul heard the music of the sultry, and the tabret, and the pipe, and the harp, the spirit of the Lord came upon him, and he prophesied, and was turned into another man. Two, when David took his harp and played before Saul, the evil spirit departed from him. The point is that, in each case, we recognize the organist. It is instrumental music, pure and simple. There is no question of words, whether clearly or indistinctly enunciated. And in each case, the language admits of no second interpretation, and emphatically spiritual effect was produced. We must be honest, even though we be theologians. We must be fair, even towards an organist. None of the facts must be blinked. Now, we venture to think that a working hypothesis can be built upon these facts. Now, we venture to think that a working hypothesis can be built upon these facts. Two irresistible conclusions emerge. The first is that the organist is clearly part and parcel of our spiritual economy. Indeed, these three graceful old stories, if they mean anything, seem to show that we need our friend the organist in every department of our religious enterprise. For, in the first two cases, it was through his agency that the divine spirit was received, and in the third case, it was by means of his melodious ministry that the evil spirit was expelled. These are the two great essential functions of the Church in every age, to invoke a fresh inrush of spiritual enlightenment and reviving fervor, and to exercise and expel all that is unrighteous, unholy, and unclean. And if, as these stories plainly show, the organist can help the Church to fulfill these two magnificent missions, and to realize this sublime spiritual ideal, then let all pastors and deacons and teachers and singers stand up and say, God bless the organist. But lest our friend of the music stool should become exalted above measure by the brilliance as of the seventh heaven of this Old Testament revelation, we hasten to emphasize the second principle that clearly emerges from its beatific splendors. It is manifest that the music of the minstrel is not an end in itself, just as the work of the minister is not in itself spiritually effective, but is the channel through which the excellency of the divine power may communicate itself. So the harmonies of the organ are but a means of grace. The language is wonderfully exact and explicit. When the minstrel played, the hand of the Lord came upon Elisha, and it was the hand of the Lord that wrought the resultant miracle. We hazard the suggestion that if our pastors and officers and members would spend half an hour in the careful contemplation of these exquisite old records, their eyes would be so illumined that they would detect an ariel encircling the brows of the organist. And if our minstrels would pour over these fragrant pages for a while, they would feel the thrill of a new ecstasy in their avocation and glorify their talents with a fresh consecration. An added sweetness and dignity would lurk in those lovely notes that come trilling and shuddering down from the organ. And the gracious ministries of our minstrelsy would anticipate that home of the eternal harmonies in the heart and centre of whose melodies the Lord himself delightedly abides. End of Part 2 Chapter 7 Recording by Hannah Mary Part 2 Chapter 8 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 2 Chapter 8 The Jackass and the Kangaroo A ministerial friend of mine was recently travelling in the Far East of Australia. On his return, he penned a most picturesque account of the wiles and wonders of the Queensland bush. And in the process of his cinematographic description of a glorious motor-eye, he includes this realistic and characteristic touch. In the heart of the bush, he says, we came upon a tragedy that must often be enacted amongst the animal dwellers of the great solitude. A kangaroo, a mother, unable to resist the pangs and pains thrust upon her by her destiny, they dead upon the roadside, and above, on a branch of a tree, stood a pair of laughing jackasses, guffawing their loudest, as if life knew no tragedy and no pain. Here, then, is a painting skillfully finished, before which we may profitably pause, and the charm of it, as of all great pictures, is that it is so true to life. The laughing jackass and the dead kangaroo. I always keep up one of my sleeves, a microscopic, a very microscopic naturalist, and an equally microscopic philosopher up the other. I unrolled my friend's picture to my naturalist. Ah, yes, he said. There you have the jackass all over. That's the way of the bird. I turned to my other sleeve and showed the picture to the philosopher. Ah, yes, he said. There you have life in miniature. That's the way of the world. The way of the bird, and the way of the world. What do these gentlemen mean? Let us probe a little. Now the jackass has a literature of his own. I suppose the most captivating and convincing description of our bush comedian that has ever been penned is the classical sketch by Frank Buckland. That most genial and most winsome of all British naturalists simply reveled in his study of the jackass. And he was particularly amused by the very traits that arrested my friend on his tour. He pillories him thus. The bird has a custom of laughing in a most exasperating fashion, he says, when a misfortune happens to travellers. Thus, when a wagon loaded with goods breaks down in some desolate region on a long march, and the owner is at his wick's end to get it right again, a laughing jackass is sure to appear at the top of a neighbouring tree, and laugh in the most aggravating manner at the miserable condition of the traveller, till the woods resound with his merry, ha ha ha, ha he he, ho ho ho. This is