Boston, tells how r the most useful man in one of their
churches was converted through the word of a Chris-
tian lady, spoken across the counter when he was
selling goods to her. One dear servant of Christ,
now at rest, said he got great opportunities to testify
for Christ when the hairdressers were cutting his
hair. Another aged worker, living alone in the
country, never let a message-girl leave without a word
said, or a book or orange given. These faithful ser-
vants fulfilled Paul's injunction to the believers, both
at Ephesus and Colosse, to buy up their opportunities.
We shall never lack calls to more earnestness. Even
as we write, a prince, a painter, a musician have all
been called away.

There is a power which is sometimes stronger even
than the realisation of the importance and the fleet-
ingness of time. We are told that the seven years
that Jacob worked for Rachel seemed like a day,
for the love he had to her. Love makes havoc of
time and distance. Faith may be the lantern which
throws on the screen of our heart the vision that
allures us to make much of time in pursuing our
ideal ; but Love is the operator, Faith worketh by
Love. When we feel that the personal living Christ
is the motive-power of our life, the mainspring of
every action, then alone does the importance of the



58 HELPS TO MAKE IDEALS REAL

maintenant come in, to live and use the moment for
Him ; for, as the lines say

" The loss of Gold is much,
The loss of Time is more,
But the loss of Jesus Christ is such
As no man can restore."



CHAPTER X

THE QUEST OF THE IDEAL

IN BOOKS

" Let us thank God for books. When I consider what some
books have done for the world, and what they are doing ; how
they keep up our hope, awaken new courage and faith, soothe
pain, give an ideal life to those whose homes are hard and cold,
bind together distant ages and foreign lands, create new worlds
of beauty, bring down truths from heaven, I give eternal bless-
ings for this gift, and pray that we may use it aright, and abuse
it not." JAMES FREEMAN CLARKE.

IT was our privilege to hear Thomas Carlyle deliver
his rectorial address in the Music Hall in 1866. He
then divided books into two classes when he said, " I
conceive that books are like men's souls, divided into
sheep and goats. Some few are going up, and carry-
ing us up, heavenward ; calculated, I mean, to be of
priceless advantage in teaching, in forwarding the
teaching of all generations. Others, a frightful mul-
titude, are going down, down ; doing ever the more
and the wider and the wilder mischief. Keep a strict
eye on that latter class of books, my young friends ! "
We remember during a course of Astronomical
Lectures given in our school days going at night out



THE QUEST OF THE IDEAL 59

on a country road to study the stars. The eager
eyes might have spent the time gazing up and
scanning the heavens. It was more profitable to
fix the eye with the help of the telescope on one
constellation or one planet, on the Plough, or on
Mars or Jupiter. We would like to speak of one or
two helpful books, not for connoisseurs in this de-
partment, but for those who are making out their first
list or catalogue, their first skeleton map of an un-
known country. Emerson says : " Private readers
. . . would serve us by leaving each the shortest note
of what he found. . . . Each shall give us his grains
of gold, after the washing." We got these grains of
gold in the following letter, when we asked for a
course of reading-aloud in a country house by the
sea :

" I should say, read M'Crie's Life of Knox, or
M'Crie's (the younger) Sketches of Scottish Church
History ', or Stanley's JewisJi Church^ or his Life of
Arnold^ or Memorials of a Quiet Life, or Hugh Miller's
My Schools and Schoolmasters ', or Trevelyan's
Macaulay^ or Farrar's Paul. Perhaps the last or first
two would be best ; only get one, get it done. Before
you begin each evening's reading, get your reader to
question you upon last day's lesson. That is worth
two readings. History is the very best kind of read-
ing. It connects, collects, and cools one's mind. It
gives you illustrations, examples that light up your
own life and the life of the present day. Religious
history is perhaps the best for us; but there is no
good history of Scotch or English religion. If you
take secular history, Froude's, which is reappearing
just now, might be good. Have you read Living-



60 HELPS TO MAKE IDEALS REAL

stone's? If not, you might get that for Sabbath.
It is the most Christlike life I ever heard of, except
Paul's."

