Mountain Air on the Plains.
How sensible everyone is getting to be! They are all coming around to my ideas.
For instance, in this matter of fresh air. It's the one thing to which men are looking with confidence for the cure of consumption, that great foe to mankind; and not only for that disease, but for many others, the doctors are prescribing courses of outdoors.
In London they have gone so far as to establish an oxygen hospital. It is often impossible to remove consumptives to the mountains; in the oxygen hospital mountain air is brought to the patient.
This is the way it works.
They place the patient in a glass cell, with an air-tight door. The cell is only six and one-half feet long, four feet wide, and six feet high, but the poor consumptive can breathe so much more easily in it that it seems a perfect palace, and he dreads to go outside, but gladly spends his days and nights in that cramped abode.
For the air is filtered before it is admitted, so that it is perfectly pure. It is dried, and it is charged with ozone. Moreover, it is rarefied, and so becomes "just as good as" mountain air, minus the mountain.
I don't know how this plan works for consumptives, but I'm going to put it in practice in my own life. I'm not a consumptive; that is, my lungs are all right. But I'm terribly afraid of spiritual consumption, the wasting away of my soul's vigor and substance. The air of worldliness which I am compelled to breathe is heavy and depressing. It is often impure. It lacks sparkle and life. I need-oh, how much I need the atmosphere of the hills of God!
And I can have it. I have found the oxygen cell. It is the quiet hour of meditation and prayer, alone with the Father, and the Book.
A Suspicious Combination.
My little daughter, when she was little (she is a big girl now) went up to her aunt one day and threw her arms around her neck with a big hug.
"Auntie," said the wee one, "Auntie, I love 'oo. Gimme-a-piece-of-candy?"
That was a suspicious combination, but, knowing her aunt, I rather guess she got the candy.
To do my daughter justice, I don't believe those two sentences of hers had the slightest connection in her mind. She often kisses and hugs the people she likes, and the beautiful words, "I love you," are often on her frank lips. That is the only time when they have been conjoined with candy, or any other boon.
But we? Can as much be said of us with regard to our talk with our heavenly Father?
How often our protestations of love to Him are only coaxing preambles of petition! How often we pass hurriedly over the "I-love-you" part, and throw our whole souls into the "give-me" part! Is God less shrewd than an earthly listener? Don't you suppose He sees through the scheme?
Cleaned Out.
The directions for running my furnace, which I have had frequent occasion to study with much care, contain strict instructions to keep all clean, outside and in. A long wire brush is provided, and I am expected to swab out all the inner ramifications of the furnace and push all the soot down upon the live coals for them to burn out. It is a choking performance, and before it is finished it is a question which is blacker, my clothes and person or the cellar floor; but the layer of soot is removed from the pipes and the hot air can get at them and change the water promptly into steam. I have spent only a few minutes, but I have saved I don't know how much coal or how many colds.
It is the same way, I am sure, with the many intricate tubes that make up the furnace of my body. How easily they become clogged, and how hard it is to "get up steam" till the waste is driven from my system by medicine or exercise or proper sleep!
But I suppose the worst of all clogging comes in my mind. Dust and soot and other masses of debris rapidly choke the wonderful corrugations of my brain. They are deposits of passion, of worry, of fear, of doubt, encrustings of all sorts of foolishness.
I want to sweep them out. I want to get my brain clear of the rubbish. I want to keep it clear. And I know of only one wire brush that will do the work: it is called prayer.
What Is Your Cruising Radius?
Solid oil may be adopted as a fuel for warships. They are already constructed for the use of oil as an alternative to coal, and coal strikes have strengthened the determination of the authorities not to be dependent upon that rather precarious source of supply.
The advantages of solid oil as against coal are these: it has immensely greater power than coal, bulk for bulk, and, since less bulk of fuel need be carried when oil is used, the ship's armor, guns, and machinery may weigh more, with corresponding increase of power as a fighting instrument; solid oil may be used in fire grates built for coal; combustion is practically perfect; steam can be raised in a few minutes; there is almost no risk of fire; fewer men are needed to handle it.
Moreover—and this is the point that interests me especially—a ship's radius of action, or cruising radius, is at least doubled by the use of solid oil. It can go twice as far without being obliged to seek a coaling-station or take on coal from a supply-ship. It is twice as free to pursue a flying foe or escape from a pursuing one.
