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THE DOMINIE
LETTERS FROM

ARKJAVENUE AND FORTIETH STREET

NEW YORK CITY
 Copyright, 1916, by
AMERICAN TRACT SOCIETY

240 a
A.
 FOREWORD

I hope you know the man to whom these

letters were written. For he is a fine fel-
low, a strong, kindly, sensible, serviceable
man. You will find him East and West, in
country and city, in overalls and broad-
cloth. Indeed, it is good to reflect that he
is far more numerous than some pastors, in
blue moments, suppose. _
The letters—one for every week in the
year—were written to no one man in par-
ticular, but with many men in mind whom
I have known and loved, with whom I have
talked of the affairs of the Christian life and
the present-day Church, knowing that their
desire for the Kingdom is one with mine.
They—the letters—are an attempt to convey
to the mind of the devoted man in the pew

2300
 Foreword

the dominie's point of view on matters,

small and great, germane to the Kingdom.
And to this man they are dedicated, in the
hope that, being born of one dominie's ex-
periences and prayers, they may be of some
small service in solving the problems of a
busy life.
DAVID DE FOREST BURRELL.
LETTERS FROM THE DOMINIE
 LETTERS FROM THE
DOMINIE
The Manse,
January I.
My Dear Friend:
It is not every minister that has in his
congregation some one who serves, as you
serve me, as a safety-valve. Too often the
man in the pulpit is not in a position to open
his mind to any .one—except his wife!
These letters and talks that pass between
you and me are a great relief to me. I can-
not tell how you feel about them, but I dare
to hope that you, in the pew, will not deem
the ink wasted that gives you the point of
view of the man in the pulpit.
So I shall keep on writing you every
3
 Letters From the Dominie

week; and I shall hope that somehow the

miscellany may add a modicum to the
happiness I wish you throughout the New
Year.
Sincerely your friend,
The Dominie.

January 2.
Dear Friend:
Here is another year begun, and another
host of New Year’s wishes flying about us!
“If wishes were horses, beggars might
ride.” How many beggars would be gal-
loping about our streets on a New Year’s
Day! Or, horses having gone utterly out
of fashion, let us phrase it thus: “How
many automobiles would be flying about
town on the first day of the year—if wishes
were cars!”
And yet—within limits—you can make
4
 Letters From the Dominie

certain oft-used New Year’s wishes come

true. |
“A Happy New Year to you!”—so your
friends have been greeting you. But you
can do much to make their wish for you
come true. You can begin the year by for-
bidding some things an entrance into it—
some old habit, some little weakness or (to
you) greater one, some unkindly spirit, some
selfish viewpoint of long standing. Station
yourself at the door of the year, keenly
alert, courageous and determined enough to
bar the way and cry to such, “No admis-
sion!”
Likewise, you can do much to further
others’ kindly wishes for you by heartily ad-
mitting some things, giving them the free-
dom of the year, presenting them, as it were,
with the keys of the unknown city. Certain
blessed habits of life—prayer, Bible study,
church-going—be sure you open the door to
5
 Letters From the Dominie

them! Many a wish for your welfare will

they help to realize. And “love, joy, peace,
longsuffering, kindness, goodness, faithful-
ness, meekness, self-control; against such
there is no law”; open you to them, there-
fore, with the opening year! They, too,
will serve to make it a happy year indeed.
Of what use to wish happiness to him who is
determined to maintain the old grudges, to
be governed by the same selfish spirit, that
spoiled the last year for him?
So it seems, also, that you can be of the
greatest assistance in making your own New
Year's wishes for other people come true.
“A Happy New Year to you!” Truly?
Do you mean it? Then how far out of your
way will you go to make it happy? You
say it to the elevator boy. Will you prove
the wish by any personal interest during the
year? You say it to the ash-man, if you
cross his dusty steps on New Year’s Day. .
6
 Letters From the Dominie

What will you really care about the ash-

man? You say it to the servant in your
house. What evidence is the New Year to
see of your genuine interest in those who
live under your rooftree? You say it to
your children. How far will you make day
school and Sunday-school teachers your dep-
uties for the care of their souls? You say it
to your neighbors. Will the New Year find
you with any more unselfish regard for
them? And you express the same wish for
the Church’s New Year. What will you
do to make your wish a reality?
For my part, J wish you a happy New
Year, a genuinely happy one. You remem-
ber the “Happy Psalm”? It is that happi-
ness I wish you: “Happy (that is the
word) is the man that walketh not in the
counsel of the wicked, nor standeth in the
way of sinners, nor sitteth in the seat of
scoffers; but his delight is in the Law of
7
 Letters From the Dominie

Jehovah... .” Oh, happy man! This is

the very happiness possessed by Jesus:
“My meat is to do the will of Him that sent
me.” Such abiding happiness I wish you.
May He who “came not to be ministered
unto, but to minister,” help us all to follow
up our wishes with substantial proof of their
genuineness!
Faithfully yours,
The Dominie.

January 9.
My Dear Friend:
Have you watched the building of our
new postoffice? Day by day its walls have
risen higher, day by day it draws nearer
completion; and all because the men en-
gaged on the work have been “on the job.”
The mortar-mixer has been at his place and
has done his share; the hod-carrier has bal-
8
 Letters From the Dominie

anced his load and made his trips aloft over

and again, all day long; the bricklayer
has spread his mortar and eyed his plumb-
line unceasingly; and the walls are going up.
There is not a member of this Church
who, after serious consideration, will not
agree that he is supposed to be a workman
on the walls of Jerusalem; that is, that he
is expected to be actually doing something
for his Lord. He knew as much when he
united with the Church; he made public
promise to do his part of the work. There
is no business obligation more sacred than
the obligation which rests upon every
Church member to do some specific work
for the Head of the Church. The walls are
going up; he has engaged himself as a work-
man; he is expected by Him whose edifice
it is, to be busy; and he has been given to
understand that he must give a reckoning
at the proper time.
 Letters From the Dominie

I mention this not only because some peo-

ple seem to forget it easily, but because defi-
nite, earnest work for Christ—real work—is
so obviously the cure for many spiritual ills
and wearinesses. I will guarantee that any
sincere Christian who will discover a work
to be done, and then set himself to do it, will
find that he gets a new light on the Bible,
on prayer, on the sermons he hears, and that
he gains a new zest for life which no other
tonic could give him. Spiritual torpidity
is common. One good cure is—a specific
task.
Incidentally, some of our happiest work-
ers are those whose work never brings them
before the public eye. They do the things
that do not show, these inconspicuous
workers. God bless them! The Church
could not live without them any more than
without those more prominent.
You told me the other day you hadn’t
10 >
 Letters From the Dominie

time or strength to go into religious work.

If you are a Church member there is but
one answer to this objection: You ought to
make time and save strength for it. I ex-
cept, of course, the few people who are occa-
sionally and exceptionally restricted by
emergencies in home or office. For the
rest, a glance over your week’s docket will
show you hours of wasted and misused time,
goodly supplies of wasted or misapplied
energy, which ought to be diverted to chan-
nels of genuine Christian service in the
Church and for the world. A little more
system, a little better choice, a little sacrifice,
and you will have time and strength at
Christ’s disposal. You tell me that you
cannot make room for Church work in your
overcrowded life. I tell you frankly, in re-
ply, that if you value at all the allegiance
you have sworn to the Head of the Church,
y
you must readjust matters, must rearrange
11
 Letters From the Dominie

your life, to make room for this great part

of life's business.
And this Christian service is the real bust-
ness of life for a Christian. Christ calls
you to do more for Him than to merely earn
your bread and butter. Stop and think:
are you actually doing anything at all for
Him?
Sincerely as always,
The Dominte.

January 16.
My Friend:
That was a wonderful experience we had
at the great evangelistic meeting Friday
night. I have had it in my mind ever since.
I suppose you also have.
Novelty in religious matters is strangely
startling. The method that is different, the
manner that is unconventional, will always
12
 Letters From the Dominie

jar upon most of us. We are satisfied with

doing “the proper thing,” and are accord-
ingly shocked by any overstepping of the
bounds of what is customary. Perhaps you
recall the man who, when told that he had
appendicitis, looked up in the surgeon’s face
and asked, “Is an operation necessary?”
“No,” said the surgeon, “it is not necessary;
it is customary.” And many of us are will-
L
ing thus to follow the conventions—at cost
of an appendix or a soul.
You were shocked at what you called “the
capers” of the great evangelist we heard the
other night. I can easily see why. You
like a formal service; and you feel injured
by any irregularity or interruption. You
like a formal prayer, correct, chastely ex-
pressed, dignified ; and you feel as if the man
who addresses God with “You” instead of
“Thou” were insulting God. I can imagine
too (for we know each other well enough
13
 Letters From the Dominie

for this sort of talk) that you would shudder

at the bare suggestion of an English Bible
in our modern English.
There are many like you, easily shocked
by unconventionality or novelty. When, in
the pulpit of an ordinarily quiet, self-con-
tained church, anything out of the ordinary
is done, the same unpleasant effect is pro-
duced on a goodly number.
I hear you calling me a heretic, an icono-
clast, when I say I cannot see the reasonable-
ness of this attitude. Oh, yes, I love a beau-
tiful, formal service as dearly as any High:
Churchman; and I am, too, a born (and
bred) conservative, through and through;
and yet the longer I preach, the more I min-
ister to our good, conventional people, the
more convinced am I that this sort of thing
will never win the world. Indeed, I do not
mind going further and saying that it is this
very spirit of convention
and propriety
14
 Letters From the Dominie

that is tying up the gospel, throttling the

Church!
I tell you, conventionality costs. It costs
a great deal. I could name many who get
absolutely nothing out of the Church service
because the conventions in the Church where
they worship have sapped all that was worth

|
while in it. There are many to whom the
Bible is a closed book because it is not given
them in the English in which they think.
There are others who have such a false rev-
erence for the Bible that they treat
it as a
_fetich_instead_of.a fountain. There are
still others who, though they say their for-
mal prayers, never pray, just because they
never talk their own simple language to
God. Formalism and conventionality take
the very life out of religion.
There is a good deal to be said, not for any
irreverence toward anything sacred, but for
a simple, straightforward dealing with God
15
 Letters From the Dominie

which can forget forms and ceremonies and

plunge into the deep heart of things.
There is an unconventionality in religion
that is undoubtedly wrong. It is that of the
fakir, of the fanatic, who does that or says
that which is clearly immoral or irreverent.
Here is no question of good taste, mind
you, but just the cleancut question of a
breach of the moral law or an insult to God.
But there is a sort of unconventionality in
religion into which the mere question of
good taste enters. And here the answer to
the charge of impropriety is easily found.
Given a sufficient reason, many of the ordi-
nary (and often arbitrary) conventions may
be over-ridden without hesitation. David’s
wife Michal sneered at him for dancing be-
fore the ark when that sacred symbol was
brought back home. And David said: “It
was before Jehovah, who chose me, . . . to
appoint me prince over the people of
16
 Letters From the Dominie

Jehovah. .. . And I will be yet more vile

than this, and will be base in my own sight:
but . . . I shall be had in honor!” There
are times when it is not a man’s business to
bow to every convention, times when he
ought to do the extraordinary and startling
thing, if by doing it he can draw men to
the service of God. So Paul said he was
“willing to be all things to all men.”
It is time for us to wonder if there is not
often more hindrance than reverence in
some of our conventions and our solemn pro-
prieties. The one great thing is to reach
men with the gospel. If we can do it to-
day only after breaking through some of our
time-honored Church customs, then the cus-
toms will have to be broken, that is all. We
must reach men! We must set men afire!
And if the usual formalities of the Church
service, the customary method of attack, will
not serve, then we must be willing to be
17
 Letters From the Dominie

mountebanks, if need be, for Christ's sake!

There is a man—I do not know his name
—who stands on a soap-box every noon and
preaches to the Wall Street crowds. I
honor him; and—I make you my confessor
—sometimes, skirting the crowd about him,
I have felt myself futile. His soap-box on
a street corner in the busy world puts my
conventional pulpit to shame.
Sensationalism? ‘There was a time when
I was afraid of the word. You, old friend,
are still in dread of it. It frightens me no
longer; and I pray daily that you, and all
the rest of my people, may see more clearly
the purpose of the Church in the world.
When you do, the old bugaboo of “propri-
ety” will have no more power over you.
That is proper in Church which will best
serve to advance the Kingdom of your dear
Lord and mine. Cordially,
The Dominie.
18
 Letters From the Dominie

Dear Friend: January 23.

You asked me the other day whether it
was not hard to offer prayer in church.
It is hard. In fact, preaching is a sim-
pler matter for a conscientious minister than
praying—that is, praying in the church serv-
ice. There are so many people in church,
with so many things to be thankful for, so
many wants to be filled, so many burdens to
be lifted; and the man in the pulpit is only
one man. It takes all one's power of sym-
pathy, all one's deepest interest, to try to lay
before the throne of grace all these long-
ings and desires.
But if the dominie’s part is a difficult one,
the part of the man in the pew is no easier.
It is hard to concentrate one's thoughts,
harder to appropriate another's words. I
have sat in the pew too often not to know the
pull at one's eyelids, the paroxysm of rest- i
19
 Letters From the Dominie

lessness that suddenly seizes upon mind and

body during what the old-fashioned people
call “the long prayer.” And the voice
heard from the pulpit does not always, for
all the minister's desire, utter what is deep-
est in the silent worshipper’s heart.
And yet it is not one man praying, but a
congregation uniting in prayer. When you
hear me say, “Let us unite in prayer,” you
may know that I mean exactly what I say.
The glory of the situation lies in the unity of
thought and desire on the part of the whole
roomful. I am but your spokesman. We
are all together talking with our Father con-
cerning the deep, essential things of life! If
a man can once force himself to remain con-
scious of this fact, the minister's prayer will.
be no longer to him a perfunctory part of the
service. It will be worship in truth; and
more, it will be fellowship.
There is another point. Your attitude to-
20
 Letters From the Dominie

ward the other folk in the pews has a great

deal to do with your appreciation of the
prayers from the pulpit. I know something
about the silly old unchristian grudges
and spites in some minds in the congrega-
tion; and I cannot for the life of me see how
those who nurse them so tenderly can im-
agine that they are in a mood for prayer.
How can Mrs. (I name no names)
“unite in prayer” with Mrs. Blank when
they dislike each other so cordially? How
can a certain prosperous man “unite in
prayer” with the man he is trying to “put
one over on” in business? Oh, no! prayer
in concert demands minds in harmony and
hearts in sympathy. One ought to be able
to say to himself, when part of the dominie’s
prayer does not fit him at all, “Ah, but that’s
a prayer for So-and-so, and there’s a petition
for poor Such-and-such; and I'll say ‘Amen’
to all!” i
21
 Letters From the Dominie

Oh, my friend, when I pray from the pul-

pit, pray with me from the pew! Put your
mind to it: it is your prayer, certainly some
of it is; to what fits you, and to what fits
others, say in your heart a strong “Amen!”
which is to say, “So may it be!” Never
leave yourself out of the blessed circle of
those who truly pray together in church.
Heartily yours,
The Dominie.