When a friend asks us what books to read, or an
invalid for a sudden accession of illness, or a traveller
for a long journey, we should all have a repertoire, a
list in memory's secret drawer to call out at once.
First let us taste for ourselves, and then be a purveyor
of good books. Very much depends on the time,
the circumstance, the mood when a book is read.
When we have read it and passed our verdict, did we
give it a fair chance, did we give it our undivided
attention ? We remember a friend saying to us how
much more profitable it was to read a book in one's
own copy, which we could mark at will, than in a
fugitive library copy. And we have found this to be
increasingly true. Sometimes after making a book
our own by marking, we have been tempted to leave
it with a friend, and when we wanted it for reference
it was gone. There is a moving population of summer
visitors who come and go, and leave not much im-
pression on our bit of land ; but we must have some
residenters living in mansions or villas who have
taken a lease for life to purchase a place in our lives.
Mr. Stead speaks of the "communion of readers,"
and such bonds are healthy and strong. In your
friends' bookcases you have a key to their tastes, an
index to their lives. You go with a friend on holiday.
As is his habit he may have taken a book suitable to
the district, such as Wordsworth at the Lakes, or
Scott at Kenilworth, Romola in Florence ; and as he
turns the pages you know his thoughts. Leaving Mar-
seilles, on two deck-chairs lay copies of Monte Christo.



THE QUEST OF THE IDEAL 61

The readers did not speak, being better employed,
but though utter strangers, never again likely to meet,
they were for the time friends. Certainly it is safer,
when talking is resorted to, to discuss a book than a
person. People get friendly over a book which they
have both discovered to be to them " the most brilliant
book of travel of the century " ; and just when they
have begun to read some standard book, they are
pleased to see it praised in a magazine. The more
they read, the more their reading seems to overlap
like wave on wave on a pebbly shore, and the more
they realise their own ignorance. How easy it is for
the young to found a library, a bookcase of their very
own, compared to what it was in our young days.
There are the penny poets and the fourpenny standard
novels within reach of all ; and we have heard from a
friend about a wonderful collection which can be got
in Glasgow for the sum of six shillings, including
postage.

Hugh Miller says : " I began to collect a library in
a box of birch bark about nine inches square, which
I found quite large enough to contain a great many
immortal works;" and we know what his learning
grew to. When a book is lent, it is a great help to
put the name of the person to whom it has gone on
a slip of paper on the shelf. A prize might be
offered for the most effective punishment for the non-
returning of books. The careful librarian will send
out a reminder, a post-card, to recall it, or a reply
post-card, asking when it will be returned ; but it is
the duty of the person who received the favour of the
loan not to keep it beyond a due time, a week or a
month. Some one said : " Though my friends are



62 HELPS TO MAKE IDEALS REAL

poor arithmeticians, yet they are good bookkeepers ! "
We know how great scholars treat their books, and
we long to imitate them. They exercise great care
and solicitude, and will let no stranger hands dust or
disarrange. For a library is like a garden. It needs
pruning; it needs weeding; it needs raking and
watering, arrangement and rearrangement according
to the plan which the proprietor feels most helpful to
him.

Speaking of libraries, the well-known story comes
to mind of one who was mostly concerned as to the
outward appearance. He ordered his several shelves
to be filled with volumes of varying size, and when
asked if they were to be bound in russia or morocco,
replied, " What's the use o' sending them so far ; can
they no' be bun' at hame ? "

The young are very critical. We went with a
friend who had literary tastes, and who had lived
among books, into the study of a writer. What
struck her was the meagreness of his library. Her
standard was high. In another country house, very
destitute of books, we found one which helped us.
The owner was not aware that it was in the house.
Next to the good done to the young by founding a
library we would put the keeping of a book of
extracts. True, it is asked, " Do you ever use them ? "
but the mere writing out of the lines impresses them
on the memory. And then it is like the delight of
arranging a vase of flowers to see those that go well
together, and add new beauty each to the other.
What rare delight it is to quarry a piece out of the
solid rock yourself, instead of merely picking them
from a heap of metal on the roadside. A list of



