Part 3 (1/2)
So, at the camp fires a man talked to the boys and a woman to the girls, not about the Inst.i.tute, but about life. These speakers knew the strange effect an Inst.i.tute week has on impressionable and romantic youth; they knew that by this time scores of the students were either saying to themselves, ”I've got to do something big before this thing's over,” or were vainly trying to put the conviction away.
The woman who talked to the girls happened to be a preacher's wife.
This gave her a certain advantage when she told the listening girls that the greatest of all occupations for them was not some special vocation, but what Ida Tarbell has called ”the business of being a woman.” It was good preparation for the next day's program, with its specific and glamorous appeal, for it put first the great claim, so that special vocations could be seen in clear air and could be fairly measured.
Pastor Drury, who talked to the boys, was talking to them all, as J.W.
very well knew, but every word seemed for him; as, indeed, it was, in a sense that he did not suspect. He was not surprised that his pastor should present the Christian life as effectively livable by bricklayers and business men as surely as by missionaries. He had heard that before.
But to J.W. the old message had a new setting, a new force. And never before had he been so ready to receive it.
The songs had sung themselves out, as the fire changed from roaring flame and flying sparks to a great bed of living coals. From the world's beginning a glowing hearth has been perfect focus for straight thought and plain speech. The boys found it so this night.
The minister began so simply that it seemed almost as if his voice were only the musings of many, just become audible. ”I know,” said he, ”that to-morrow some of you will find yourselves, and will eagerly offer your lives for religious callings. We shall all be proud of you and glad to see it. But most of you cannot do that. You are already sure that you must be content to live 'ordinary Christian lives,' It is possible that to-morrow you may feel a little out of the picture. And those who are hearing a special call might regard you, quite unconsciously, of course, as not exactly on their level.”
”Now, suppose we get this thing straight to-night. There is no great nor small, no high nor low, in real service. The differences are only in the forms of work you do. The quality may be just as fine in one place as in another. The boy who goes into the ministry, or who becomes a medical missionary, will have peculiar chances for usefulness. So also will the boy who goes into business or farming or teaching, or any other so-called secular occupation. Just because he is not called to religious work as a daily business he dare not think that he has no call. G.o.d's calling is not for the few, but for the many. And just now the man who puts his whole soul into being an out-and-out Christian in his daily business and in his personal life as a responsible citizen must have the genuine missionary spirit. He must live like a prophet, that is, a messenger from G.o.d. He must know the Christian meaning of all that happens in the world. And he must stand for the whole Christian program.
Otherwise, not all the ministers and missionaries in the world can save our civilization. It is your chance of a great career. You who will make up the rank and file of the Christian army in the next twenty-five years--do you know what you are? _You are the hope of the world!”_
As the group broke up in the dim light of the dying embers, J.W.
stumbled into Joe Carbrook, and the two headed for the tents together.
They had been on a much more friendly footing since Thursday.
”Say, J.W.,” said Joe, abruptly, ”what's the matter with me? I came to this place without knowing just why; thought I'd just have a good time, I suppose; but here I am being b.u.mped up against something new and big every little while, until I wonder if it's the same world that I was living in before I came. Do you suppose anybody else feels that way? Is it the place? Or the people? Or what?”
”I don't just know,” said J.W., trying to keep from showing his surprise. ”I feel a good deal that way myself. I think it's maybe that this is the first time we've ever been forced to look squarely at some of the things that seem so natural here. At home it's easy to dodge. You know that, only you've dodged one way and I've done it another.”
”But do you feel different, the way I do, J.W.? Do you feel like saying to yourself: 'Looka here, Joe Carbrook, quit being a fool. See what you could do if you settled down to getting ready for something real. Like being a doctor, now.' Do _you_ feel that way? You don't know it, but I've always thought I could be a doctor, if I could see anything in it.
And then the other side of me speaks up and says: 'Joe Carbrook, don't kid yourself. You know you haven't got the nerve to try, even if you had the grit to stick it through.' Is it that way with you, J.W.? You've paid more attention to religion and all that than I ever did. And what you said on Thursday about the 'Big Idea' has kept me guessing ever since.”
”No, Joe, my trouble's not like yours. I know I can't be a doctor, nor a preacher, nor a missionary. I've got nothing of that in me. But what we heard to-night at the camp fire came straight at me. As I tried to say the other day, if you get the 'Big Idea' of the Inst.i.tute, Christian service looks like a great life. But me--I've no hope to be anything particular; just one of the crowd. And I never quite saw until to-night how that might be a great life too.”
As they were parting, J.W. ventured a bold suggestion. ”Say, Joe, if you think you could be a doctor, _why not a missionary doctor?”_
Joe's answer was a swift turning on his heel, and he strode away with never a word.
”Probably made him mad,” thought J.W. ”I wonder why I said it. Joe's the last boy in the world to have any such notion. But--well, something's already begun to happen to him, that's sure--and to me too.”
On Sunday the little world of the Inst.i.tute a.s.sumed a new and no less attractive aspect. Everybody was dressed for Sunday, as at home. Cla.s.ses were over; and games also; the dining room became for the first time a place of comparative quiet, with now and then the singing of a great old hymn, just to voice the Inst.i.tute consciousness.
The Morning Watch talk had been a little more direct, a little more tense. And before the Bishop's sermon came the love feast. Now, the Methodists of the older generation made much of their love feasts, but in these days, except at the Annual Conference, an occasional Inst.i.tute is almost the only place where it flourishes with something of the ancient fervor.
Many changes have come to Methodism since the great days of the love feast; changes of custom and thought and speech. But your ardent young Methodist of any period, Chaplain McCabe, Peter Cartwright, Jesse Lee, Captain Webb, would have understood and gloried in this Inst.i.tute love feast. It spoke their speech.
Our group from Delafield will never forget it.
Nearly all of them spoke; Marcia Dayne first because she was usually expected to lead in everything of the sort, then Marty, then J.W., and, last of all and most astounding, Joe Carbrook.
Marty looked the soldier, and he put his confession into military terms.
He spoke about his Captain and waiting for orders, and a new understanding of obedience.
Before J.W. got his chance to speak, the leader read a night letter from an Inst.i.tute far away, conveying the greetings of six hundred young people to their fellow Epworthians.