very interesting. We are grateful to Mr Buckland and to my friend for drawing our attention to so curious a phenomenon. But this chapter is not to be understood as a fugitive expression into natural history. I am attracted to the theme by quite other considerations, for it is surely as clear as Noonday that the incident is true to life in the deepest sense. We are forever and ever discovering, with a shock of surprise, that the laughing jackass is never far away from the dead kangaroo. At every turn of our pilgrimage, we see comedy stand grinning cheek by jowl with tragedy. The world is made up of the most discordant and incongruous juxtapositions. Among the treasures in the Sydney Art Gallery is Sir Luke Files' famous painting entitled The Widower. On the right-hand side of the picture sits the poor toiler with his sick child on his knee. One overwhelming bereavement has already overtaken him and another stares him in the face. His brow is clouded with uttermost sorrow and perplexity. He looks at his child and seems to say, if only she were here. And on the left-hand side of the picture are the younger children playing on the floor, laughing and pro-ing in their merriment. They are not old enough to understand, but their delight seems cruelly to mock his despair. Have we not heard the story of the laughing jackass and the dead kangaroo over again? The thing occurs hourly. As the mourners return broken-hearted from the graveside, they are tortured by the mad melody of wedding bells from a neighbouring belfry. Edward Fitzgerald somewhere says that there are no lines in our literature so pathetically expressive of the soul's deepest emotions, as the familiar song of Robert Burns. Ye banks and braves of Bonnie Bloom, How can ye bloom so fresh and fair? Yet little birds, how can ye sing? And I so weary, full of care. Who is there that passing through some deep valley of weeping has not been stabbed to the quick by the laughter on the hills? I shall never forget the day on which I left the homeland. I was about to set sail for lands in which I should be the various stranger. I passed on my way to the ship through the crowded London streets, every one of which was endeared to me by old associations and enriched by fond memories. I was accompanied by those who were all the world to me, those who, like myself, were calling up all the reserved powers of the will to nerve them for the wrench of parting. And I remember how I was mocked by the sounds of the city streets. My soul was in tears, but who cared? People were chattering, crowds were jostling, newsboys were shouting, all London was sunlit and gay. It seemed as though the old haunts were glad to see me go. The laughter tore and lacerated my spirit. The jackass seems a hideous incongruity in the presence of the dead kangaroo. The parable has an obvious application to public affairs. There are enough dead kangaroos lying about the world, in all conscience. Our tragedies are tremendous. At the moment of writing, Italy and Turkey are at war. France and Germany are scowling angrily at each other across their frontiers. China is convulsed in the throes of a huge revolution. Spain and Portugal are in a state of seething tumult and disorder. At our own doors, the social conditions are full of disquiet and unrest. Strikes and lockouts are the order of the day. We are not alarmists. We see in all this no cause for panic. The pessimist is completely out of court. But, on the other hand, we do submit that these things call for a certain public seriousness and gravity. The newspapers should cause every decent citizen furiously to think. Yet we see small evidence of serious thought, quite otherwise. The pursuit of pleasure, and not always of the noblest pleasure, was never so deliriously feverish. The wood seemed to resound with the untimely giggle of the laughing jackass. And, with so many tragedies about us, the notes grate harshly on our ears. We venture a pertinent application. If things have become so serious that Australia needs to build battleships and compel all her sons to bear arms, then things have become far too serious for pugilistic orgies and similar carnivals of inanity. There is no doubt about it. The laughing jackass is quite out of place beside the dead kangaroo. We pause reverently for a moment before daring to suggest a still deeper consideration in closing. Perhaps this is why our gospels present to us the sad and stricken face of a man of sorrows. The smitten soul, turning aside like a wounded deer from the herd, simply could not endure a gay or mirthful savior. I know a lady who dismissed her doctor, because she could not bear the levities with which he thought to brighten her. Her nerves winced and squirmed beneath his jokes and chatter. It is a curious fact that there are more suicides in summer than in winter, and more ingenial and sunny climbs than in sterner temperatures. The reason is obvious. The brightness and gaiety of the world mock the bruised and battered spirit and drive it to despair. A tearless savior would have repelled the very souls that Jesus came to save. But one over whose crushed spirit, all the waves of grief have surged, must be the natural refuge of all penitent and contrite hearts so long as time shall last. It is this harmony of the emotions, this subtle and unfathomable wealth of infinite sympathy that has led millions to sing with choked and trembling voices. Rock of ages, cleft for me, let me hide myself in thee, let the water and the blood from thy riven side which flow, be of sin the double cure, save me from its guilt and power. There is a world of tender significance in the incongruous tragedy which the motor car passed by the side of the track. End of chapter 8