January 30.
My Dear Friend:
My downtown luncheon with you on Fri-
day was a great pleasure to me. It is hard
nowadays for the parson to get in close
touch with the men of his congregation, and
he welcomes every opportunity. And you
know how much easier it is to warm up over
a good meal!
22
 Letters From the Dominie

Do you remember the “sandwich man”

we passed as we came out of the restaurant?
A poor broken remnant of a man, shabby,
out at heels, red at nose, with a great oblong
sign hanging from his neck in front and the
mate to it hanging down behind. He ad-
vertised So-and-so’s Blacking, or What’s-
his-Name’s Dental Parlors, or something of
that sort.
Verily; but he advertised other things,
and most effectively too. I haven’t been
able to forget his looks. He was a walking
recommendation of the terrors and pinch-
ings of poverty; the truest “ad” in the world
for the corner saloon; a living proclamation
of the slavery of a vile habit. And he was
doing all this advertising without knowing
itl In fact, even if he did know it, he
couldn't help himself!
This is not a sermon on bad habits. It is
a talk on unconscious advertising as per-
23
 Letters From the Dominie

formed by all the members of this church.

Did it ever occur to you that you are a
seven-days-a-week advertiser, for good or
bad? You act as if you have done your full
duty to the church when you have gone to
the morning service on Sunday? Then
Jones, your neighbor, reads your advertising
and discounts the value of your church.
You fail to use the Church Calendar?
Jones reads, not the “Calendar,” but your
advertising of itas not worth reading. You
ignore the evening service? So does Jones
—on your advertising of its insignificance.
You gossip about the affairs of your church,
or decry the actions of some member or or-
ganization in it? Jones is there, reading
your advertising and discounting your
church. You insist upon “personal free-
dom,” and deliberately continue the doing
of things worldly or worse? Jones reads
the signs, and on the basis of your advertis-
24
 Letters From the Dominie

ing he discounts not merely the power of

your church for good, but the saving power
of your Saviour, whom your advertising dis-
honors!
My friend, your sandwich man takes off
his signboards at times, but you can’t take
yours off! You are a living advertisement
for or against the Church and Christ Jesus.
What kind of advertising do you propose
to do in the future?
Cordially yours,
The Dominie.

February ó.
My Dear Friend:
I have been reading an old story by way of
preparation for the Sacrament, the story of
the wanderings of Israel in the wilderness.
No wonder the Fathers found in it such a
symbol of the life of the godly man. What
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239
 Letters From the Dominie

a fine parallel it is, with all its adventures,

its misadventures, its various disciplines!
But the best of it is Elim.
A great horde of people, men, women and
children, with their servants, their flocks
and herds, their beasts of burden laden with
all manner of household belongings, all
trudging wearily along through mile after
mile of dreary, sandy waste, with the hot sun
beating down upon them, burning thirst
parching their throats, children crying for
a drop of water ;—then, suddenly, above the
shoulder of a sandhill, a glimpse of the slen-
der green tops of palm-trees, a mad rush of
the thirsty multitude, the sparkle of clear
waters under the palms, the blessed feeling
of cool water on parched tongue and throat!
So “they came to Elim, where were twelve
springs of water, and threescore and ten
palm-trees: and they encamped there by the
waters.”
26
 Letters From the Dominie

That is just what happens to those who

rightly partake of the Lord's Supper. One
of the oldest figures ever employed to de-
scribe life is the figure of a journey. It is
accurate. We pass through the events of
day after day as one passes along a highway,
meeting all manner of adventures and peo-
ple, confronting all sorts of obstacles; now
finding the way smooth, now rough; and
ever in need of rest and refreshment for
body, mind and soul, ever seeking, con-
sciously or unconsciously, the cooling waters
of Elim. Our souls crave something differ-
ent from what our work-a-day activities
give, something far better, more substantial.
We deal daily in things that parch our
thirsty souls.
“What mean dull souls, in this high measure
To haberdash
In earth’s base wares, whose greatest
treasure
Is dross and trash!”
27
 Letters From the Dominie

Let us be clear. It is not merely change,

but genuine refreshment, life itself, that we
need!
And this genuine increase of spiritual vi-
tality is his who comes believing to the
Lord’s Table. The Lord’s Supper has as
truly a practical value in terms of spiritual
life as had the springs of Elim in terms of
physical life. It is not because it has a
magic value in it; for it has none. It is be-
Cause it is the picture, the symbol, of that
which means life to the believer, the death
of Jesus, who “bore our sins in His own
body on the tree.” It is because it is the
Christ-given pledge of the forgiveness of
our sins. It is because it is a real channel
of Christ’s grace. He who comes thought-
fully, prayerfully, expectantly to the Lord’s
Supper will have his parched soul refreshed.
“Thou of life the Fountain art,
Freely let me take of Thee.
28
 Letters From the Dominie

Spring Thou up within my heart;

Rise to all eternity!”
Cordially,
The Dominie.

February I3.
My Dear Friend:
Do you know that pleasant feeling of “let-
ting down” at home?
Yesterday I called at a certain house
whose head explained his very slipshod ap-
pearance with the remark that he thought
a home was not a home if a man couldn’t
“let down” in it. |
I agree with him—up to a certain point.
If we have a right to ease and informality
anywhere, it is at home. An easy jacket
and slippers are symbols of one of the deep-
est pleasures of home, the right to relax, to
ease off the tension of life.
29
 Letters From the Dominie

But there are too many husbands and

wives who seem to feel that this privilege
confers a license to do, and say, and be, a
good many things which they would not
dare abroad.
Some men, when they come home, pro-
ceed to “let down” with a vengeance.
Throughout the day they have shown them-
selves considerate, careful of others’ inter-
ests; but good manners are hung up on the
hat-rack with their overcoats. The man
who will not let his clerk wear his hat in the
office will wear his own hat about the house
in his wife’s presence. With peculiar
denseness he assumes that the affairs of the
home are far beneath “business” in impor-
tance. Although at the office he is cool,
temperate, patient, here at home he grum-
bles at his supper, growls at his wife, snaps
at the children, feels privileged to lose his
temper, and behaves on the whole more
30
 Letters From the Dominie

like a savage than a Christian gentleman.

“But she's my wifel They're my chil-
dren!”
Precisely, and therefore entitled to every
true courtesy. Whatever politeness a man
shows to women outside of his home, he
owes the same a hundred-fold to the one
woman at home.
And the women? I am afraid that some
of them seize the same unwarranted license.
On their best behavior all day away from
home, they have to “let down” on their re-
turn, if it is only to take their turn snapping
at the younger generation—and the cook—
or pouring out upon a tired husband's de-
voted head all the flood of petty ills and
vexations accumulated during the day.
And the children? It goes without say-
ing that they, too, learn to take full license
in “letting down.” Indeed, in too many
homes they are taught that common phi-
31
 Letters From the Dominie

losophy which would have one easy set of

manners for home use and another, very
proper, very different, for use elsewhere.
Whereas I have an idea that Jesus would
expect a child to treat his own mother with
as fine a courtesy as he would employ to- A
wards his hostess at a children's party.
What is back of it all? Partly pure self-
ishness. It is easier to “let down,” to lose
control, to slip to a lower level, than to be
patient, considerate, kindly. And partly
the reason is the superficiality of the good
manners exhibited in public. They are
“party manners,” truly; they are never
shown at home. But it is the real man, the
real woman, that is disclosed by the “letting
down” in the domestic circle. This Mr.
Propriety and Mrs. Politeness who are seen
abroad, so suave, so well-mannered, they are
not the real people, but actors, made up for
public view; at home, off come the masks!
32
 Letters From the Dominie

God save us from this life-on-two-levels!

Let us be true Christian gentle-folk at heart,
and save ourselves the trouble of putting on
mask or “make-up” when we go abroad.
Semper idem! Itis a refinement of hypoc-
risy that cannot extend to those who should
be dearest the same outward marks of re-
gard and courtesy that are shown to others
less near. Let us train ourselves to “let
down” at home without falling below the
proper level of followers of Him who
“pleased not Himself.”
Sincerely, as always,
The Dominie

February 20.
My Friend:
Not a hundred miles from my threshold
there dwells a man of a certain peculiarity.
It cropped out when the heavy snowfall
33
 Letters From the Dominie

came to an end yesterday. I happened to

see him shovelling off his walk. When he
reached the point where his walk ended and
his neighbor's began, he very carefully lined
it off with his snow-shovel, shovelled ac-
curately to the line, then turned and
marched back to the house in conscious rec-
titude. He had shovelled to the line, very
careful not to clear an inch beyond it. He
had done his share, precisely, fully; now let
Mr. Neighbor look to his own share!
It happened that, a few minutes after this
characteristic performance, I was glancing
over a pamphlet that had come in the morn-
ing mail. I was struck by one pregnant
sentence: ‘The very essence of the Chris-
tian spirit is going beyond what might justly
be considered one’s own part, picking up
and carrying the load which others have
selfishly or carelessly thrown off.”
That is true. In the matter of Christian
34
 Letters From the Dominie

service the attitude we too often take is that

of my neighbor—very much afraid that in
shovelling our own sidewalk we may inad-
vertently go an inch or two beyond our line
and clean that much of our neighbor's walk.
We are so fearful lest inadvertently we
might do a little more church work than
some one else. We excuse ourselves, on
that ground, from larger activity. “There
is Mr. Idle; he has more time than 1 have;
why don't you ask him to do this work?
No use asking me to do more; I won't take
on any extra work until 1 see Mr. Sloth and
Mrs. Froth doing more than they are do-
ing.”
When it comes to giving do we not follow
out the same silly course of reasoning?
Our standard of comparison is the giving of
our neighbors. “Don't ask me to give any
more money to benevolences until Mr.
Mean begins to give something.” “There's
35
 Letters From the Dominie

Mr. Wealthy; he has ten times my income,

and I’m giving more now than he is.” And
so it goes: we compare our gifts with our
neighbors’, coming to the very satisfactory
conclusion that we are “doing our share, if
not more than our share.”
God forgive us, this is no way in which to
approach the Saviour’s business! It is not
a question of “giving our share,” but a ques-
tion of giving and doing all we can. “Who-
soever would save his life” (being careful
to do no more than his share) “shall lose it;
and whosoever shall lose his life” (spending
it without stint, without comparison with his
neighbor's service) “for My sake, shall find
ite
Imagine—if you can—our Saviour view-
ing his redemptive work with the same cal-
culating eye with which we view our work
for Him! “Empty myself? Take the
form of a servant? Be made in the likeness
36
 Letters From the Dominie

of men? Humble myself? Become obe-

dient unto death, yea, the death of the cross?
Why should I? It is more than my share.”
That was not Christ’s way: “For ye
know the grace of our Lord Jesus Christ,
that, though He was rich, yet for your sakes
He became poor, that ye through His pov-
erty might become rich.” Nor is it the way
of the Christian: ‘Whosoever would be-
come great among you shall be your min-
ister; and whosoever would be first among
you shall be servant of all.” In this service
there is no place for “comparative tables.”
The sole question, in relation to gifts and
work, is the one the individual must put to
his own heart: “Am I doing as much, giv-
ing as much, as I can?”

Sincerely your friend,

The Dominte.
37
 Letters From the Dominie

February 27.
My Friend:
Somehow it irritates me almost unreason-
ably to find a man of your calibre skeptical
or merely cold on the subject of foreign mis-
sions. It argues a distorted vision.
Much depends on how far one can see
clearly. If the submarine had good eye-
sight it would be a thousandfold more effect-
ive. The locomotive must have not only a
skilled hand on the throttle, but a pair of
clear, vigilant eyes at the window. And the
Church, to be most effective, must be pos-
sessed of a multitude of men and women
who can see around the world.
That is the range of the true Christian’s
vision—around the world, no less. For
that was the range of Jesus’ vision when he
established his Kingdom—‘“all the world,
. .. the whole creation.” That was the
38
 Letters From the Dominie

range of prophetic vision before Jesus:

“All nations shall serve Him; . . . all na-
tions shall call Him happy.” That was the
range of apostolic vision after Jesus: ‘“The
gospel . . . is the power of God unto sal-
vation ... to the Jew, and also to the
Greek.” Pauls vision embraces Asia
Minor, reaches out to Macedonia, on to
Italy, Spain—where will this end? There
is no end save “the ends of the earth.”
Christian vision sees a world hungry for the
Saviour, and a Saviour hungry for the
world.
_ The eyesight of some of the women of this
church has been growing sharper during
this past year. The meetings of the Mis-
sionary Society and the Federation for Mis- |
sion Study have been of inestimable value
in correcting vision. ‘To-day in this congre-
gation eyes that were formerly focused al-
ways on the near foreground, eyes that never
39
 Letters From the Dominie

saw at a distance, are seeing around the

world.
The woman who congratulates herself
that she is broadminded because she fixes
her eyes on local interests, pitying her nar-
row sister who works in the Missionary So-
ciety, has much to learn. For breadth and
depth of human interest commend me, every
time, to the woman whose eyes are adjusted
to objects not only near but afar, the woman
who sees as Jesus sees, around the world.
And what is true of our women ought
even more to be true of the men. The aver-
age man has, I think, a broader vision than
the average woman, simply because his
world is a larger world. He ought, there-
fore, to be the more willing to cultivate a
vision of a world-encircling gospel. Yet
you, with others of our thinking, success-
ful men, so broad-minded in other fields,
decline to be interested. As I said, it irri-
40
 Letters From the Dominie

tates me, it is so unreasonable for a Chris-

tian man!
I once heard a great man say that mission
study was the most broadening influence to
be had. Ex-President Taft and ex-Presi-
dent Roosevelt say practically the same
thing. It is true. Jesus cries to the
Church, “Lift up your eyes and look on the
fields”; and that particular congregation
that lifts up its eyes and looks beyond its own
parish, beyond its own land, beyond the seas,
girdling the earth with its vision, is abso-
lutely sure to be bigger, stronger, kindlier,
more zealous, more successful than its near-
sighted neighbor. There is small Chris-
tianity in a vision like that of Longfellow’s
children at their porridge:
“Steadfast they gaze, yet nothing see
Beyond the horizon of their bowls;
Naught care they for the world that rolls

41
 Letters From the Dominie

With all its freight of human souls,

Into the days that are to be.”

Man, man, look up! Look out over the

world! ‘Train your eyes to see as the Sa-
viour sees! With all my heart I urge you,
as a thoughtful and capable man, to look se-
riously into this matter of missions. Read
up on it. Listen to the statesmanlike ad-
dresses you can hear on it. Invest in it.
And this for your own development as well
as for the sake of the Kingdom of Christ.
Yours as always,
The Dominie.

March 5.
Dear Friend:
So you think me unpractical because I in-
sist that it may be a man’s duty to throw
away his ballot by voting for some one who
42
 Letters From the Dominie

cannot be elected rather than vote for a less

fit man?
I am not so sure. There is a high ideal-
ism that has been the glory of our nation and
is its glory in this world-crisis. And I be-
lieve that what I advocate may become, at
the ballot box, the duty of every high-
souled citizen.
I found a brother minister last week pre-
paring to speak to his people on “The Effi-
cient Ballot.” That is a fine phrase, worth
remembering—and applying. You say
your ballot is efficient because you vote for
a man who, while you do not approve of his
affiliations and record, has nevertheless a
good chance of being elected. I say that, on
the contrary, the ballot’s efficiency is to be
measured by the principles for which the
candidate stands, no matter what his chance
of being elected.
In 1858 my grandfather voted for Lin-
43 >
 Letters From the Dominie

coln against Douglas, and—as his neigh-

bors told him—-““threw away his vote” on a
beaten candidate. Butin 1860 he voted for
Lincoln; Lincoln went into the White
House; and ever after my grandfather was
proud of the fact that he had cast his ballot
in ’58 for the man who was the right man,
though he was sure of defeat.
Was that first vote thrown away? Nota
bit of it! A vote cast for the right man, de-
spite the outcries of all the prophets of “ex-
pediency,” is never thrown away. It is cast
on God’s side, and God will win out in the
long run.
We want the right to triumph, you and I.
We are after righteousness and justice, and
we must vote, not for what will give us a
little temporary relief, but for what will, in
the long run, bring in the reign of right.
“Woe betide us everywhere,” cried Car-
lyle, “when for this reason or for that we
44
 Letters From the Dominie

fail to do justice! No beneficence, benevo-

lence, or other virtuous contribution will
make good the want. And in what rate of
terrible geometrical progression, far beyond
our poor computation, any act of Injustice
once done by us grows! . . . Justice, justice,
in the name of Heaven, give us justice, and
we live; give us only counterfeits of it, +..
and we die!”
It is not only nonsense, it is wrong, to tell
me that, though I know Mr. Logroller to be
a bad man, I oughtto vote for him “to keep
the other side out,” or “to keep from wasting
my vote.” As an honest citizen and a
Christian I must vote for the individual men
who will, to my mind, give the State the
cleanest and best government; and I must
do this regardless of their chances of elec-
tion.
“Oh, blest is he who can divine
Where real right doth lie,
45
 Letters From the Dominie

And dares to take the side that seems

Wrong to man's blindfold eye!

