How to Press the Button.
I had trouble this week with the electric light in the attic. It is not a straight-out electric light, but merely gas lighted by electricity. At the foot of the attic stairs-rather, the attic ladder-is a push button. Press -it, and there is a whir overhead, and the usually black attic bursts into a flood of light. Press a button below the first, there is another whir, and the attic is dark again.
This contrivance is very useful, but very delicate. From past experience, I was not at all surprised when one evening I found that a pressure of the button elicited no quiver of light above. There was the whir, but that was all. I tried it repeatedly before I gave it up; no use.
Then I telephoned to a neighbor who is an electrician, and who had put in that push button. He was not at home. Early the next morning I telephoned again, for I am a little nervous about leaving the house with any electrical flaw around it, even in a matter probably so innocent as a push button.
The neighbor came up my front steps as I was telephoning, and together we mounted to the upper story of the house.
At once he pressed on the push button, and the usual flood of light burst out in the attic.
"What is the matter with this push button?" he asked.
"Why," said I, "it won't light for me. I tried it repeatedly last night and this morning. It is like the toothache that always disappears as soon as one gets to the dentist's."
I was chagrined to think that I had put him to so much trouble unnecessarily, and said as much to him. He comforted me by replying, "I can often get light out of a push button when no one else can. The battery, I can see, is weak and must be renewed."
"Oh," said I, "I suppose I didn't put my finger exactly in the center of the button, or I didn't push hard enough."
"No, it isn't that," he answered. "I feel around until I find the right place." It was the intuition of long experience, knowing just how to do it.
"There!" I muttered to myself as he left the house, "that is what comes from being an expert in any matter. The expert can get light where other people get only darkness. The expert can bring a response from push buttons that are dead to others. The expert is in a delicate and close connection with his specialty that enables him to work what seem miracles to the rest of the world. It must be fine to be an expert."
Especially, though I should like to become expert in some branch of physical science, I want to be an expert in spiritual affairs. I want to be able to push the buttons of character. I want to draw light from gloomy faces and the sparkle of intelligence from stolid minds. I want to illuminate the dark attics of human experiences, and fill them with light and cheer.
Here are unresponsive pupils in my Sunday-school class. I press the button, press and press till I almost drive it back into itself, and there is no gleam of affection or even of interest.
Here are unresponsive acquaintances, men and women whom I should like to make my friends, and I press upon all the buttons of social advance, and press in vain. They remain strangers as at first.
Here are men and women, boys and girls, within whose lives I am longing to see spring up the Light of the world. They are gloomy, morose, fearful; they are dark-attic people, and sadly need the sunshine of Christianity. But all my clumsy attempts to show them the blessedness of religion result in blank failure.
There must be a way. There is a way. Along will come someone with the mysterious open-sesame touch, and the dull pupil's face will light up with zeal and with affection, mere passing acquaintances blossom instantly into bosom friends, and at a word from these favored beings the Christian invitation is gladly accepted.
It looks like wizardry, but it is not. It is expertness; and expertness is thought, plus experience. I do not know enough about this soul-electricity, and I have not trained myself to handle it.
It is mysterious, but so is everything else mysterious. Thoughtfulness and patience and determination and practice will master it, at least as well as any of these marvelous life forces can be mastered.
And there is the Master Electrician, who is ready to take me as an apprentice.