THE QUEST OF THE IDEAL 63

pieces in a book of quotations is like eating bride-
cake which causes indigestion, or to use merely a
book of quotations, as if a dinner were all made up
of savouries without substantial dishes. What a joy
it is to share our treasures with some appreciative
and enthusiastic friend. When on showing your
notebook you can tell the habitat of the plant, and
still more, that you plucked it and labelled it your-
self, the joy is something akin to the botanist opening
his herbarium, or the geographer making a new map.
The author's name attached is like the hall-mark of the
Queen's head on the silver, or the cock on the Canti-
galli china. We would say to the children, " Save
up your pennies for books rather than sweetmeats,"
and " learn by heart whilst yet the memory is nimble."
A book may bind a whole family together in loving
sympathy if suited to be read on the different flats of
a house. A friend has started a lending library to
be put in servants' halls in country houses. The
subscription is small, and the books are sometimes
gladly welcomed upstairs. A douane and douanier
should certainly be stationed at our bookshelves, not
to let in any contraband literature. And who should
seek to station this douanier like a mother? Lady
Nairne began a book of extracts from books to
leave for her son's use, but he went first. She had a
high ideal in this as in all else, for one of her
favourite mottoes was " Holiness is happiness." Mrs.
Booth of the Salvation Army said to Mr. Stead :
" Give us mothers ; mothers are the want of the
world." Some remember learning to read at their
mother's side by the easy method of " Reading with-
out Tears." In learning the alphabet they got a key



64 HELPS TO MAKE IDEALS REAL

to their mother's heart, and a strange life of inter-
change and communion began. On Sabbaths it
was Peep of Day and Line upon Line, and after-
wards Ministering Children was added to the list.
The mother hears the child throw out a hint and acts
on it, and at the next birthday or Christmastide pre-
pares some surprise. A girl went to the country to
nurse an invalid, and she found packed, by her
mother's desire, among the clothing the blue volume
sequel to Ministering Children which she had long
desired to have. And when the treasured gift has an
inscription with a loved quotation, or pages marked
worthy of special study, the value of the gift is
enhanced. After the Bible, which another cannot
study for us, with its chapters learnt by heart, its
tracks of waste land cultivated, and mines explored
with help of Cruden (who seemed to our minds more
a person than a book), what book was like the dear
old " Pilgrim," as we called it. A student told us
that there was hardly a Sabbath passed on which he
did not read out of the Pilgrim's Progress, and it is
to us the ideal book after the Bible. Then our
mother arranged Rutherford's Letters for us on a
plan of a letter, or part of a letter, for every day
in the year. The attractive binding and beautiful
paper of Andrew Bonar's edition first impressed us,
but the book was ever a delight. Foremost among
the favourite stories of our childhood stands Robinson
Crusoe, and not far behind it the Swiss Family
Robinson. In later days we have seen children
devouring Ballantyne's Coral Island, which is some-
what akin. In a train to London we read Uncle Tom's
Cabin. Across our memories there flit the images,



THE QUEST OF THE IDEAL 65

the places where we read the books, the friends who
gave them, and it is good to tell our children the
histories that there is not time to write. In these
days of deluges of literature, typewriting machines, of
evening papers, of fountain pens, the hours seem to
have fewer minutes and the days fewer hours ; but
with the scantier supply of children's books long ago
there was just as much pleasure, and, perhaps, as
much profit.

In later life it has been our privilege to make a
study of some tracks of literature with one who was an
authority and who had a master mind. We took each
winter a different author for an hour's reading regu-
larly and thoroughly : a course of Browning, including
the " Ring and the Book," a course of Dante, one of
Ruskin, and one of Wordsworth. We all have allo-
cated different readings at different times, remember-
ing some books along with the sunsets over the sea
at country houses when they were read aloud in the
long summer evenings. The good of this course of
study was from the side-lights that the friend threw
on the reading, as he explained the growth of the
writer's mind, the source where he got certain ideas,
etc. These talks favoured assimilation and digestion.
We have come across his vigorous marginal pencillings
this winter, now that his hand is cold in death. We .
only wish we had taken down notes of all he told us.
In a course of reading he was like a living encyclo-
paedia, for he knew the chief figures in the literature
of the period.

Paul said " especially the parchments," and in our
longing after the ideal in books, we feel that we are
just like children throwing stones into the sea and
5



66 HELPS TO MAKE IDEALS REAL

listening to the waves which speak of the expanse
beyond. For life is so short and the books so many
that the difficulty is to remember what we have read
and have it ready for use, and not as rusty weapons
in an armoury.