“For right is right, since God is God;

And right the day must win;
To doubt would be disloyalty,
To falter would be sin!”
Yours,
The Dominie.

March T2.
My Dear Friend:
You ask about tithe-giving. I can only
answer that I wish all of our people were
at least tithe-givers. The tithe was the
minimum required of the Israelite; but I
am convinced that practically all of our peo-
ple could and should give to God more than
a tithe of their income. The law of Chris-
tian giving is not the law of the Old Dis-
pensation, requiring an arbitrary tenth for
46
 Letters From the Dominie

God, but the law of the New Dispensation,

requiring what burning heart and enlight-
ened conscience and consecrated will shall
feel it right to give.
Christian giving is always systematic and
proportionate. So Paul wrote: “Upon
the first day of the week let each one of you
lay by him in store, as he may prosper.”
That is business-like; and the best type of
Christian is business-like in all things. I
cannot understand the lack of method shown
by so many men when they deal with the
Lord in financial matters. They are slip-
shod and negligent, as they would be with
no human party to a financial arrangement.
And many of them, if they give systemati-
cally, do it out of their surplus—what they
can spare to God!
But—give a tithe as a minimum? Isn't
that a good deal? Well, God and God's
Kingdom can be done justice to only in one
47
 Letters From the Dominie

way. God's proper proportion of a man's

income must be at least enough to prove a
generous recognition both of God’s bounte-
ous dealings with the man himself and of
the imperative demands of the work of
God’s Kingdom.
Our people, for all their small incomes,
are well-to-do—they can all give God a
tithe; some can give Him a full half; but—
they are not ready, because they think
they need the money more than God needs
it.
There’s the rub, and there’s my hint at
the third essential. Christian giving must
come, in the nature of the case, from a con-
secrated heart that desires God’s glory above
all things else. That was the trouble with
the rich men whose gold coins Jesus heard
clattering so loudly into the brazen trumpets
of the Temple treasury. Mind you, they
were systematic and proportionate in their
48
 Letters From the Dominie

giving; and, like a certain other Pharisee

whom Jesus described, they presumably
gave more than the minimum tithe. But
they gave selfishly, for their own glory;
while the poor widow gave her all out of a
spiritual compulsion.
I recall a meeting with one of my ushers
after church one Sunday. He was smiling
broadly, and he told me why. A certain
member, a woman who owned eight fine
farms, had been in church that morning.
He had noticed the gusto with which she
sang the hymn before the offering,—

“Were the whole realm of nature mine, N

That were a present far too small;
Love so amazing, so divine,
Demands my soul, my life, my all.”

And then—“I passed the plate down her

aisle, and she put in five cents!”
I didn’t laugh with him. I can’t laugh
49
 Letters From the Dominie

over iteven now. Why, if that woman had

ever caught a glimpse of what Jesus had
done for her; if she had ever had a suspicion
of the “riches of the glory of His inheritance
in the saints”; if she had had the smallest
conception of the meaning of “life eternal”
to a dying world, could she have given
to God thus? Christians through-and-
through, dead in earnest as Henry Martyn,
find the clasps of their pocket-books flying
open for God; for they have consecrated
those pocket-books, with themselves, to
Him.
Sincerely as always,
The Dominie.

March 19.
My Friend:
A certain good hausfrau has driven me
from my study. I write with difficulty, pad
50
 Letters From the Dominie

resting on a window-ledge. I cannot find

my ink-bottle. My desk is piled high with
books, and my shelves are empty. On the
study floor is a great heap of papers, maga-
zines, boxes, pencil-stubs, and what not, all
of which articles the good wife has doomed
to exile. For this is the strenuous but
inevitable season of Spring houseclean-
ing! |
How things do accumulate in our homes!
When all the closets and cupboards, the
nooks and corners, are emptied of their ag-
glomerated stores, what a sight is there!
Clothes worn and half-worn; books that
failed to interest; pictures with broken glass
or disjointed frames; magazines and news-
papers by the score; a broken umbrella;
some cracked plates—what a load of trash!
Out it goes, to the ashman’s wagon or (How
generous we are with what we no longer
want!) to the Salvation Army: anywhere, so
51
 Letters From the Dominie

long as we are rid of itl And the house is

so'clean and neat: the trash is gone!
But how about a little spiritual house-
cleaning? Strange, was it not, that the last
two speakers in our Men’s Club Course told
us the same hard truth, that the greatest hin-
drance and menace to the Church of to-day
is undoubtedly the worldliness of our Chris-
tian people.
I have been trying to look through the
closets and cupboards of my soul; I suppose
you too try it at times. It is good disci-
pline. How startled a man is when he runs
across a habit he thought he had thrown
away years before! What a lot of trash the
human mind and heart can accumulate,
their owner all unconscious of the fact!
But I can not think it strange when I con-
sider the distinctively worldly nature of our
daily life, and the amount of newspaper and
magazine trash we absorb as mental and
52
 Letters From the Dominie

spiritual pabulum. The consequence of

“stocking up” with trash is a superabun-
dance of—trash, of course.
Look around in the cupboards and shelves
of your soul, my friend. Anything there
that takes up valuable space and does no
good? Any trash there? Then why not,
by God's grace, clean house? You will en-
joy living with yourself far more; and you
will have so much more room for the things
worth while.
Your friend,
The Dominte.

March 20.
Dear old Friend:
I was greatly chagrined when you said—
so easily, too—that you were not expecting
to attend the Annual Meeting of the church.
You are one of the consistent givers, and you
53
 Letters From the Dominie

have always shown a certain interest in

church affairs; and your remark rather
“flabbergasted” me. It cannot be possible
that we must provide a sideshow of some
sort to draw such men as you!
1 know what so many of our people are
saying. They say it every year:
“What's the use? Why should I take the
trouble to go to the Annual Meeting? It’s
all cut and dried anyhow. The nominees
are all hand-picked. And annual reports
bore me.”
There is something wrong with the per-
son who holds such an attitude. Some peo-
ple stay away because they are afraid their
personal abilities are not going to be recog-
nized as they should be. I should be
ashamed to think that any one in this church '
could be animated by such feelings; for per-
sonal ambition ought never to cross the
church's threshold. And some stay away
54
 Letters From the Dominie

because they think “the machine” is running

things. But there is no “machine” in this
church. The men now in office are more
likely than others to know what men are
suitable and ready for their respective
Boards; still, any one entitled to vote is en-
titled to nominate any one else for office.
That is so, I think, in most churches. Yet
you do not refuse to vote in national elec-
tions because you did not personally nom-
inate the candidates. The great guaranty
against “church politics” is the participa-
tion of all the people in such meetings as the
one now approaching.
Some stay away because they have other
engagements, or are too tired, or do not care
to spend an evening on reports and the like.
I sincerely hope that you are not in this
class of indifferents. Annual reports as to
the progress of your church ought to in-
terest you deeply. If they do not, it is be-
55
 Letters From the Dominie

cause you have forgotten whose the church

is and what it stands for. To say that an
Annual Meeting bores you is to admit that
you do not care whether your Saviour’s
Kingdom is advanced in your community:
I hope you are unwilling to make such an
admission.
Why attend? For at least four good
reasons:
1. To fulfill your honest obligation.
You, a member of this church, are pledged
to such support; and you will keep your
pledge. If only an attendant and contrib-
utor, you would be still under obligation,
having enjoyed the hospitality of the church.
2. To get information. The annual re-
ports of our Boards and Societies contain
facts which ought to interest any one inter-
ested in the church.
3. To render service. Your attendance
alone adds to the weight of the meeting; and
56
 Letters From the Dominie

your advice, your protest or approval, your

vote, all have weight. You are needed.
4. To cement the congregation more
closely together, and to prove your lively
and warm interest in your fellow-members.
Take a red-hot coal out of the grate and
put it alone on the hearth, and it will soon
grow cold and dead. For your sake and
the church's sake, keep in touch, that you
may keep on fire. Come to the Annual
Meeting, and come prayerfully and seri-
ously, prepared not to criticise but to help.
You are needed. —
Cordially yours,
The Dominie.

April 2.
Dear Friend:
Sometimes I wish that every member of
our church could have a turn at sitting
57
 Letters From the Dominie

through a service in the pulpit. The man

who sits there sees so many, many things—
little things, usually, but characteristic—
that those in the pews fail to observe.
Small mannerisms, little accidents and inci-
dents, signs of interest, of indifference, all
are so easily caught by the dominie’s eye.
You will wonder what I am leading up
to. Well, I am thinking of what I see at
every Communion Service. A certain few
(chiefly men who claim intellectual superi-
ority) stand with closed lips while the con-
gregation repeats the Apostles’ Creed.
They rather pity the credulous who blindly
follow outworn dogma; rather plume them-
selves on their own emancipation!
That seems to me a vital mistake.
A creed is a definite summary of what one
believes. Just as a man lives by faith,
guides himself by convictions and axioms on
every side of his life, by the same token he
58
 Letters From the Dominie

must have a creed for every side of it. I

have my creed in politics, in business, in so-
cial life, in religion. If I do anything in
the way of thinking before I act, I am sure
to have such creeds. President Emeritus
Eliot of Harvard defines his new religion,
explicitly barring creeds and dogmas; but
that very definition is a creed, of which that
prohibition is a part! Thinking men must
formulate their thought and must summar-
ize it.
And, beyond the fact that creed-making is ,
thus spontaneous, it has great positive value. |
My creed clarifies my faith and strengthens |
it as well; for the very process of assembling
my beliefs does for them as a whole what
the assembling room does for wheels, rods,
and cylinders: it puts them in working
order.
It puts me where I belong, too. It will
put me, if it is the creed of a Christian, in
59
 Letters From the Dominie

the Church, among those who agree with

me on all essentials, who will be therefore
the most congenial and helpful company.
And it stiffens my backbone, enabling me
to find in myself a greater degree of moral
courage than the man of vague ideas and
many doubts can possess.
And then it helps me to do better work for
Christ. If you look abroad over the
Church you will find that its best work has
throughout the centuries been done by men
and women of the strongest evangelical con-
victions. |
As to the Apostles’ Creed, it is the sim-
plest and most comprehensive of the great
creeds the Church has produced. In it are
to be found most of the fundamentals of the
Christian faith. It is for this reason more
widely used to-day than at any time in the
fifteen centuries since its birth. We use it,
not for any magical value in such things, not
60
 Letters From the Dominie

in mere slavish repetition of our fathers’

words, but because we think it an exception-
ally accurate statement of the great saving
truths of Scripture. The one statement
over which we stumble concerns Christ’s
“descent into hell.” We need not stumble
even here, for the word “hell” to our fore-
fathers of early England meant the whole
realm of departed spirits, the very realm
described by the New Testament word
“Hades.”
There is a great deal of nonsense spoken
to-day about doing away with creeds. It is
an impossibility, an inconceivable thing; if
it could be done, it would be a fatal thing to
do. God give us men and women who
know the-great truths which are in the Bi-
ble; who think clearly enough on religious
matters to be able to summarize them; who
are not afraid to repeat the creed of their
fathers if it happens to be their own!
61
 Letters From the Dominie

The difficulty, in the case of the men I

have spoken of, is due largely, not to their
unbelief (I happen to be acquainted with
the convictions of some of them), but to
their blind adoption of the slogan of the age
-—“Down with dogma!” Creeds are not
the fashion; therefore they, following the
fashion, are above creeds, and above us who
can still repeat them.
It is a fundamental mistake. Truth will
shape itself definitely; cognate truths will
flock together like birds of a feather; and it
is a most inspiring and helpful event when
a churchful of people will with one voice
and one heart repeat a summary of their
great Faith. And incidentally it is the
makers and adherents of the creeds who
have moved the world. They are the men
of purpose and of inextinguishable vigor.
Heartily yours,
The Dominie.
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 Letters From the Dominie

April Q.
My dear Man:
I have just had a delightful experience.
I have been in a house with a church in it.
I remember—in Antwerp, I think it was—
a church with a ring of houses around it;
but this was quite different, a house with a
church in it. You know the house. It is
one where you, too, like to drop in. It has
“atmosphere.”
When Paul sent greetings to the Church
in Rome he bade the elders bear his saluta-
tion to Aquila and Priscilla “and the church
that is in their house.” That church was,
of course, composed of the Christians of the
neighborhood, who were wont to gather in
the home of Aquila and his good wife. But
without doubt the family altar of that godly
couple was the nucleus and center of the
little church. And, equally without doubt,
63
 Letters From the Dominie

the living nuclei of the church in this vil-

lage are the family altars of her members.
The warmth and liveliness of our
churches, the genuineness and hearty activ-
ity of local Christianity, depend more upon
the cherishing of a true religious life in our
homes than upon any one other thing. A
church is like a spring-fed lake, the whole-
someness of whose waters is impaired the
moment the myriad springs along its shores
lose aught of their purity and sweetness.
There is a great and immediate need for a
deeper, better religious life in many a
church member's home for the sake of that
home and for the church’s sake.
Of all the ways in which to secure such a
life there is one of inestimable value: it is
the observance in heart as well as in words
of old-fashioned “family prayers.” If I
were asked to name the one thing that would
most quickly put new life into this partic-
64
 Letters From the Dominie

ular church, I should say, without hesita-

tion, “Family worship.”
But you are too busy? Not too busy, cer-
tainly, for the most vital business of life?
There is nothing so beautiful, so beneficial,
so essential to the life of those in your home,
as the right development of their spiritual
nature; and that depends largely on what
some folks sneer at as a “form” of religion,
on “family prayers.” This brings the mem-
bers of the household together before the
throne of grace; it makes them intimate in
the deepest and best things of life; it forces
them to face the great problems of life, and
provides them with a God-given. solution
for them; it enlarges their sympathies and
kindness not only toward each other, but to-
ward others outside the home; it destroys
that bugbear, embarrassment, which assails
so many Christians when religion is men-
tioned; it prepares for office and shop, for
65
 Letters From the Dominie

school and playground, for day and night,

for joy and sorrow. I submit to you that
no Christian ought to be too busy to find
time for so valuable a thing as this.
But still you are very busy? Yes; but
there are various ways of solving this prob-
lem of “family prayers.”
A few of our people have time for it im-
mediately before or after breakfast; and
others can make time then, by retiring and
rising ten minutes earlier. Some have time
in the evening, when all the family can be
together; but the old-fashioned evening of
this sort is out of fashion, sad to say. One
or two of our families have the Bible at the
breakfast-table, and turn the breakfast
“blessing” into brief “prayers”; and this can
easily be done in many a home. And others
get at it in other ways. It can be done, and
done in every Christian home, not in a mere
rattle of empty words of Scripture and
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 Letters From the Dominie

prayer, but sensibly, reverently, helpfully,

even if ever so briefly.
But it is quite possible that you do not
have “prayers” at home, not because you are
busy but because you are afraid! or.
ashamed! Is that it? Then I entreat you,
in the name of all that is best in life, in the
name of your Lord Jesus, to get you a new
courage, that you may “speak a guid word
for Jesus” in your own home.
How pathetically did “puir Robbie
Burns” carry through those later dreary
years the memory of a family circle he had
known: |
“The cheerfu’ supper done, wi’ serious face
They, round the ingle, form a circle wide; .
The sire turns o’er, wi’ patriarchal grace,
The big ha’-Bible, ance his father’s pride:
His bonnet rev’rently is laid aside,
His lyart haffets wearin’ thin an’ bare;
Those strains that once did sweet in Zion
glide,
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 Letters From the Dominie

He wales a portion with judicious care,

And ‘Let us worship God!’ he says, with
solemn air.”

