ARMS and armor are all-important in secular and sacred warfare, but how to wield the one and wear the other must be learned. The God of battle seldom makes a raw soldier into a great leader all at once. Moses tarries in Horeb, and Elijah in the desert, and Paul in Arabia, to get a preparation for their work: and with forty days in the wilderness even our Lord’s ministry begins. Uncle John Vassar, the splendid missionary worker, was girded and disciplined in various ways. For these experiences eight years in God’s school were none too long.
He was a novice in religious things, and needed instruction especially in the word of God. Probably he was more ignorant of even the letter of Scripture than many a half-grown boy today. He had not been a member of the Sunday school, nor a regular church attendant by any means, and little of Bible truth lay in his mind excepting such scraps and fragments as home-training might have fastened there. This deficiency he sought, far and fast as possible, to supply. In the brewery where he was employed, he would write down on the walls in the morning two or three short texts to be learned and thought over while at his tasks. On a shelf nearby, or else in his pocket, was kept a small Bible, and when there was an unoccupied moment that would be in his hands. Evenings, when no religious service claimed his time, over that same book he would bend for hours, sometimes on his knees. Thus little by little he acquired that familiarity with the written word which he afterwards displayed, and by which he foiled opposers and silenced cavilers, as his Master did the tempter on the mountain, by quotations apt and irresistible.
No talent lent him was allowed to rust from disuse. Fast as he got he gave. He believed it to be as wrong to hoard grace as gold. Communion with Christ was only a holy portal through which to pass to the help of man. He began to talk with individuals about their hope: not so pointedly or skillfully as in later years, for tact and fidelity such as characterized him must partly be acquired. But from the start no one spent half an hour in his presence without being made to feel that with John Vassar religion was a real thing.