I am moved to inquire anxiously whether there is not some solid oil that I may use as fuel for my life ship I want to-make longer cruises. I want to be less dependent upon my coaling-stations. I want to range further and ever further in exploring the vast unknown. I am not content with petty ventures, creeping only a little way from the protecting shore. I want to extend my radius of action. How shall I do it?
Yes, I think I know. I have heard of the prayer fuel. I know how compact it is, how instantly available, how productive of power, how economical in use, and how perfectly it will propel my ship of life wherever its Designer fashioned it to go. I know all this. I know it well in theory.
Why is it, then, that I continue to fill my bunkers with the dull, black, heavy, and bulky coal of worldly wisdom and self-reliance? Why?
The Weather.
Said the young girl to the minister, "Please pray for clear weather this week; we are going to have a house party."
Said the boy to the minister, "Please pray for snow, Father; I'm just crazy to try my new sled."
Said Mrs. Salmon to the minister, "Please pray for rain, Dr. Jones; I want to it fill my new cistern." Said Mr. Goodman to the minister, "Please pray for cold, Dr. Jones. We need ice soon, or the poor will have to pay dreadful prices next summer." Said Mrs. Charity Kinde to the minister, "Please pray for warm weather, Dr. Jones, so that the poor won't have to buy coal at the present high prices."
On thinking over these requests, Dr. Jones concluded to omit the weather from his prayers.
Hanging by a Thread.
The great building was burning, and he was alone on the top floor. No fire-escape.
He looked around and saw a spool of thread, and his horrified face grew calm.
What could he do with a spool of thread? If his life hung by that thread, it was doomed.
Ah, was it?
Making fast one end of the thread, he quickly let down the spool, the thread unwinding as it went down.
A quick-witted man below saw the point, got a ball of twine from the house across the way, and fastened one end of the twine to the thread.
The man pulled up the thread carefully till he held one end of the twine in his hand. Then with the twine he pulled up a strong cord. Then with the cord he pulled up a rope on which he made his escape.
What was the thread?
It was the thread of prayer.
The Shah's Telephone.
Persia is not a country to which one would naturally look for improved modes of government, and for advanced applications of modern inventions; but certainly both of those discoveries are to be made in a little piece of news that came from Teheran, years ago, by way of a leading London newspaper. The paper's correspondent telegraphed that the subjects of the new Shah complained of the difficulty of bringing their complaints, according to the free-and-easy custom of the Orient, directly to the attention of his majesty. There were too many court officers, and they stood officiously in the way.
Well, what did the Shah do? He actually caused a telephone to be set up in a public square in his capital, and he invited his subjects to use it as a means of getting into direct communication with himself. By this ingenious contrivance he combined aristocratic seclusion with a democracy surpassing an American President's; and, moreover, he was safe from the dagger of the most enterprising assassin. We commend the idea to all autocrats.
But aside from the political reflections that arise, what a superb illustration is all this of the religious fact of prayer! There are many officious personages that try to get in our way when we would approach the King of Kings. "You must pass in your message through us," say priest and Pope, and all that harbor their spirit. "You must use the regular service of the post-office, with a postage-stamp of the right design and color," says the legalist. "You must wear such a dress, and use precisely such ceremonies," says the formalist.
But the King waves them all aside. In the market-place, in the shop, in the fields, at the church door, in the cheapest pew, in the lonely sick-room or the crowded streets He has set up His telephone booths. There is no exchange: the wire is direct. It rises straight to the council chamber of the Most High. It is attached to the Throne of the universe. And every word you whisper is heard by the King Himself, who, hearing, makes reply.
Air-Shafts From Hot Places.
A party of us, on our way to Geneva, were conducted through the lower parts of our vessel, the Romanic, of the White Star line. Our guide was that honored and beloved Lutheran clergyman, Dr. Waltz, of Louisville, Ky.
One place to which he took us was most impressive. He led us down to the steerage, down and down, then opened a door, and we found ourselves on the edge of a deep pit, reaching to the very bottom of the great vessel. Following him, we descended by a succession of iron stairways, three flights of them, winding downward into a very inferno of heat and noise and whirling machinery, the steamer's engine-room.