Oh, man, if your religion is worth any-

thing, it is worth dealing with in plain and
hearty terms at your own fireside!
Cordially,
The Dominie.

April 16.
My Friend:
Like you, I have been reading, during
these days before Easter, the story of the
Saviour’s last week before his death. It
makes one think mighty seriously. What
indomitable purpose! What unequalled
self-denial! What unqualified love!
You say you are puzzled by that strange
and terrible cry from the cross, “My God,
My God, why hast Thou forsaken me?”
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 Letters From the Dominie

You are by no means the first to wonder at

it. Indeed, there are those who, unable to
fit it into their conception of the salvation
wrought out by Jesus, simply cut it out of
their Bibles. To my mind, however, it is
the key to the whole riddle of the cross and
to the whole earthly mission of the Saviour.
You tell me you can easily conceive of
Jesus as forsaken by his followers when He
reaches the—to them—incomprehensible
failure of crucifixion; but you cannot think
of Him as forsaken by his Father?
Yet right there is the unlocking of the
whole mystery. This agonized, appalling
cry is the most significant of the Seven
Words on the Cross, unless one except the
triumphal “It is finished!”
Clearly he is in dead earnest. There are
those who would have us suppose that he
was playing a part. Nothing could be
farther from the truth. It is the third hour
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 Letters From the Dominie

of the day; he is almost in artículo mortis;

and men do not pose on the cross, in the mo-
ment of death. No. Jesus’ cry is genuine,
heart-deep; he actually feels that the Father
has forsaken him.
But this is the very opposite of what we
should expect of Jesus. Any other man
might feel such spiritual darkness closing
thick about him in the Valley of the
Shadow; but Jesus, the Son of God, why
should he so agonize? All his days, yea,
through all eternity, he has rejoiced to do
his Father's will; and on his head once and
again has the heavenly benediction fallen,
“Thou art my beloved Son. In Thee I am
well pleased.” We should expect him, in
this awful crisis, to be above our weaknesses,
to be conscious every moment of the
Father’s presence and aid. Yet the cry
rings out from the cross, “Why hast Thou
forsaken me?”
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 Letters From the Dominie

There is only one explanation: The

Father has actually hidden his face from
him. The darkness that lies over Jerusa-
lem is as nothing to this terrible blackness
in the Saviour's soul. The sneers and gibes
of the priests, the desertion of the fickle
crowd, the physical agony of death, throb-
bing nerves, aching muscles, parched throat,
failing heart—all these are insignificant in
comparison with the consciousness that the
Father has withdrawn his comforting and
sustaining presence.
And there is only one conceivable reason
why that presence should be thus with-
drawn: Jesus is the representative of a sin-
ful world, and he “bears our sins in his own
body on the tree.” It is guilt alone from
which the Father withdraws himself.
From Jesus, the sin-bearer, the Father’s face
is turned away. For one dreadful moment
“He that sent” Him is not “with” Him.
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 Letters From the Dominie

The Savior is alone. This is the climax

of the sacrifice, the bitterness of the cup He
willed to drink.
And the Christ endures even this for us!
We are used to separation from God, ter-
ribly, shamefully used to it; it seems the nor-
mal thing; but to Jesus it is awful, horrible.
Yet for our sakes he drinks even these bit-
terest dregs of his cup.
“Had ever love such proving?
Was ever love so priced?
Oh, what is all our loving
Compared with Thine, O Christ!”

It is this that makes the Saviour’s outcry so

poignantly significant. It is the revelation
of the full weight of the burden of our guilt,
the measure of our debt to Him, our Sacri-
fice.
Sincerely,
The Dominie.

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 Letters From the Dominie

Easter, April 23.

Dear Friend:
I have just come from a home at whose
doors, as the Arabs say, the Black Camel has
knelt; and I have witnessed something I
have seen before but can never understand.
Why should Christian people, when one of
their own is taken Home, grieve as if Easter
meant nothing to them?
One of the puzzling things about our
present-day Christianity is the strange ease
with which some people accept the facts of
the Faith and yet refrain from applying
those facts. Such a theoretical or nominal
Christianity is a common spectacle; and it
leaves the life barren and cheerless.
For example, there is the fact of Jesus’
‘ resurrection. It is the best authenticated
fact in history. It is accepted as a fact by
Mr. Nominal and Mrs. Superficial. “On
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 Letters From the Dominie

the third day He arose again from the dead.

He ascended into heaven, and sitteth on the
right hand of God the Father Almighty.”
They repeat the words, they acknowledge
their assurance that Jesus rose;—and then
what?
Then, when some skeptic casts suspicion
on the old gospel, they begin to doubt,
though the resurrection of Jesus is the proof
of the truth of his Gospel, as He said it
would be: “There shall no sign be given
but the sign of Jonah the prophet: for as
Jonah was three days and three nights in the
belly of the whale, so shall the Son of Man
be three days and three nights in the heart
of the earth.” Thus did Jesus risk the au-
thenticity of his gospel on the fact of his
resurrection.
And these people seem to live as if this
present existence were all that they had and
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 Letters From the Dominie

it must be made the most of. “Let us eat,

drink and be merry, for to-morrow we die.”
They throw themselves into worldly pleas-
ures; they fix their hearts on earthly treas-
ures; they spend themselves on transient and
ultimately worthless pursuits, though the
resurrection of Jesus ought to have opened
their eyes to the value of eternal realities
and spiritual ambitions. His rising is the
seal set to Jesus’ words: “Lay up for your-
selves treasures in heaven.”
And these people, nominal believers in
Jesus’ resurrection, behave like utter unbe-
lievers when death enters their family circle.
They rebel against it, complain of God,
mourn as if death ended all, cover them-
selves over with garments the gloomiest con-
ceivable, “sorrow as the rest, who have no
hope,” though “if we believe that Jesus died
and rose again, even so them also that are
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fallen asleep in Jesus will God bring with

Him.”
For this is the one overwhelming, joy-
ful thing about Easter: that the resurrection
of Jesus is simply a historical fact, estab-
lished, by the plainest and strongest and
most plentiful proofs, just as every other
fact of history is established. That great
expert on legal evidence, Blackstone, de- Je
clares that no other fact in history is so
well authenticated. There is every reason
why you, a rational being, should believe
that Jesus rose; for the fact is established
by the usual and rational processes of veri-
fication.
And it is not only a fact, but it is the most
powerful fact in the world. It verifies the
gospel of the atonement; it certifies the pres-
ent value of spiritual things; it takes from
death its terrors, establishing the reality of
heaven and the certainty of immortality.
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 Letters From the Dominie

What is needed is just the common sense

that makes men act upon a settled truth.
That, I take it, is the faith that counts.
Some Christians lack the most precious gifts
and comforts and incentives of their religion
simply because they do not apply it to their
own daily needs. “But now is Christ
risen!” That ought to make a vast differ-
ence in us.
“There is no death! What seems so is
transition.
“This life of mortal breath
Is but the suburb of the life Elysian,
Whose portal we call Death.”

Thus being certified of many things, we

have a right, evenin our deepest bereave-
ments, to rejoice on Easter Day.
“Christ the Lord is risen to-day!
Sons of men, and angels, say;
Raise your joys and triumphs high!
Sing, ye heavens! and, earth, reply!”
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 Letters From the Dominie

And after? Live as one who lives for

ever, as one who expects soon to end his ap-
prenticeship, to meet the Master face to
face, to serve Him eternally. Do you be-
lieve in the resurrection of the dead? Then
live your convictions!
A blessed Easter to you and yours!
The Dominie.

April 30.
Good Friend: |
It warmed my heart to see you bring your
week-end guests to church last Sunday
morning.
I have an idea that the Sunday visitor fur-
nishes a fine test of the depth of our Chris-
tian convictions and the warmth of our in-
terest in the house of God. Like many
other incidentals of modern life, he fur-
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 Letters From the Dominie

nishes us with both a temptation and an op-

portunity.
How frequent he is nowadays—and his
family with him! We must not forget the
family; for they all come together. Sud-
denly they appear. They seem to drop out
of the sky as if by a Zeppelin. They fall
into the Christian home as a sort of bomb-
shell, upsetting the usual and proper order
of things, making wreckage—_I speak advis-
edly—of the day. The host and his family
had at least a mild expectation of going to
church. If the visitors arrive in the morn-
ing, that expectation ceases; the larder is
emptied; the good wife spends the morning
in the kitchen while her husband looks after
the guests; a table groaning with good
things is set and cleared; an hour is spent at
the kitchen sink; the rest of the afternoon
is given over to trivial talk, with multi-
tudinous cigars for the men. If the guests
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 Letters From the Dominie

arrive in the afternoon, the same sequence of

events is followed, running late into the
evening. Sunday is gone; nothing is
gained; many things absolutely necessary to
genuine Christian living are lost; and the
thermometer of spirituality in that house
registers a considerable drop, which drop is
more than likely to be permanent. Instead
of breathing a bit of the air of heaven, the
members of this family have breathed all
day the heavy, dead air of the world; and
they and the church pay the penalty.
It is our only chance to see these friends?
I doubt it, in most cases. Saturday is a
half-holiday for most people. And even if
Sunday were our only chance, it would still
be in order for us to keep first things first.
Thus:
Attend to our Sunday duties ‘and privi-
leges without fail. If we stand pledged to
support the services of our church, or to
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teach in our Sunday-school, or to take part

in our Young People's Meeting, then such
engagements, to the honest mind, take pre-
cedence of all else.
But our guests? I have not forgotten
them. Itis our place—and our privilege—
to tell them of our obligation, and to invite
them to come with us. Hospitality has no
rights beyond that. The guest who ex-
pects us to break sacred engagements and
ignore sacred duties just for the sake of his
company is guilty of a flagrant breach of
good manners. The burden is on his shoul-
ders, not ours. Let our Christian people
drop that apologetic air with which they
have been wont to mention their church-
membership; let them put first things first,
and take an honest pride in fulfilling their
duty to their church and their Lord.
That is why the cockles of my heart were
warmed when I saw you bring your guests
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 Letters From the Dominie

to church. I felt that you esteemed the

church and your faith at their proper value.
Your guests felt it as well, I am sure.
Cordiaily,
The Dominie.

May 7.
My dear Man:
You and l are old enough friends to per-
mit of my speaking plainly about some
things.
I was distressed to hear you say, in our
discussion last night, that you had long ago
dropped the habit of private prayer and
meditation.
“Timothy Kilbourn,” in a recent publica-
tion speaks of men who have lost the key to
the closet door. I thought of his words
when you spoke; for I think you put your-
self in their class. I thought afterwards of
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 Letters From the Dominie

many people I have known, and I said to

myself, “That key, to the place where men
go to pray alone with God, is one of the
strongest tests of a man's life and religion.”
And I think still that I was right.
Take out your key-ring, my friend, and
look it over:
There is the key to your front door, worn
and shiny. You use it daily.
And the key to the office door or the shop
door? Worn, and shining bright.
And the key to the cash-box in the safe?
Just like the others.
There is the thin little key to your safe-de-
posit box—rather new, scarcely worn, with
little dots of rust on it.
There is the key to the tool-chest that used
to be your hobby before you became such a
busy man—look at it now, a rusty brown.
Your key-ring is an index to your life.
And the key to the place where you used
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 Letters From the Dominie

to go apart to be with God, to think on high

and holy things and to speak with your
Father—take a look at it. Its condition, my
friend, will be a very true index to your con-
dition. How does it look—rusty? or worn
and clean-shining?
Not there? You’ve lost it? You really
mean that you have in your day no moment
when you are alone with God? Where has
that key gone? Down the well of knowl-
edge, so-called? thrown into the sea of plea-
sure? forgotten in the whirlpool of busi-
ness? Where isit? And how, how do you
expect to go on living without it?
What does it do? There have been vol-
umes—libraries!—written about the accom-
plishments of prayer. Whenever the crop
reports indicate a drought in the wheat-belt
the newspapers report concerted prayer by
the farmers for rain; and then they proceed
to argue editorially as to the benefits of
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prayer. Often-times the argument ends

with the patronizing encouragement to
Christians—and others—to go on praying,
because the reflex action of prayer on the
mind is beneficial! Pray, not because you
stand a chance of having your prayers an-
swered, but because by praying you put
yourself in a calm and hopeful frame of
mind!
What a noble philosophy! As if prayer
were a new sort of static machine; or, say,
a new kind of gymnastic apparatus, to be
used to build up the muscles or bring an
end to brain-fag—and no more!
That prayer, even with but a modicum of
faith, does calm and clarify the mind, every
one knows. So does solitude, away from
the city, under the blue sky. But is that all?
What mockery is this, to urge me to pray
for my own sake, though my prayer can
never be answered by the machine! As
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 Letters From the Dominie

well urge a wrecked sailor, a thousand miles

from a rescue, to swim because it strengthens
the muscles!
Jesus” philosophy of prayer is that which
is summed up in two words of his: “When
ye pray, say, ‘Our Father.” We do not
pray to the machine: we pray to the God
above and controlling the machine. We do
not pray just for mental and spiritual exer-
cise; we pray because prayer is the inter-
course of earthly children with their Heav-
enly Father. The relationship, according
to Jesus, is precisely like that existing be-
tween us and our children—only that God is
wiser, kindlier, more just than any earthly
father. Can God answer prayer? “If ye,
being evil, know how to give good gifts unto
your children, how much more shall your
Father who is in heaven give good things to
them that ask Him?”
That ends it. Pray, my friend, not for
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 Letters From the Dominie

the reflex action of prayer, but out of a great

need and a greater assurance. God hears.
God answers.
And God expects you to pray. Oh,
there’s the trouble; we do not fulfill God’s
expectation. The normal Christian life is
a life of constant prayer, of daily and oft-
repeated communion with God. That is
what we lack. Pray more earnestly! more
expectantly! more frequently! and forget
not—as Jesus forgot not—your church and
your neighbor in your prayers.
Dear friend, if that key is gone—as you
say it is—you'd better get it back; learn
again to pray. Shine it by hard usage. If
it grows bright and worn I know what your
life will be, a life of contentment and peace,
a life of faith and hope, the best sort of
life ever lived. I think—I am confident—
that some of the crow’s-feet will disappear
from your face, some of your chronic anxie-
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 Letters From the Dominie

ties vanish utterly, if you will try this

out.
Sincerely, as always,
The Dominte.