And the most learned will tell you they are still
at the beginning, though advancing. We watch with
interest the growth of the mind of our friends. We
may court introductions to the great and good, but
we need not wait for an introduction to a book ;
and then, when tried and proved, it is our privilege
to pass it on to others. A friend told us once that he
did not understand Browning, but that he loved Mrs.
Barrett Browning. Only the other day he advised us
to read over again " Rabbi ben Ezra." His child had
educated him. In our drawing-room Browning and
Virchow discussed " Paracelsus " twelve years ago,
but we hardly then knew Browning's poems, else how
different would the conversation have been to us ! It
was Browning who said,

"Ah, but a man's reach should exceed his grasp,
Or what's a heaven for ? "

and each time we turn his pages our ideal is raised.
For writers and readers alike we close this chapter
with Milton's grand words. Let no young reader
fear the long name, but go to the pages where he will
find it for himself in the " Areopagitica." The effect
that the words have on us as they call us from our
low level and scrappy reading, are like leaving the
hurdy-gurdy organ on the street and entering a great
cathedral where the grand music is swelling out, and
one by one the worshippers yield themselves to the
spell .



THE MISSION AR Y IDEAL 67

" For Bookes are not absolutely dead things, but do
contain a potencie of life in them to be as active as
that soule was whose progeny they are ; nay, they do
preserve as in a violl the purest efficacie and extrac-
tion of that living intellect that bred them. I know
they are as lively, and as vigorously productive, as
those fabulous dragons teeth ; and being sown up and
down, may chance to spring up armed men. And
yet, on the other hand, unlesse warinesse be us'd as
good almost kill a Man as kill a good Booke ; who kills
a man kills a reasonable creature, God's image ; but
hee who destroys a good booke, kills reason itselfe,
kills the Image of God, as it were in the eye. Many
a man lives a burden to the earthe ; but a good booke
is the pretious life-blood of a master spirit, imbalm'd
and treasured up on purpose to a life beyond life."



CHAPTER XI

THE MISSIONARY IDEAL

" There was depression in every direction. We met and prayed
for the heathen. We were drawn out of ourselves. God blessed
us while we tried to be a blessing 1 . Our hearts were enlarged,
and we were baptized into a deeper sympathy with the soul-
saving- purposes of the Redeemer. And the spirit was con-
tagious." ANDREW FULLER.

"O Master! when Thou callest,

No voice may say Thee nay,
For blest are they that follow

Where Thou dost lead the way ;
In freshest prime of morning

Or fullest glow of noon,
The note of heavenly warning

Can never come too soon.



68 HELPS TO MAKE IDEALS REAL

They who go forth to serve Thee,

We, too, who serve at home,
May watch and pray together

Until Thy kingdom come;
In Thee for aye united,

Our song of hope we raise,
Till that blest shore is sighted,

When all shall turn to praise!"

ALREADY to some is it like the sound of the wheels
of His chariot, the advent of His feet, the missionary
ideal realised, " the world for Christ," when the cul-
tured youth of all the nations are federating to " make
Jesus King." And the news that comes to us from
the ends of the earth is often like a page of some
romantic story. We heard from a lonely missionary
in the heart of Africa, whose faith is as great as his
bodily strength is weak. It takes five months for a
letter to go to him. It may arrive or not, according
to the good luck the letters have at the hands of the
carriers; though only the wrapper may arrive without
the book. From his outlook the chariot may seem
long of coming, but with what joy will the lonely
sentinel months after hear of the Liverpool Confer-
ence ! It would be worth while to have from him
not a photograph of the face which we remember as
more spirit than flesh, but of the innermost soul
beating on all alone true for Christ and His heathen,
having for his treasured possession a wife's grave.
Surely a sight of that soul, so like the Master, tread-
ing the wine-press alone, would fire our icy coldness,
for he is an ideal missionary. This is a part of his
last letter

"I do not know if you would remember a young
wife of the king, in whose heart and for more than