It was too noisy to speak, too clamorous even to think. As for heat, it was almost unbearable. The greasy steel bars that we grasped on the way down along the stairs were so hot one could scarcely touch them. The air seemed to scorch the lungs as it was breathed. Perspiration broke out upon hands and face, and one envied the engineers their scantiness of clothing.
But as I crossed the narrow room at the bottom of the well, with its ponderous machinery swiftly moving on all sides, suddenly I entered a little space of cold air. It was a space only about two feet wide, while on all sides of it pressed the palpitating heat. I pulled member after member of the party into that cool aerial oasis, to their intense delight and relief.
And then, one by one, we looked upward.
Over us was the mouth of a shaft. Its long funnel rose through the towering ship, and at the top there smiled down upon us the blue sky! Surely the sky had never before seemed to any of us so fair as when seen, that little circle of it, from the Dantean depths of the engine-room.
The incident preached a lesson to me, and it may preach the same lesson to you. Into every life the great Designer sends an airshaft. I care not how far down the hold of the ship of life your lot is cast, the airshaft follows you. Your lot may be hot and hard. It may be crowded with clamorous tasks, greasy and disagreeable. You may be down, far down, in the dark and the heat and the toil.
But there is a spot in your life, somewhere, from which you can look up into heaven. There, you can catch a glimpse of your Father's face. There, you can become a part of the Father's beauty, and healthfulness, and love.
Cool air surrounds you, there, and the influences of the wide, fresh sea. In that spot, though only two feet broad, is your salvation.
Have you found it?
And do you often go there?
The Ink You Use.
Not for a long while did I discover what was the matter with my fountain pen. The best I could do, it would clog up. I cleaned it thoroughly before I filled it. I wiped the pen often, and well. I worked it clear with a straw from a whisk broom. I shook it and jolted it and pleaded with it. Still it got stuck, and within a short time after it was filled.
Then I heard someone speak of "fountain-pen ink." I made inquiries. I made a purchase. I squirted in the liquid. And, presto! a new pen.
You see, I had been filling my pen from an ordinary ink-well, full of ordinary ink, open most of the time, and poorly closed at best. The ink was heavy, to start with. The evaporation rapidly increased the sediment. Dust got in, clouds of it, whenever the room was swept. Bits of lint were generously added to the compound. In short, it was a kind of paste, slightly diluted, that I had been pouring into my long-suffering pen.
The fountain-pen ink is thinner, and does not dry up into iron rust. Moreover, it is kept carefully sealed away from the air and the dust and the lint. It brings nothing into my pen that should not be there, and it flows out of my pen in a beautiful black stream. Would that my thoughts flowed as freely and smoothly!
Yes, would that my mind would do as well. For I'm afraid I haven't yet learned the proper reservoir from which to fill up my mind. How it clogs! How it sticks! How muddy it gets! It is full of dust and dirt and lint at this very minute, and it is any thing but the clear, swift, and obedient tool it ought to be.
Does anyone know a good ink for mind-filling? an ink kept pure and undefiled, away from the dust of the world, free from the hindering sediment of the world, smooth-flowing clear, responsive? Does anyone know such an ink?
Somebody has told me of getting an ink of the kind at a shop called "The Closet." It must be a tiny, out-of-the-way shop, with such a name. Guess I'll have to hunt it up, and sample its wares.
The President's Hour of Oblivion.
A Washington newspaper described an interesting custom of President Taft. Late every afternoon, in his private office, he slipped down in a big, easy chair, pulled a cap over his eyes, and slept soundly for an hour.
Visitors called, but they were made to wait till the nap was over.
There were bills from Congress, but they could be signed at five as well as at four.
There were cabinet matters to consider, but they could be taken up later.
The administration fences were to be repaired here and strengthened there, but saw and hammer might be wielded after a while.
A new revolution might break out in Central America, the Balkan States might get into another rumpus, a volcano might erupt in Java and an earthquake might set Europe to trembling; it was all one to the peaceful President.
An hour, and he woke up, his famous smile on his face, and was ready, with clear brain and steady nerves, for the tasks that might have accumulated. He did them, and all succeeding tasks of the day, in half the time they would have occupied had it not been for that hour of rest. And thus the President kept himself in good trim for the great emergencies and for a long life of usefulness.
Do you envy President Taft? Do you wish that you also could enjoy an hour of oblivion in the midst of your pressing cares?
You can.