May I4.
My Friend:
I wonder if the complexion of the con-
gregation this last week or two has brought
to your mind what it has kept jingling in
mine?
“The first of May
Is Moving Day.”

At this season, every year, the Newcomers

arrive. All through the land, I imagine,
the same spring shifting of population oc-
curs. Most of the towns and villages that
are not suburban have been developing lit-
tle manufacturing industries; and to and
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 Letters From the Dominie

from city, suburb, and industrial town come

and go the moving households.
What a complication they add to an al-
ready complicated problem! You may not
have felt it as the dominie has; but to me
Mr. Newcomer and his family (a weighty
sign of the times!) are fresh puzzles every
year.
They must be assimilated into the life of
the community. The community! Are we
that? We are to a large degree merely a
boarding-house for commuters; then there is
still the element descended from the Fathers
of the Town; next, add to your tally some
hundreds of colored folk, with as many more
Italians and other foreigners. Jumble all
together; take out a few every year; put in
some newcomers; complicate the whole
with all manner of tastes, occupations, faiths
and morals; and this—a community! Save
the mark!
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 Letters From the Dominie

Yet that is what it once was, and what

it will be again at no distant date, please
God; but it is hardly a community just now.
A community is, to be exact, a place where
people have common interests and feel a
common obligation; and such a place this is
not, in this day. Our social life, our civic
affairs, our church life, do not yet measure
up to the standard; for there is one thing
not widely enough nor earnestly enough
practised by us all, one thing that is an es-
sential in a “community.”
That one thing is neighborliness, without
which no aggregation of people can be
called a community. Archbishop Trench
said it was “a debt which we must be con-
tent to be ever paying and have never paid.”
We live too much on the give-and-take
basis; what we need is that quality of kindly
interest in those about us which asks no re-
turn and expects none. And we pick and
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 Letters From the Dominie

choose our neighbors too much; what we

need is an unaffected, simple neighborliness
that serves all kinds of neighbors. “Love is
like the sun, which does not ask on what it
shall shine, or what it shall warm, but shines
and warms by the very law of its own be-
ing.”
And the people who ought to afford the
best example of neighborliness are the mem-
bers of our churches. Christ gives us no
option as to our neighbors. He does not
permit us to choose them. Our friends are
the few who, perhaps, are congenial with
us; but our neighbors are those, regardless
of wealth or position or culture, in whose
midst God has set us down. We are under
obligation to know them, to sympathize with
them, to serve them. It will not hurt you
to do what your Lord could afford to do.
If you do it, this place will more nearly de-
serve to be called a “community.”
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 Letters From the Dominie

The corollary is this: that such true

neighborliness must show itself in church if
anywhere. The constant temptation of a
congregation is to regard itself as a “happy
family,” complete, self-sufficient. I used to
know one church that complacently gave it-
self that very title. It almost killed the
church. No; it is our business to give the
Newcomer family the best the church has,—
pews, service, interest, neighborly affection.
It is not enough that your pastor should
spend his afternoons calling on the newly
arrived and inviting them to come to church,
You men in the pews must come to the point
when you will prove the value of the Sav-
iour to men by the wholeheartedness of your
welcome to the stranger in your gates.
Otherwise the Church dies!
Yours heartily,
The Dominie.
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 Letters From the Dominie

May 21.
My Friend:
I am sorry that you missed Dr. Blank's
address to the Men's Club. You would
have appreciated one point he made. He
told of a man who was invited out to a fine
dinner at a friend’s house. When he sat
down at table, and the delicious viands were
set before him, he could not eat. “What's
the matter?” asked the host sympathetically.
“Oh,” he replied, “I saw a peanut-stand
when I left home, and I bought a nickel’s
worth and nibbled them. Then I was
thirsty, and I stopped at the drugstore for a
soda. Then I passed a candy store, and I
just bought a little to eat as I came along.
And down at your corner yonder I passed
a fruit-stand, and I couldn’t resist the temp-
tation to buy a couple of apples and eat
them. I’m sorry, but my appetite’s gone
somehow!”
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 Letters From the Dominie

It is not hard to find the reason for many

a person’s indifference to his church. He is
bored by sermons, put to sleep by anthems,
irritated by soul-stirring, awakening relig-
ion. He has lost his appetite for these
things. He sings with Cowper:

“Where is the blessedness 1 knew

When first I saw the Lord?
Where is the soul-refreshing view
Of Jesus and his Word?”

Appetite lost? Of course; for he had a

jaded palate before ever the church bell
rang. He makes a late Saturday night of it
often. I have a faint suspicion that his wife
is responsible, because I know how tired he
is by Saturday; but, that aside, he turns in
at midnight or later on Saturday, and he
wakes in the morning ready for nothing but
a Morris chair and a paper. No one can
have an appetite for wholesome Sunday
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 Letters From the Dominie

food who feeds thus to the point of spiritual

dyspepsia of a Saturday night. A Satur-
day night dance, theatre, card party, is war-
ranted to make his soul lose the zest for sub-
stantial food. The big Sunday dinner, the
afternoon spent in sleep, cigars and supple-
ments, or in motoring or calling, the over-
whelming satiety of such things, is often the
reason why he yawns, “I don't feel like
church to-night.”
Don't feel like it? Who could, under
such a course of treatment? No human be-
ing could keep his appetite for genuinely re-
ligious things after nibbling all the week
and eating full on Saturday of cheap mag-
azines, sensational stories, plays, cards, din-
ners, late hours! God save us from such a
lifel Let us be sensible and moderate in
our pleasures and cut out the things that act
on the soul's finest desires like peanuts and
candy before dinner.
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 Letters From the Dominie

I heard one man say after the Men's Club

meeting that “Christianity and church-go-
ing are not synonymous.”
Not synonymous? Certainly not; but,
nevertheless, inseparably connected.
There are some who say that they can be
“just as religious” whether they come to
church or not. (I am talking, not of the
“shut-ins,” but of those who are able to at-
tend and do not.)
True religion has always been church-go-
ing religion. It has always found a genuine
refreshment and a deep joy in meeting with
the saints in the sanctuary. It has always
sung feelingly, “I was glad when they said
unto me, Let us go into the house of the
Lord.”
On the other hand, neglect of the serv-
ices of the church is a mark of spiritual
decline. I have my reasons for so think-
ing:
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 Letters From the Dominie

First, Jesus was a persistent and habitual

church-goer.
Second, Jesus himself established for the
Christian Church that concerted worship
which had always been at the heart of the
Jewish Church; and Jesus promised to be
present wherever the saints, if only two or
three, should meet in his name.
Third, there are benefits to be had from
church-going which can be had in no other
way. (List on request, if you cannot think
of them for yourself!)
Fourth, the same holds true of benefits to
be rendered. Neighbors to be encouraged,
strangers to be served, the larger interests of
the Church to be aided—surely these are no
small privileges enjoyed by Mr. Church-
goer.
Fifth, Mr. Stay-at-home and his family
plainly lack in genuine spiritual life and in-
terest. Their Bibles are dust-covered;
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 Letters From the Dominie

their prayers are perfunctory; their neigh-

bors know them as no more nor less than
merely worldly people. There is a direct
connection between all this and their ab-
sence from the sanctuary.
And then when Mr. S. can be persuaded
to betray his real reason for staying away it
is always found to be an unchristian reason.
He does not like the preaching or the choir
or his pew, or he has a grudge against Mr.
Church-goer, or he has other interests. Get
to the bottom of his heart, and usually he
neglects his church because of worldliness,
pure and simple.
True religion goes to church unless the
Lord has laid it by the heels. It goes be-
cause it loves to go, loves to meet God's peo-
ple, loves to think on high and holy things,
loves to hear the gospel, loves to praise God
from whom all blessings flow. I have never
known a truly gracious, Christian character
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 Letters From the Dominie

but what its owner loved the house of God.

Church-going is an essential part of true re-
ligion, always has been, and always will be.
Faithfully yours,
The Dominie.

May 28.
Dear Friend:
The day after to-morrow will be Memo-
rial Day. We shall keep it gladly, out of a
deep affection for the memory of those who
have given up their lives in the wars of our
nation.
We honor them not only because they
died for their country, but because, on bat-
tlefield, in forced march, in bivouac, they
lived for it too.
Living is the common test of patriotism.
It is only in emergencies that men must
fight. The average citizen is called on to
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 Letters From the Dominie

prove his patriotism by the tests of living in

times of peace. This is what Lincoln had
in mind at Gettysburg: “It is for us, the
living, to be dedicated here to the unfin-
ished work which they who fought here
have thus far so nobly advanced.”
There are campaigns being fought out in
our day stirring enough to rouse the heroic
in the breast of any true patriot.
There is the battle for simplicity of life
in the face of appalling snobbery and ex-
travagance. A Joan of Arc is made of no
more heroic stuff than the woman who dares
to-day to ignore the fashions. No petty
campaign, this, but one that calls for a vast
army armed with sanity and contentment.
There is the battle for commercial pro-
bity. Where there is so much smoke there
must be some fire; and where we have so
much legislation restricting the methods of
business, so many investigations, so many
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 Letters From the Dominie

scandals, it seems probable that modern

business methods are not altogether what
they should be. The Wall Street Journal
declares, “It takes greater and finer heroism
to dare to be poor in America than to charge
an earthwork.”
There is, too, the conflict for social purity.
There is no country in the world so dis-
graced by its divorce laws as ours. Here is
room for righteous struggle, not merely for
better laws, but for a social standard that
will dare to use the deadly weapon of ostra-
cism. And in the same field is being fought
the battle over the “single standard” of
morality. Here is opportunity for a heroic
stand on the part of both men and women
who believe that purity is the same for both
sexes. And here again the keen'weapon is
ostracism.
The conflict over the saloon calls for sol-
dierly virtues. Lincoln called this the next
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 Letters From the Dominie

great campaign after the abolition of slav-

ery. No evil in our land is so colossal, so
iniquitous, so fatal to all good interests, as
this. And the soul that would fight against
it must be of heroic mould.
And there is the campaign for the observ-
ance Of law. Here is a field for heroes!
Rich and poor, ignorant and cultured, are
alike to be dealt with. Inertia, callousness,
self-indulgence, cynicism, political corrup-
tion, party politics, all are to be met and
vanquished.
God be thanked, there are many, many
true patriots in the land, spending them-
selves like heroes in such conflicts!
And God be thanked, there is beginning
to make itself felt abroad over the land a
revival of genuine old-time Christian piety,
which is, in the last analysis, the one essen-
tial ingredient in the making of a patriot.
Reverence for law, love of neighbor, hatred
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of evil, indignation at injustice, moral cour-

age, self-forgetfulness—these are Christlike
qualities. God give us more.
“For truth and right, and only right and
truth—
Right, truth, on the absolute scale of God—
No pettiness of man's admeasurement;
In such case only, and for such one cause,
Fight your hearts out!”
Cordially,
The Dominie.

pean 4.
My Friend:
Have you ever neral what were the
feelings in the breast of the dominie as he
watched the people file out after the Com-
munion Service? So many thoughts crowd-
ing in upon him! What does this renewal
of vows, this closest of associations, mean to
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these dear folk? how deeply do they feel?

to what heaven are they exalted? Out they
go, murmuring greetings to one another,
smiling, chatting; what do they take with
them?
What will you take with you? That is to
say, what that you did not bring with you
when you came?
You ought certainly to know your Sav-
iour better and love Him more. For this
is the very picture of the lengths to which
his love to you led Him. “Greater love
hath no man than this, that a man lay down
his life for his friends.”

“Thine am L by all ties,

But chiefly thine
(Chat, through thy sacrifice,
Thou, Lord, art mine.”

And you ought to hate all sin more in-

tensely. For at the very heart of this Sup-
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per there lies the fact that our dear Lord

died because of our sins. “Him that knew
no sin God made to be sin for us, that we
might become the righteousness of God in
Him.” Gladly He gave himself to death
for our sake, “bearing our sins in his own
body on the tree.” Surely you cannot think
of this without feeling keenly that that
which needed so great expiation must be a
monstrous and hateful thing to God, with-
out being willing to sing with old Isaac
Watts:

“Oh, how I hate these lusts of mine

That crucified my Lord;
These sins that pierced and nailed HIS flesh
Fast to the cruel wood!
Yes, my Redeemer, they shall die!”

And you ought to love your fellows in the

church more than ever. He who comes
hither in the right spirit is sure to find him-
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 Letters From the Dominie

self, as he leaves, with a greater warmth in

his heart towards those with whom he has
just feasted. He will surely be less critical
of their faults, more considerate of their
opinions, more genuinely sympathetic. He
will not forget the “shut-ins”; nor will he
omit from his prayers henceforth those
whom he has just welcomed into this goodly
fellowship, and those others who are having
a hard fight of it to keep the faith.

“Blest be the tie that binds,

Our hearts in Christian love.”

And surely you will henceforth do more

for Christ. “Ye are not your own; for ye
were bought with a price; glorify God
therefore”—how? By self-interest? by ab-
sorption in “bread-and-butter-business?” by
just enjoying life? Nay, by ranging your-
self at Paul’s side, gladly wearing the name
“doulos”—“bond-slave” of Jesus Christ,
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 Letters From the Dominie

and out of grateful love attending to the

Master's business.
Heartily yours,
The Dominie.

June IT.
Old Friend:
Sometimes I am tempted to feel that in
giving us our Sunday God has come near
casting His pearls before swine]!
It was early in the seventeenth century
that Henry Vaughan wrote his quaint praise
of Sunday: i
“The pulleys unto headlong man; time’s
bower;
The narrow way;
Transplanted paradise; God's walking houre;
The cool o’ th’ day!
A taste of heav'n on earth; the pledge and cue
Of a full feast! and the out-courts of
glory.”
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 Letters From the Dominie

It may be exaggerated in some of its odd

figures of speech, but it expresses a whole-
souled delight in Sunday as a day set apart
for the best thing in life, namely, fellowship
with God; and so I dare to quote it in the
twentieth century. The man who wrote it
had something that many of us sorely need.
What do you put first on Sunday?
Some people put their stomachs first in
importance. Sunday happens to be almost
the only day on which many busy men and
women can visit friends and kinsfolk; and
the good wife whose house is to be thus hon-
ored puts on her apron and stays at home
from church to superintend arrangements;
and at some time after noon the family and
their guests sit down to gourmandize. It
takes an hour or two to eat the American
Sunday Dinner (capitals are justified!) and
another two or three hours for men-folk to
sleep and walk it off—while women-folk
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work it off a-cleaning up the dishes! What

a glorious blessing such a Sunday must be!
But what about God?
Some people put the newspaper first.
Johnny runs down to the store for it while
father dresses. Father begins on it before
breakfast, and applies himself diligently to
it for the smali remainder of the morning
and through the waking fraction of the
heavy-lidded afternoon. Mother takes a
look at the women’s section and the society
news, after the roast is in the oven and again
after the dinner dishes are washed. Johnny
and his small sister spend the greater part of
the day over the fascinating crudities and
uglinesses, the funny rudenesses and vulgar-
ities, of the colored supplement. Alto-
gether a blessedly intellectual day! But
what about God?
Some people put “the play of arms and
legs” first: Premising, with unctuous logic,
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that “the Sabbath was made for man,” and

that “it is their only chance for exercise,”
they spend a glorious day outdoors, and they
go to sleep Sunday night with the fine tingle
of physical weariness in their limbs. I con-
fess it sounds pleasant and helpful; but—
what about God? Are these people cattle
—and nothing more?
“What is he but a brute
Whose flesh has soul to suit,
Whose spirit works lest arms and legs want
play?
To man propose this test:
Thy body at its best,
How far can that project thy soul on its lone
way?”