THE MISSIONAR Y IDEAL 69

two years the grace of God had been working.
Being a favourite wife, she was not free to leave the
royal harem. Once, on a very solemn occasion, when
several had made a profession,, the king summoned
her also to speak, for he knew the work that had
gone on in her soul. But he meant that she might
make a profession, and still hold her place as one of
his concubines. She answered by a flood of silent
tears. At last she entreated him not to stand in "the
way of her salvation, but to free her once for all.
The king, who himself is wavering, would "have liked,
for reasons of his own, to postpone that step. But
he yielded at last, and very nobly. By her own
slaves he had all the material prepared for her house
in the village ; and then last Sunday, when she stood
up in church, and with a firm, clear voice declared
herself a follower of Jesus, and made a short but
pointed appeal to the chiefs, the whole congregation
was breathless, and all eyes were fixed upon her.
But soon they were fixed on the king himself, who
had risen to his feet, and declared that it was with
.his fullest consent that that young woman left once
for all his harem. And then, turning to the big
chiefs, he said, ' It is useless to fight against the
things of God,' and taking an image from the course
of the sun, c they have risen : we cannot impede
them and push them back. They must go forth/
This has caused a very great sensation. The chiefs
were enraged. They declared the woman was mad.
Why did she not wait for the king to become a
Christian himself? Why set such an example to
their own wives? Indeed, she has put our little
world upside down. Meantime, she Is no more a



70 HELPS TO MAKE IDEALS REAL

, ' queen/ Nobody kneels now before her and claps
hands as a few days ago, although she is of royal
blood, a cousin of the king; but she is cheerful and
happy, she is free. A host of men and women
have been after her to compel her to go back to
the City of Destruction, but the Lord sustains her.
Now we are waiting for the king himself."

As we write, a letter comes from India, saying
" One of our hospital patients had been ill for long
with chronic bronchitis. She was a woman of about
fifty-five years, had been a Telegu Brahmin, but
married a Mohammedan man, and broke caste. Her
name was Raddia. One night her distress was
terrible. Next day we found her sinking. Her
mind was quite clear, and she spoke with joy in
laboured sentences of going to be with Jesus Christ.
She knew quite well that she was dying. She had
no fear. She asked that she might be buried as a
Christian woman, and regretted that she had not
been baptized. My fellow-worker went to tell the
missionary, and he at once said that he thought she
should be baptized, and he would come to do it.
We knew it would comfort her. It was a very
simple and a very solemn service. The dying
woman, fighting hard for breath, confessed her faith
in Him who had brought life and immortality to
light. She w r as baptized in the name of the Father,
of the Son, and of the Holy Ghost. She could not
speak much after that, but in whispered, broken
sentences told us that her ' heart was very happy,'
that she 'had peace/ Just about midnight that
same night she fell on sleep."

A steamer is even now putting out from Bordeaux,



THE MISSIONAR Y IDEAL 7 1

carrying back, for the second time, to the French
Congo a choice labourer. With him as freight he
carries a house, a boat, seeds for his garden, and,
among his books, Make Jesus King. He knows the
deadly nature of the climate, but if it is to finish
there his course with joy, he counts not his life dear.
In the gay city of Paris, as, long ago, in the upper
room at Jerusalem, or in the Catacombs of Rome, a
company of friends met to wish him God-speed ; and
two student friends have caught the enthusiasm, and
are to follow to Africa.

One of the ideals of missionary life is consecration.
We all know the breath of one of those souls upon
us, the effect of one of their letters ; and why are
these consecrated spirits so rare ? It does not need
a Tent or a Conference ; the Spirit is ours, and it
may be said of any of us as it was long ago, " The
Spirit of God clothed himself with Gideon/' When
they leave us the ordinary conversation of Christians
seems cold, the discussions about lines of demarcation
between the Church and the world so futile ; for we
have been with those who have seen the vision of
Christ and the needs of the heathen world.

" Whoso hath felt the Spirit of the Highest

Cannot confound nor doubt Him, nor deny :
Yea, with one voice, O world, though thou deniest,
Stand thou on that side, for on this am I."

Our standard of life has been raised for a few days,
and the heat or feeling of a room all depends on what
you have come from. Some features have struck us
in some ideal missionaries and workers we have
known which may help us to make our missionary
ideals real. We think of one who went about with no



7.2 HELPS TO MAKE IDEALS REAL

excitement or hurry. He failed to keep an appoint-
ment with us one forenoon for reading and prayer.
Later on other duties were pressing, and he found
the door locked, The words were called in, " I've
been O.K. M.S." He meant "On His Majesty's
.Service." The service had been praying and talking