You may not have a private office—or a public one. You may not possess an easy chair. You may work in a sawmill or a boiler-factory. But you may enjoy the President's siesta just the same.
For the essence of it is not the sleep, but the surcease of worry. The essence of it is not the cessation of toil, but the cessation of frets. And you can have that.
You can set apart an hour, say from two to three post meridian, in which you will withdraw your spirit from the annoyances of your tasks, and determine for that hour to be conscious of the Friend and Comforter working by your side. Rest your burdens upon Him. Confide your troubles to Him. Rejoice in His companionship that hour. Listen to His voice. Realize His presence.
And if you actually commune with Him an hour, however fragmentarily at first, gradually the influence of the hour will spread over the entire day, and through all its minutes you will be at rest in Him.
Screw up the Bulb!
You are all tired out.
The world has gone wrong with you. Perhaps you can hardly place your finger on the sore spot, but you know that you have been hit. Everything is gloomy, and you want to give up. Why were you born, anyway? What's the use of it all, anyhow? Ugh! You have often felt that way. So have I.
And when we feel that way, I know what is to be done. Screw up the bulb!
Don't know what I mean? Well, I'll tell you.
It doesn't take long to accustom one's self to a convenience, and it seems as if I had used incandescent electric lights all my life. But I haven't; indeed, I have been using them only a few years. And I well remember my first lesson in regard to an important point in the use of them.
I went to turn on my light one day, as it was growing dark. I turned the button, but no light flashed from the bulb; it was as dark as before. "Ah," I said to myself, "it's burned out"; and I went to the janitor for a new bulb.
"Why," said that functionary, in surprise, "I put a new bulb in your light only last week. Has a fuse blown out there?"
No, I didn't know that anything of that sort had happened. So he thought he would take a look at it.
The first thing the janitor did, on arriving in my room, was to feel of the bulb.
"Huh!" he grunted, and gave it a little twist.
Instantly the room was flooded with light.
"Got loose," he muttered laconically, and went about his business. In cleaning the lamp the bulb had become unscrewed a trifle, the point of electrical contact was withdrawn, and a gap was made over which the illuminating wave could not pass into the bulb. That was all.
And that is all that happens in your life and mine, my brother, when we have those dark spells I have just described. We are out of contact with the Source of light. We have got withdrawn, in some way, from touch with the only Joy and Peace and Power in the universe. And, having no light in ourselves, of course we are gloomy, and the world seems a dismal place.
Many matters may have brought this about. It is very easy, in this jostling life of ours, to jar loose that point of contact with the Unseen Force. However it came about, the result is always the same.
And the remedy is always the same: Screw up the bulb! Put yourselves in contact once more with the Source of energy and cheer. Pause in your rush, get out of the turmoil, withdraw to some quiet place, or make a quiet spot in your heart if you can. Get in touch once more with God.
And all life will be light again.
An Unanswered Prayer.
I have received a pathetic letter from a young man, who says that when he was a boy he violated some of nature's laws, thus causing dyspepsia and nervous debility, which has made his life a wreck for seventeen years. He has sought in every way to regain his lost health, and has prayed much for this great boon, but his prayers have remained unanswered, and this has hurt him more than anything else. He has confessed and forsaken his sins, and is trying to live an earnest Christian life, working in the Sunday school and the Christian Endeavor society. "I have promised God," he writes, "that if He will restore me to health and strength He can have the rest of my life to be used as He thinks best. I feel that if God answers my prayer I will become a man with a message." And he asks me to urge Christians everywhere to pray for him that his health may be restored.
Now I am not unfeeling. I deeply sympathize with this young man and with his request. He voices a universal cry, one that I myself have uttered to myself and to God many, many times.
Most earnestly do I urge all Christians to pray for him, and yet not just for the thing that he chiefly mentions and desires.
For no man has a right thus to bargain with his Maker. I have tried to do it many times, but I have no right to do it. No man has a right to say, "If God will restore me to health, He can have the rest of my life to be used as He thinks best." God has an absolute right to our lives, to all of them, past, present, and future, every day and every hour, to be used as He thinks best. There is no "if" about it. Whatever circumstances He may send us, in whatever condition He may place us, of health, of wealth, of influence, of ease, of friends—whatever may be the exteriors of the soul, God has a right to the soul, to the life. We may make no terms with Him, we may lay down no conditions, we may present no "if." God demands rightfully our supreme allegiance, our glad surrender, our unquestioning obedience.