And then I cannot help but doubt that sec-

ond premise of theirs; for 1 have observed
that the heartiest devotees of the Sunday-
for-exercise theory are the people who can
most easily get Saturday afternoon off. But
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 Letters From the Dominie

even if they can't get it—where does God

come in?
One might quibble over details of Sun-
day-keeping forever. It is to be settled by
the individual conscience; and the indi-
vidual conscience has for guide the Word of
God plus common-sense. Sunday is a day
set apart for the best interests of man; and
those best interests cannot be served if God
be left out, or left least. We ought to count
that Sunday lost which fails to prove itself
in very truth “a gleam of glory after six
days’ showers.” He who slights his Sab-
bath opportunity for cultivating his soul’s
acquaintance with God is very certain to
make of God a stranger during the six days
that follow.

Sincerely as always,

The Dominie.
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 Letters From the Dominie

June I8.
My dear Man:
It does me good to see you sing in church!
Your voice is lost in the volume of song
(Thank God, our people sing/), but “ac-
tions speak louder than words.” 1 wish
they all enjoyed it as you do. The Chris-
tian who does not love the hymns of the
Church is an anomaly.
There are no songs like thesel And no-
where is the purifying, beautifying, enno-
bling influence of Christianity more clearly
seen than in its effect upon the music of the
civilized world and its development of so
rich a treasure as we have in our hymn-
books. There are no songs like the songs of
Zion. The history of our hymns is the his-
tory of the sorrows and joys, the persecu-
tions and conquests, the fears and hopes, of
the typical Christian and the whole Church.
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 Letters From the Dominie

Jesus himself began that history when, as

Mark tells, before He led his disciples to
Gethsemane, He gathered them about Him
and they sang a hymn; and the Church has
been singing hymns ever since, singing in
prisons, in the galleys, in the catacombs, in
the torture-chambers, in hermits’ cells and
vast cathedrals, singing her triumphant way
down the centuries.
And the best part of sacred music and
song, the most valuable part of it all, is
the congregational hymn-singing. We all
love to hear beautiful voices in the choir-
loft. Such music, sung and heard in a de-
vout spirit, is a fine element of worship.
Milton felt its power:

“There let the pealing organ blow

To the full-voicéd quire below,
In service high, and anthems clear,
As may with sweetness through mine ear

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 Letters From the Dominie

Dissolve me into ecstacies,

And bring all heaven before mine eyes.”
But still there is no melody the Church
can raise that compares with the reverent,
thoughtful, hearty singing by the whole con-
gregation of one of the great hymns, “The
Church's One Foundation” or “Rock of
Ages” or “Love Divine” or “Come, Thou
Fount.” I doubt if all our other Church
music put together sounds as sweet in God's
ears as this.
I think of preaching soon upon the duty
of “making a joyful noise unto the Lord.”
There is food enough for a sermon in the
words; and it will not be hard to fit it to our
congregation! We do sing heartily; but
there is so much to be gained by directing
our singing “unto the Lord” rather than
unto other folks’ ears! And there are some
who seem to feel that because they lack mu-
sical talent they are therefore to remain
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 Letters From the Dominie

silent. I see them every Sunday, ashamed

or afraid to sing! Ah, but if they would
only make a “joyful noise” and make it for
God’s hearing, it would do them and all of
us so much good! What can God care if a
man sing off the key? If it make no mel-
ody to human ears, I am sure that, just as
the many incongruous noises of the city be-
come harmonious to the ears of the man far
above in one of our modern towers, so his
song will prove tuneful in the ear of God.
So I shall preach both to the man who
can only make anoise and to the man who
can sing. Here is a part of our worship in
which we can all closely unite. ` Let us all
do our very best to enable the church to wor-
ship God fitly and nobly through our con-
gregational singing.
This means reverence, thoughtfulness,
heartiness, self-forgetfulness on your part.
Let us make the hymns we sing during these
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coming months a full expression of our faith

and hope. Do you love Christ? Is your
hope in Christ? Then sing out! Do not
be afraid of showing your feelings. He
who loves our Lord ought to wear his heart
on his sleeve in church. When a hymn is
announced, sing! Think, and worship, and
pour your heart out before God! A singing
church is always a healthy church, and cer-
tainly it must be a church the dear Lord
loves.
I do not know of one of the truly success-
ful churches of our day where the singing
of the people is not an essential factor in
that success. Take Paul's advice: “Let
the word of Christ dwell in you richly; in
all wisdom teaching and admonishing one
another with psalms and hymns and spirit-
ual songs, singing with grace in your hearts
unto God.” Cordially yours,
The Dominie.
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 Letters From the Dominie

June 25.
Dear Friend:
Last Thursday I had to deal with a young
soul that had been mortally hurt—through
no fault of its own. The girl is in a safe
place now, quiet, guarded; but it is years too
late! She had been permitted to grow up
on the streets; and we—the community—we
had left certain dangerous things lying
around the streets, God forgive us! Yester-
day a youngster down town picked up a
stick of dynamite in the gutter. We might
better have left dynamite lying around than
have left the things that so grievously hurt
my frail girl of Thursday!
There is an old woman in Glasgow whom
we should copy in larger matters. She is
bent with years and rheumatism. A police-
man noticed her peculiar actions one day,
and kept his eye on her. She was hobbling
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 Letters From the Dominie

about, stooping often to pick up something

which she hid in her apron. ‘The officer
grew suspicious, walked over to her, and
asked gruffly what she had in her apron.
In it were bits of broken glass—nothing y
else. “I thought I’d take them out o’ the
way o” the bairnies’ feet,” she said. And the
officer walked off, shamefaced.
It seems sometimes, to one who sees some-
thing of the life of the children of the town,
that something more might be done here to
take the hurtful things out o” the way o” the
bairnies’ feet, and out o’ the way o’ the feet
of the almost-grown-up bairns, too.
There is the cigarette habit, for instance.
I have never known a time when so many
of the younger boys were smoking cigarettes
as now. I cannot say just where they are
bought, but I am sure they are bought right
here in our stores. Evidence is not lacking
as to the injury done by the “coffin nail”; the
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 Letters From the Dominie

boy’s school record and his record in gen-

eral morality are vitally affected. Here is
a point at which not spasmodic but constant
vigilance on the part of school authorities,
police, and parents is needed.
There are the Sunday shops, too. It may
not be amiss to recall the words of Justice
McLean, of the United States Supreme
Court: “Where there is no Christian Sab-
bath there is no Christian morality; and
without this free institutions cannot be long
sustained.” In certain nearby communities
of the same character as ours the soda-
fountain, the cigar stand, and the candy
counter are closed on Sunday. Here we
choose to remain indifferent to a situation
that cannot fail of moral injury to all con-
cerned.
So, too, one might point out the need of
taking the saloons out of the way o’ the
bairnies’ feet. What of the children in this
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 Letters From the Dominie

town whose homes are made unworthy the

name of home by our saloons; whose lives
are stunted and blasted from the start by our
saloons; whose right to the care and protec-
tion of their parents is nullified by our sa-
loons? And what of the young men who
are, before our very eyes, now stepping up
to fill the places of the down-and-out and
the dead at the bars of our saloons? These
things need not be; but they will be until
we clear the way for the bairns.
This is your problem as well as mine.
Your children are growing up here. Their
feet will be cut by the broken glass, their
souls hurt, perhaps mortally, by sharper
evils. Oh, I wish you men of the church
could see what I see! Pd like to see you
shrink and whiten at the spectacle of hurt
and death wrought by the accepted evils of
our town! No one can clean the streets but
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you! In the name of God, clear these

things out of the way o’ the bairnies’ feet!
Yours,
The Dominie.

July 2.
My dear Friend:
A propos of the Fourth, I have just read
an amusing story.
During the Franco-Prussian war there
lived in Paris a certain eccentric nobleman,
Count Bertrand by name. His greatest pe-
culiarity was his habit of annually leaving J
home, going to some quiet hotel, and there
taking to his bed for three full months. He
received no callers, and saw not a soul but
his servant, who brought him one meal a
day, and served that meal in absolute silence.
Bertrand was thus hibernating when
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 Letters From the Dominie

Paris was besieged. He might never have

known of the fierce struggle, the hardships
and suffering within the city, if the bread
served with his meal had not, one day, been
so bad that he could not eat it. He flew into
a rage and demanded the reason for such
poor service. Whereupon his man, break-
ing his long silence, told him of the siege
and the consequent famine.
The count was stunned. He- rose,
dressed, and wandered about the hotel, be-
wildered, muttering over and over, “Paris
is besieged! What ought a Bertrand to
dor” Suddenly a happy answer struck
him: “Why, he ought to go to bed;—and
I will go to bed!” |
And go to bed he did, and there he stayed
until the siege was ended.
The moral? Decidedly there's a moral.
I called this an amusing story, but it has
another side, far from amusing.
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 Letters From the Dominie

The man who is interested in public af-

fairs and national dangers only when his
own convenience is affected is a very small
calibre patriot. He still exists, this Ber-
trand; but we could do better without him.
He is a parasite, eating the bread of the na-
tion, while he declines to shoulder shovel or
rifle when the country needs either. Amer-
ica wants men and women who think beyond
their own bread and butter, men and women
whose own patriotic souls will not let them,
once roused, go back to sleep in the hour of
need. Ina nation growing as ours is grow-
ing, ever entering on new and untried
phases, ever facing fresh emergencies, every
hour is such an hour, calling for patriots
whose hearts are big—bigger than their
stomachs!
Save us from the man whose indignation
is born merely of a sense of personal injury
and is so ephemeral at best that he can, with
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 Letters From the Dominie

Bertrand, sleep through the boom of the en

siege-guns!
You who know the soul of the commuter
will agree with me; but there is as much
flimsy, time-serving, calculating, selfish
pseudo-patriotism in other classes as in that
with which you journey daily on the train.
The country needs—and never more than in
this crucial year—the patriotism that is
stung deep by national peril regardless of
whether personal interests be affected or not.
Pray with me, on the Fourth, for more such
true lovers of country.
Yours cordially,
The Dominie.

July 9.
Dear Friend:
Short or long, what a blessing a good va-
cation is! William Motherwell, fleeing
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 Letters From the Dominie

from his desk in a murky Scottish city,

wrote with delight about his holiday:
“Up, up, my heart! and walk abroad;
Fling carking care aside;
Seek silent hills, or rest yourself
Where peaceful waters glide.
Good Lord, it is a gracious boon
For thought-crazed wight like me =e
To smell again these summer flowers
Beneath this summer tree.”

But there are conditions essential to mak-

ing a vacation a thorough success, from
which we return- better in body, mind and
soul. |
We ought to go for the right purpose,
which is not excitement; that is the last
thing most people need when the summer
comes. They have had enough excitement
to last a while, rush and hurry and sordid-
ness and struggling. Their supreme need is
peace and quiet, release from strain, chance
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 Letters From the Dominie

for the soul to stretch itself, so to speak.

What shall it profit a man if he crowd his
holiday full of excitement and come back
unrested in spirit?
We ought to go to the right place. Jesus
set a good example when he asked his disci-
ples to come apart to a “desert place and
rest a while.” “Desert” means simply
“empty of humanity.” He wished to get
them away from the crowd, from the
world's business, to a place apart. Most
people go where the crowd goes; and they
make a great mistake. Undoubtedly they
can rest their bodies at a great resort; but—
their souls? I have my doubts. The mind,
the soul, want big spaces, silences, beauties
of nature.

“The world is too much with us; late and soon,

Getting and spending, we lay waste our
powers:
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 Letters From the Dominie

Little we see in nature that is ours;

We have given our hearts away, a sordid
boon!”

We ought to go in the right company.

Vacation is made largely by the people in
whose company it is spent. We crave com-
pany of some sort, and we are sure to have it.
But of what sort? The ways of summer
folk are easy-going. Acquaintances are
easily struck up. People decent enough at
home allow themselves strange license on a
holiday. But one day in bad company may
spoil a life; certainly, a day in bad company
will make a definite and lasting impress on
character.
We ought to take certain baggage along.
The home church, for example. Some peo-
ple forget it. Take it along, in your
thoughts planning your share of its work in
the fall, and in your prayers asking God’s
benediction on it, and in your holiday spend-
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 Letters From the Dominie

ings setting aside the Lord's share. Our

Bibles, too, ought to go with us: not at the
bottom of the trunk, to be left untouched,
but where the Baedeker goes, in pocket or
handbag. It is the soul's guide-book, and
there is never a better chance to use it, nor
a greater need for it, than on vacation.
And our own selves ought to go, too. It is
very easy to play Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde
in this matter of vacations. Buta Christian
has no option. He must be himself always,
or else prove that his religion is only a
cloak; he must hold to his convictions about
the Sabbath, about church-going, about
clean conversation, about neighborliness,
about personal habits—hold to his convic-
tions always! What troubles conscience at
home ought to stir it abroad! And this is
hard, because the restraints of home are
lacking. Don’t put your Christianity in the
cedar-chest; take it along!
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 Letters From the Dominie

A happy, healthy summer to you and

yours.
As always,
The Dominte.

July IÓ.
My Friend:
You write about the “modern Athenians”
as you have met them on your vacation.
That is a happy phrase. They are legion.
They are, as you say, outdoing those of an-
cient days in their passion for novelty. You
and I live in the midst of them! and we can-
not help but observe this present-day mad-
ness.
When I was a small boy the fashions, if I
mistake not, changed once a year. (My
mother used to make over her gowns for the
second and even the third year!) When I
was in college they had doubled that rate.
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 Letters From the Dominie

To-day, they change quarterly, and the

tailor and the modiste appear to be grieved
that there are but four seasons a year! The
craze for novelty in dress is one of the most
conspicuous—and futile—characteristics of
our time.
Go to the theater, and you will find the
same desire in evidence. There must be an
eternal succession of new effects, startling
developments, novelties. The most striking
illustration of this lies in the fact that the
very same people are found in eager attend-
ance on both the most flagrantly immoral
plays and those plays that are advertised for
their religious qualities. They are there at
both plays just because they are, in their
bored sort of eagerness, searching for some-
thing new in the way of a sensation.
Go to an “up-to-date” restaurant, or coun-
try club, or private entertainment, and you
will find people, even the younger of the
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young people, dancing with steps and atti-

tudes that have an unmentionable origin and
unsavory history. They want novelty; that
is why they step over the bounds of refine-
ment.
The news-stand is a good indicator of
public manners and tastes. The man at the
railroad stand in Hoboken tells me what
magazines are selling best—“a mile ahead
of the rest.” What ones? Two magazines
grown notorious in the past short year or
two for the nastiness of their stories, stories
which mark the moral degradation of some
of our cleverest authors. Why do they sell?
Because the dear public wants a new sensa-
tion every day.
And you and I are a part of this public.
We dare not forget that. It seems, in its
madness, to have hitched its wagon, not to
a star, as Emerson urged, but to a frenzied,
orbitless meteorite. It is our business not
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 Letters From the Dominie

to go with the crowd, but to hold fast to sim-

plicity, morality and common-sense, know-
ing that novelty is not a synonym for worth.
Just now the function of Christian people
seems to be to act as the brake to society, a
big task, and bigger in summer, I think,
than at any other time.
Sincerely,
The Dominie.

July 23.
Dear Friend:
Did your good wife tell you what a cer-
tain small boy in our neighborhood said in
his prayer the other night? “Good-by,
God! I’m going to the mountains to-mor-
row.”
So many grown folk might have said it!
They go off on a vacation and leave God be-
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 Letters From the Dominie

hind without even the formality of a

good-by. The church is left, with a sigh of
relief at the thought that there is no obliga-
tion to attend service for weeks or months
to come. The Sunday-school is left, under
the assumption that the children will be
‘just as well off without any lessons for the
summer.” The Bible is forgotten, left in
the house behind closed shutters and locked
doors. The family altar—well, the family
altar tumbled down years ago. The weekly
envelope for the support of the church and
its work—it too is left behind.
What's the matter? Why, all this is but
symptomatic of a grave condition—namely,
that these good people propose to go away
and leave God himself behind. They will
be found breaking Sunday as they never
would at home; visiting places they would
not go near at home; cultivating habits that
they would not dare indulge in at home.
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 Letters From the Dominie

And throughout a whole vacation God is

surely forgotten!
The only wrong in all this is that there is
no true Christianity in it. Religion that
can be packed away in moth-balls is not
Christ's religion. Consistency is absolutely
essential, since the true Christian recognizes
God's presence and his own responsibility
on his vacation just as fully and gladly as
at home.
Up here in the mountains one may see
both kinds of religion to advantage. Ina
neighboring camp there is a man whose life
has made a deep impression on me. His
religion is one that, to any observer’s eyes,
has not changed character in the least by be-
ing transplanted many miles from home or
by being set down among strange people.
People who possess this peculiar sort of re-
ligion evidently act in their vacation sur-
roundings on the very same principles that
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 Letters From the Dominie

guide them at home. Some men, when they

put on a flannel outing shirt and an old felt
hat, undergo a corresponding change of
character and conduct; but these people are
the same, in speech and deed, as at home.
Some forget the obligations of neighborli-
ness in a summer colony; but these people
are constantly quietly proving as good neigh-
bors up in the hills as down in New Jersey
or Brooklyn. Their religion is thorough-
going; it comprehends all their daily life,
wherever they happen to be.
That is the only sort of Christianity that
is genuine. It is the only sort that men who
are not Christians will give weight to. It is
the only sort the Church of Christ ought to
contain or to cultivate.
If we are looking for a standard to set for
this year’s work in this church, we can find
none better than this—that in every line of
the church’s activities we try to produce in
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 Letters From the Dominie

men and women and children just such a

religion. The Sunday-school, the Men's
Club, the Young People's Society, the
preacher—all ought to have in mind the
standard set by Christ Jesus, to develop
Christians who shall be themselves, prac-
tise their principles with a Christlike kindli-
ness, abroad as well as at home, Christians
with creed plus practice, Christians on va-
cation and at work, Christians always, in all
circumstances, because Christians in heart.
Our vacation goes well. All happy, lazy
and getting fat! The trout are taking the
fly nicely,—but the biggest one continues,
after time-honored fashion, to get off again!
My fingers have not yet begun to itch for
work, but if they follow the precedent of
former summers they will soon.
Yours,
The Dominie.
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 Letters From the Dominie

July 30.
Dear Old Friend:
Not much chance to write letters up here,
but there is plenty of opportunity for doing
one's thinking. What a hurry-skurry life
we lead at home! At least it seems so from
these mountain heights. How “the ever-
lasting hills” do humble a man; and how
this clean, crisp air does drive the cobwebs
from one's mind! I wish all of us could
run away to a glorious height like this every
little while, just to be made sane again!
We went over into Maine yesterday for
a fine day’s trip. Eighteen miles in a ram-
shackle motor-boat on a weird man-made
lake with whole forests. thrusting dead
branches up through the waters; then a two-
mile trail through the spruce; and then the
river, white “swift water” here, a long
swirling, black pool below. What a river!
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 Letters From the Dominie

and what trout! My poor little flies were

not half big enough. The guides used sal-
mon flies!
Which (the guides, not the flies) bring me
to my tale. It is of a guide and his
philosophy that I write.
He is short and wiry, brown as an Indian
save for white mustache and grizzly eye-
brows: quiet as an Indian, too, with clear
blue eyes that note everything. They
say he knows every inch of the North
Woods.
He had me in charge. All the way up
the lake and for half a mile on the trail to
the river he said never a word. Then he
spoke:
“I guess I'd better let one o” these boys
lead the way here. These trails are all new
to me.”
I looked at him in some surprise.
“T hain't guided up this valley,” he ex-
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 Letters From the Dominie

plained, “for ten years; and the dam's hid

all the old trails.”
He looked up through the scanty timber
towards the distant mountains, then turned
and smiled at me.
“But they can't fool me,” he said simply,
“as long as them mountains stands there. I
can always find my way by them, if every
trail’s gone!”
Man, what a fine speech was that! I
thought of all the novel changes in thought,
of new theological and philosophical sys-
tems and theories, of the bewildering maze
of new trails offered us modern travellers,
with the old trails (so they tell us) wiped
off the map, obliterated. But God be
thanked, the mountains still stand! Above
forest and stream, high o’ertopping swamp
and “slashing,” there, immovable, unchang-
ing, rise the great fundamental truths of
revelation! No matter how confusing the
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trails, we can still follow my old guide and

“lift up our eyes to the hills!” Let the lit-
tle theories and novelties go! Eyes aloft,
to the great truths! To guide ourselves by
them, unconcerned as the old guide over the
petty things that perplex others—this is the
way to live! Don’t you agree?
Yours,
The Dominte.

August Ó.
Dear Old Friend:
Still here in the high hills, and fishing and
tramping more zealously every day. I wish
you were near enough to permit of my send-
ing you the mate to the “square-tail” trout
I ate for breakfast to-day. Better still
(while I am wishing), I wish you had been
here to catch him. He came out of a deep,
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cool lake three miles up in the mountains,

just through the notch which I can see on
the northern horizon as I write.
We ended the week’s fishing up there yes-
terday. John, the old guide I wrote about
last week, had me in tow again. We came
down from the lake in the twilight, after
the early evening fishing. On the way he
volunteered another bit of his homely
philosophy. Passing a big spruce, I saw an
axe driven into its side, and no sign of an
owner in the neighborhood. John nodded.
He had seen it on the way up in the early
morning.
“That must belong to the surveyors down
below,” he said. “They'll be back for it
some time.”
There hung the axe in the tree, and might
have hung there for a month, and not a man
would touch it save the owner. Here was
the simple honesty of Eden, truly. When I
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said something about it the old fellow shook

his head sadly.
“Used to be that way all through the
woods,” he said, “but "taint so no longer.
Over at the Lakes, now, ye can’t leave
a thing around without itll be taken.
They’re gettin’ too civilized.”
I have thought of his words a hundred
times since. Civilization, in the general
meaning of the phrase, has not always car-
ried blessing with it. Theft and falsehood
have gone with the city sportsman and his
money to the mountains. Rum and its un-
mentionable companions have gone with
“Western progress” to Africa and the Ori-
ent. And here athome? Here too we pay
a high price in some ways for our civiliza-
tion. A few days ago 1 came up out of the
Subway, for whose speed I had paid by
breathing its foul air and being deafened by
its din. I looked across City Hall Park and
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saw that wonderfully beautiful Woolworth

Tower—“frozen music”—piercing the blue
with its golden tip; but the side street down
which I walked later had been metamor-
phosed into a sunless abyss by the skyscraper
of civilization; and I remembered that
gracious homes had once stood there, with
gardens sloping to the river . . . And then
I thought of the war, with all the agencies
of “civilization” at work to help prosecute
A
We call it the march of progress. And
we have progressed. The world is better,
doubtless, than ever before. But—has this
colossal machinery of modern life really
helped in the progress? We are too easily
impressed by the externals of our civiliza-
tion. Judging by the one gauge, the mak-
ing of men, it sometimes seems as if we were
not getting full value. There are greater
things than power, efficiency, impressive-
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ness. Civilization must be made to produce

them or it fails.
We shall be back soon, to get into harness
again, and, I hope, pull better than before.
Good health and a good time to you all!
Heartily yours,
The Dominie.

August 13.
My Dear Friend:
Last Sunday morning at church-time we
strolled down to the one little church, a mile
or so below the camp, to find two women
waiting, with three small youngsters, in
doubt as to whether there would be church
that morning or not. The arrival of the
sexton (store-keeper, over the way) settled
the matter in the negative. The young
theologue who supplied the several churches
along the valley during the summer months
was sick. The sexton was sizing us up
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 Letters From the Dominie

while he talked. I imagine that the aver-

age fisherman up here is not distinguished
for his church-going habit; for the man
turned to me and asked abruptly, “Either
of you a minister?” I confessed. He had
some initiative, it appeared, for he informed
me at once that he would let folks know that
I was going to preach in the evening.
It was a delightful service—to me, at any
rate. I wonder if you can appreciate the
inspiriting consciousness I had that I was
dealing with people who came to church
from more than mere force of habit or
fashion? I did enjoy it, wheezy organ,
nasal voices, smell of smoky lamps—all of
it. And after it was over one old fellow
came up with tears in his eyes, patted me on
the shoulder, and said earnestly, “Well, El-
der, that'll carry us a long way. Thank ye.
Thank ye.”
I do love to be told just that—that my
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preaching will carry people just a wee bit

further and more safely on the road. I
have the natural man's liking for praise—
I'll never fully subdue that while I’m in the
flesh, I suppose—but that’s not it. More
than I like to be told that I’ve done well I
love to be assured that I have helped some
one.
And I hate the cynical attitude of so many
of our sophisticated people at home. They
assume that the preacher is out to make his
reputation by his preaching. I hate that.
I want a reputation—lI say it to you frankly;
I want it; but I want it just because it will
give me more ears for my Message. (I
know you believe me when I write this.)
And I want, much more, to have proof that
I have faithfully transmitted that Message.
I tell you, it felt good to have that old back-
woodsman pat me on the back! I wish I
had more of it at home.
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 Letters From the Dominie

I wonder—has it ever occurred to you

that praise may be wholesome? Not flat-
tery, but praise, or better, thanks? I think
I could preach better and harder, and win
more men for my Saviour, if you at home
were to “pat me on the back” a little oftener.
This is a confidence with a vengeance!
but I shall let it go, with all good wishes.
Yours faithfully,
The Dominie.

August 20.
Dear Friend:
No more of the hills in my letters, for
we are down on the coast, with a salt breeze
in our nostrils and a flat horizon of sea be-
fore us. This huge caravansary is some-
what of a contrast to the camp up near the
skies. Such a crowd of people, so busy
about their pleasures! An orchestra is play-
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 Letters From the Dominie

ing out on the veranda—not quite the same

as the voice of “the murmuring pines and
the hemlocks” (most of which were really
spruces in our forest primeval).
Much of the life here seems so futile, so
enervating, rather than invigorating. I sup-
pose my impression is largely due, however,
to the greatness of the contrast with life
in the hills. There are fine, heroic deeds
done here, as I have just discovered.
It happened a day or so ago. A certain
woman (you know her) was dining with
friends in one of the cottages near the hotel.
The witty hostess laughingly retailed a story
of undoubted humor but of just as undoubted
shadiness. The little company gathered
about the table laughed, at first uncertainly,
then, gaining courage from each other,
heartily. The woman I speak of laughed
with them, but not in the least heartily. The
story was followed by another and another;
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 Letters From the Dominie

a polite little Decameron was being related.

But this woman laughed no more. When
she said good-night it was with never a
single word as to an enjoyable evening, but
with chin held high and a decided coolness
in her tone.
And when she spoke of it afterwards it
was with burning indignation. She had
made up her mind, she declared, that she
had no desire to have her children ever come
to think that their mother could enjoy a
dirty story!
God be thanked for such women, women
who have a love for clean speech and clean
pleasures; women who dread the defilement
of their children's minds by anything un-
clean; women who put their moral princi-
ples above the demands of empty politeness.
Too many of us are willing to laugh with
the crowd. ‘Too many of us regard social
conventions as more important than the
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truth. We need more women—and more

men—who will not endure what is unclean
or in any way unworthy. Indeed, I think it
is harder for us men than for the women to
adhere to the clean standard. Women the
world has always expected to be decent; but
men, for ages past, have been given more
“latitude.” In the dominie's presence most
men are clean-mouthed; but I know as well
as you do what happens “when the cloth is
gone,” and this even with men who are
Christians. Oh, for more who will be fired
with indignation when vileness is aired in
their presence! I thank God many a time
for giving me to work with a handful of
clean-minded men—you are one—and
women like the true “lady” I have just
written about. “Blessed are the pure in
heart ”—and they that company with them!
Sincerely as always,
The Dominie.
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August 27.
My Friend:
We are on our way home at last, having
spent a last Sabbath in this great city.
There is one thing you, as a layman, will
never know, and that is the deep pleasure
the preacher gets out of sitting for a Sun-
day or two—not much more—in the pew
and hearing other men preach. It is one of
the treasured delights of my vacation every
summer.
On Sabbath morning I heard a great ser-
mon from a noted preacher. I have long
wanted to hear him; and he is well worth
hearing. He preaches the gospel, and with
power.
But the sermon was marrea by the atmos-
phere of the church. I did not feel the
close, oil-smelling air of our little church
in the mountains half as much as I did the
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heavy, gloomy solemnity of this beautiful

church. Somehow there seemed to be a
straining after a deeply religious effect.
Windows, high pulpit, order of service, the
very back of the sexton, the very expression
on the faces of the ushers, all seemed to be a
bit—a bit overdone. On the way home I
thought of what had happened at the Spring
meeting of a certain Presbytery.
The unfortunate victim of the stereotyped
annual “narrative” was making his report,
doing a good best to make dead figures live,
when he mentioned a certain church.
He said it had reported its condition as
“devotional.”
Then he proceeded to show what had
happened during the year in this “devo-
tional” church. It had received no addi-
tions to its membership; it had not increased
its gifts to benevolences; it had no unusual
development along spiritual lines to an-
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nounce; but—it was intensely “devotional.”

Funny, is it? Hardly so. I thought it
was, at first hearing; but it has stuck to my
mind ever since and I have had time to
think about it; and I have a strong suspi-
cion that this particular church is afflicted
with a disease that is none too rare. Itisa
form of delusion. The patient appears to
be exceedingly religious; loves the dim re-
ligious light in which one can hardly see
to read a hymn; delights in the vague, sen-
suous, mystical hymns that mean little or
less; enjoys a sermon composed of sweetness
and light, without the seasoning of strong
doctrine; is pleased to sing fervently of the
blood of Jesus, yet is shocked by the plain
statement of the atonement; prizes a stained
glass window above the contrite heart of a
sinner; shudders at the crude, rude methods
of a Billy Sunday; worships before the im-
ages of Liberalism, Toleration and Social
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 Letters From the Dominie

Service; and is, withal, deeply “devotional.”

“Tt is not thus that souls are won,” not
thus the Kingdom is enlarged, not thus the
Lord Christ glorified. A church that can-
not show at the end of the year a gain of a
dollar in gifts or a person in membership
is, if a “devotional” church, rendering its
devotions before some other than Jesus
Christ. Devotion to Him brings results;
and the more complete the devotedness, the
larger the results. “There is a vast differ-
ence between the devotion that feels re-
ligious because it sits in a comfortable pew
and enjoys a pleasant service, and the devo-
tion that is religious, surrendering life itself
to the Lord Jesus.
Yours,
The Dominte.