"A man with a message"? My brother, if you have no message out of your sickness, what right have you to expect that you will have a message out of health? If you have no message to-day, how can you think that you will have a message out of any to-morrow? You say that you have sinned and that you have been forgiven. Is not that the main thing? If that is true, you have forfeited your eternal life, and God has given it back to you again. Do you see no message in that? Are a few years, even a long lifetime, of sickness and physical handicap to be regarded for an instant compared with an eternity of power and joy in God's presence? You have the real thing, the only thing really worthwhile; and you say that if God will do so and so in addition, you will yield Him your life. Do you wonder that He does not grant your request?
And even if you make a glad and complete surrender, God may not answer your prayer for health. It may not be best for you to be well in body. God's just laws bring just penalties when they are broken. God's children will rejoice in this, will even rejoice that the working of God's justice shall be illustrated in their own lives by continued sickness, if God sees best. God's true children will rejoice in their sufferings as Paul did, and will be glad to go about as living witnesses of the peril of sin as well as living monuments of the joy of salvation.
It is not easy to take this position, though it is very easy to talk about it. It is not easy to accept the consequences of one's wrongdoing and be willing that they should remain lifelong consequences if God wills. But this peaceful resting in the will of God brings a joy that nothing else can give. In it is the health you really long for, the health of the soul if not of the body.
And so, my brother, I pray, and I ask all Christians to pray, that you may gain this spiritual health, this absolute trust in God, this eagerness to testify of God's goodness out of any state. And while I make this prayer for you I make it also for myself.
No Power.
It happens occasionally, when one is driving an automobile, that the splendid machine stops suddenly, and no manipulation of throttle, sparker or lever will start it up again. The operator climbs out, and finds a puddle of gasoline under the car, with a wet line stretching back over the road. At once he gives it up, hunts a telephone, and summons another machine to tow him to the nearest garage.
What has happened? The pipe running from the gasoline tank to the engine has broken, and all his gasoline has run out; without gasoline, the strong engine is powerless and the big vehicle motionless. The pipe is a tiny copper tube which holds only a few quarts of liquid, but that liquid is one of the essentials of speed.
No Christian can pass through such an experience without gratefully remembering what God does for him through the agency of prayer. It is a simple channel, but what power flows along it!
Keep the Nib Clean!
You have all had the experience. There is really no need to tell you about it. You have all been particularly desirous to turn off a fair copy of something or other, or write a particularly neat letter to somebody or other, and just as you have arrived within two or three lines of the end of the page and are congratulating yourself upon the fine appearance of your effort,—fie! the letters become thick and smudgy, a sort of elongated blur, and you have introduced into the midst of your calligraphy a line of which any schoolboy would have been ashamed.
What is the matter? You know without looking. There's something in the nib of the pen. Maybe it's a little hair. Maybe it's a tiny thread or a bit of lint. It's so small that you can hardly see it, and so elusive that you can scarcely get it out. The nib seems especially fond of it, and holds it with a grip worthy of a better cause. Finally, at the imminent risk of the diamond points, a pin does the work of extrication, and, with nerves all awry, you return to your task.
The experience is so common that it is not worth describing were it not for the hint of higher things that it gives us. For how often—yes, and just when we wanted to produce an especially fine impression, as like as not-has the lint or the thread got into the nib of our lives! Never mind what it was. A cross word, as like as not. Some misrepresentation, perhaps. Maybe a plan that has failed. Maybe a toothache. Whatever it may be, immediately our life-lines become all blurred, and the fair page, which the morning handed us so fresh and clean, is irretrievably spoiled. Too bad! Too bad!
I have had this fountain-pen experience so many times that I have acquired a useful habit. It has become second nature to me. Before writing on any page I pass my palm over it, and brush away whatever may be lying in wait for the coming pen. Since I have been doing this, my trouble from obstructed penpoints has been almost nil.
And oh, to learn this lesson in the affairs of the soul! For there are palms, white and pure, that are skilled to pass smoothly over the blank sheet of every coming day. They will remove all the waiting snares. They will clear the way perfectly before us. They will insure for us a fair and noble page to lay before the Teacher at eventide.
And what could they be but the pure, white palms of prayer?