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 Letters From the Dominie

September 3.
Dear old Friend:
Home again! The town is deserted; the
trains are packed; the automobiles skurry-
ing through, seaward or hillward bound,
are legion. For us who stay, the weather
is hot and close. I am glad you can be
away over Labor Day. ‘You will need the
rest, for I mean to set you to work as soon
as I can get my hands upon you!
I like Labor Day, for I like an excuse for
preaching on Work. I have been reading
that half-cynical, wholly-wise first part of
Ecclesiastes :
“What profit hath man of all his labor
wherein he laboreth?”
Isn't that a fine text for Labor Sunday?
I have so often, seeing these white-faced
men and women plodding home from office
and shop, asked myself the same question.
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 Letters From the Dominie

Why do they live thus? What is this urg-

ent task for? What is the use of it all?
Some, I know, are at work to keep alive.
God pity them! Clerks, laborers, women
and children in the sweatshops, how many,
many there are! Think of it: it is a hun-
dred years since Tom Hood wrote “The
Song of the Shirt,” but the conditions, the
victims, are here still.
“W ork—work—work,
Till the brain begins to swim;
Work—work—work,
Till the eyes are heavy and dim”—
and on, on without rest, all to keep soul and
body together. What terrible pathos there
is in work done for this mere motive!
What profit have the workers?
Some work to grow, in pocket, in body, in
mind. They seek more than bread and but-
ter; they seek personal profit. And this, I
think, is sadder still. Some of the men you
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are thrown with are doing just this, working

to get what they can out of it. And what
do they get? One died last week: his prop-
erty goes to another, after all these years of
straining effort! One lives in his library,
stuffing his selfish skin with literary hors
d'euvres—to whose profit? I knew a fel-
low at college who was to be found in the
“gym” every day at work on the “muscle
machines”; he gained a marvellous set of
muscles; but he never played at anything
and never made a team! What profit out
of all his labor? .“He that saveth his life
shall lose it!”
There are those, too, who toil for human-
ity’s sake, God bless them! Far be it from
me to discount any genuine “social service.”
As latterly used the phrase nauseates me;
but I know plenty of people (there are more
to-day than this old world ever saw before!)
who are true, unselfish social servants. It
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 Letters From the Dominie

is at this point that work begins to bring in

profit. Not financial nor tangible, but
mighty real, a profit in the joy of life, the
consciousness of truest usefulness. He who
loves neighbor as self will make his work
bring in permanent profit.
But it is those who stop here, in their
motive for work, who have put a stigma
upon the phrase “social service.” The ulti-
mate profit comes after all to the man, the
woman, who is consciously, heartily, serving
God in his work. “Daughter, thou sweep-
est well My floor.” You remember it?
To wield pen or shovel, needle or mop, to
the glory of God; to feel assured of playing
a part in the fulfilment of God's great Plan,
is to win from work an immeasurable profit
in the consciousness of fitness, usefulness,
and in the deepest peace of mind and heart.
These profits are permanent, eternal income,
for the laborer works on, under divine su-
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pervision, eternally. “His servants shall

serve Him.” Whata blessed epitome of the
life of heaven and of its rewards!
There are so many little folk doing little
things, fit (in this world) only for little
things! I wish they could all be made to
feel how truly God must value them and
their labor. Not the matter nor the
method, but the motive—this is the vital
point that settles what return shall come
from work.
“Our tongues were fashioned for Thy word,
Our hands to do Thy will divine;
Our bodies are Thy temples, Lord;
The mind’s immortal powers are Thine;

“Tts highest thought, to trace Thy skill;

Its purest love, on Thee to rest;
Its noblest action of the will,
To choose Thy service and be blest.”
Sincerely your friend,
The Dominie.
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 Letters From the Dominie

September IO.
My Friend:
Do not think that when I urged you to
“set things going” I failed to appreciate
how hard it is to get up steam in the autumn.
One day this summer I missed my train
and had to spend some hours at a lumber
town away up in the mountains. With a
packet of nuts for luncheon, I spent the
noon-hour in a great silent mill whose busi-
ness was the cutting and shipping of pulp-
wood for the making of your daily news-
paper. One o'clock came. A whistle
blew. Men appeared from every direction,
popping up stairways and chutes, rising
from their hidden seats on log piles. An-
other whistle; the clanking and grinding of
chains and gears, the whirring of knives;
and in less than one minute from the second
whistle every man was at work in his place!
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 Letters From the Dominie

Our summer—the church’s unwillingly

taken: noon-hour—is over. The whistle
blows. ‘The machinery of our societies and
clubs begins to move. Great things are to
be done, can be done, will be done, if we,
feeling our personal responsibility, are all
“on the job” from the sound of the whistle.
There are advantages to be gained by the
individual and the church that can quickly
get into the routine of things. Yes—you
need not smile—I am always urging our
people to do more than the customary thing;
but, after all, a certain routine is profitable.
One day, not long ago, we were motoring
on a poor, a painfully poor mountain road.
It had been raining persistently. The
black dirt roadway was soft and greasy all
the way, and where an occasional spring was
determined to cross the road the deep ruts
were deeper still. The man at the wheel
tried for a while to keep out of those smooth
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 Letters From the Dominie

hollows. He ran along this side, but the

car skidded off toward the ditch. He
crossed and tried the other side, but the op-
posite ditch had equal fascination for the
heavy car. At last he dropped back into
the ruts, leaned back and heaved a deep
sigh, and remarked, “I guess Ill let her
travel in the rut. It's a good deal safer on
a road like this.”
We have all of us valid objections to
“falling into a rut”—valid when the “rut”
means an improgressive indifference. God
keep this church out of such ruts!
But there is a very definite sense in which
it will be a good thing for us and for the
church if we can quickly and easily drop
back, after the summer's rest and change,
into the routine of our church activities. It
is safer ordinarily to stick to routine than
to try other methods. It is far more profit-
able after a holiday to make oneself get into
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 Letters From the Dominie

the accustomed swing of things at once than

to hesitate and fidget and groan over the
compulsion of work,
Here we are at the opening of our au-
tumn work. Before October has fairly
started every activity of this church ought to
be in full swing. ‘That means that you will
at once pick up the accustomed tools and,
without grumbling or complaint, start in.
Let us waste little time over preliminaries.
Most of the planning is done; the rest can
be done quickly. I know the reluctance
with which busy people—many of them too
busy—start in with the church work in the
fall. It is largely, I think, because they
have not had a full rest. But I know, too,
that all of us will be the happier, and the
church will be the more prosperous, if we
all combine to swing at once into the routine
of things. On a rough road the car in the
rut will often make greatest speed, and will
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 Letters From the Dominie

in all probability ride the more easily.

This must, with God's help, be the best
year by far the church has known. As the
master wrote in crayon across the drawing
of his sleeping pupil, “Amplius!”—
“Larger, broader!”—so let us, looking back
on the past year, write across its record the
same word: “Amplius!” Bigger things,
better things, this year for us all. The
work waits—for you! Begin it aright!
I have mixed my metaphors, perhaps, but
I trust my meaning is plain. Do your part
in starting things. Cordially,
The Dominie.

September 17.
My Dear Man:
I hope you won’t be hurt—I do not
greatly mind, in fact I shall be pleased, if I
shock you—by my saying that your excuses
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 Letters From the Dominie

will not hold water. I want to shock you,

shock you out of the too large class of non-
workers in the church.
Oh, yes, I know you are a trustee, and I
do know that you are genuinely interested;
but you are not lifting a finger in any spe-
cifically religious service. Tell me one
thing you have done, one word you have
said, along this line in the past year. Am I
right?
Then I am going to make a request of
you. It is simply this: Consider Peter.
There is no record of any delay or demur
on Peter’s part on that momentous day when
Jesus called him from his boat and his nets,
saying, “Follow Me, and I will make you
a fisher of men.” ‘This was not a call to,
mere allegiance: Peter had already obeyed
that call. This was a call to service, to ac-
tual work in Jesus’ Kingdom; and Peter did
not hesitate.
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 Letters From the Dominie

I can imagine quite easily that many peo-

ple, members of Jesus’ Church, would stam-
mer and stutter and at last come out with
some excuse; and they would utter it, at
least in some cases, in all sincerity, thinking
ita good one. I can almost hear them:
“I haven't the right temperament.”
Neither had, Peter! But by the grace of
God, Peter, through years of patient service,
developed it. Jesus called Peter to active
service in spite of his many faults of char-
acter.
“I haven't a good enough appearance.”
Neither had Peter! A fisherman, and a
Galilean, of all things! God has a way of
choosing and using “the base things of the
world, and the things that are despised.”
Jesus called Peter, in spite of appearances,
to active service.
“T haven’t the education, the polish.”
Neither had Peter! I have known hun-
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 Letters From the Dominie

dreds of workers in the Church and Sun-

day-school, and 1 have watched the results
of their work; and I am frank to say that
Serace cina a counts for a thousand A
times more than “polish.” Jesus called
Peter to active service in spite of his lack
of polish.
“I haven’t the social position.” Neither
had Peter! You do not need it. If you
happen to have it, it is a fine asset for a
Christian at work; but if you have it not,
remember that most of the work of the
Church has in all ages been done by the
rank and file. “Not many mighty, not
many noble.” Aye, Peter was called in
spite of lack of social position.
“T haven’t the specialized training neces-
sary.” Neither had Peter! You do not
need it! We have a very silly idea in our
heads to-day about “specialists”—silly, cer-
tainly, so far as most of the affairs of the
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 Letters From the Dominie

Church are concerned. Practically all of

the most efficient workers in Christs
Church have been no specialists, but simple,
humble, praying, Bible-loving, soul-desir-
ing Christians. Peter was called to active
service in spite of utter lack of special
equipment.
There is work to be done for Jesus here
in this church. It calls for workers. You
need not worry, my friend, over any unfit-
ness on your part; follow Jesus into service,
and He will make you fit.
Y ours,
The Dominte.

September 24.
My Friend:
I wish I could work a wonder in this
day. Do you know what it would be? It
would be to transform a certain prayer-
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meeting pessimist into an all-around opti-

mist. Why is it that some folks cannot even
talk with God in a cheerful, hopeful tone of
voice?
Of course, the pessimist, like the poor, is
always with us; but he is not nearly so good
company as the other ubiquitous person, es-
pecially in prayer-meeting! 1 meet him in
many places. So do you.
He talks politics, and we feel as if the
country were going to ruin; business, and
we are sure the bottom has dropped out of
the industrial world; household matters,
and we are convinced that every grocer and
butcher is a thief; or religion, and we feel
that the Church is going fast to decay and
that God is in desperate straits!
The worst thing about this doleful spirit
is its contagiousness. Put the pessimist in
a workshop, and shortly all the men are dis-
satisfied; he has spread the contagion. Put
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him in the church, and in no great time, al-

though things have been moving smoothly,
there begins to be a general spirit of unrest,
of dissatisfaction. Half of those who are
dissatisfied do not know why—it is simply
because the pessimist has been around!
Pessimism is not comfortable unless it is
making every one else uncomfortable. Its
voice, iterating and reiterating, gives by
mere force of repetition a fictitious value to
its statements.
But surely if the pessimistic spirit is out
of place anywhere, it is in the Church of the
living God. For no one need expect flaw-
less perfection in the Church on earth until
Christ comes again. There is here no per-
fect music, nor perfect sermon, nor perfect
ventilation, nor perfect society, nor even a
single perfect Christian! It is the glory of
the Church that, with all its faults, it is
chosen and used by its Lord as the divinely
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appointed tool for His hand. And the ul-

timate triumph of the Church is sure:

“Gates of hell can never

"Gainst that Church prevail.
We have Christ's own promise,
And that cannot fail.”

This is true. But it is also true that the

spirit of disquiet, of discontent, of pessi-
mism can greatly hamper the progress of
the individual congregation. It ought to
be easy to choose between the force which
confuses and delays and that which en-
courages and advances the cause of. Christ.
Better a trowel of mortar than a dynamite
bomb. Let us cultivate a cheery, consistent
optimism all through this church! There
are so many fine things to be said of it! It
has not for years been in such good condi-
tion, financially, numerically, spiritually.
Undoubtedly it has its weaknesses, and we
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would be extremely foolish to blind our eyes

to them; but we can best remedy them, not
by harping on them forever, but rather by
quietly, heartily, persistently filling each his
place in the church's activities. One is
surer to be an optimist in the church if he
finds something to do in it.
And we ought not to forget that opti-
mism, as well as pessimism, is contagious.
Spread it! Be a “promoter” of the right
sort, an enthusiast for your church. It is
Christ’s church; and the optimist can serve
Him in it far better than the pessimist can.
I have been reading Isaiah the Optimist.
What an inspiriting challenge he issues to
Israel on Jehovah’s behalf: “Enlarge the
place of thy tent, and let them stretch forth
the curtains of thy habitations; spare not:
lengthen thy cords and strengthen thy stakes.
For thou shalt spread abroad on the right
hand and on the left.” To a nation (and a
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Church) fearing reverses and planning “re-

trenchment” came this stirring advice:
Plan for larger things, not smaller! Build
your tent bigger; make its curtains longer;
splice a length to your tent-cords; drive
stouter tent-pegs; for you are going to
grow!
With all my heart I believe that at the
beginning of this new church year we
should make this verse from Isaiah our
watchword. For many years this church
has been living under the same tent, with-
out being obliged to lengthen her cords or
strengthen her stakes. Membership has
been about the same, growing a little, but
not growing in proportion to the growth of
the town. Spiritual power has grown per-
haps at no faster rate. The old tent is still
more than big enough—unless it be on the
side where the Sunday-school lodges.
Now it is time that we expected to grow.
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We have been looking forward to an au-

tumn and winter very much like last year.
Let us look forward henceforth to a very
different one. Let us plan for larger
things, finer things. Let us, like Carey,
“Expect great things from God.” We have
not had faith enough in the past. We have
assumed that God could not soften a heart
or convert a sinner in this church. We
have thought it folly to plan for enlarge-
ment. But that is wrong. We ought to be
expecting God to fill a larger tent; and we
ought to plan accordingly. The churches
that grow have planned for growth.
| Cordially,
The Dominie.

October I.
My Friend:
One of the strange facts about our mod-
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ern religious life is the common assumption

“that he is an ill-balanced man who shows
any emotion in religious concerns.” If you
should catch your neighbor in church with
tell-tale tears upon his cheeks, you would in
all probability put him down as a man of
more feeling than sense. If you are asked
to sing a hymn phrased in a more jubilant,
exalted tone than the more sober “devo-
tional” hymns you are used to, you are irri-
tated. And if the man in the pulpit tries,
apparently, to stir up your feelings, you feel
indignant.
Whyr You inject emotion into every-
thing else in the world. Why should not
the woman who goes into raptures over a
successfully baked cake put a little feeling
into her religion? Or the man who yells
himself hoarse on the bleachers, why should
he not show feeling when he views the grace
of God in Christ? You throw in feeling
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 Letters From the Dominie

generously in business, pleasure, politics;

why not in religion?
And do not forget that nothing in your
life goes so deep into your soul as does
Christian experience. The consciousness
of pardon, the new sense of peace, the in-
tensity of spiritual conflict, the contempla-
tion of the manifold grace of God in Christ
—oh, there is matter here, my friend, to
make you forget your conventions and to
rock the very foundations of your being
with feeling. If there is one person who
proves himself sane by the evidence of emo-
tion, it is the true Christian. If there is one
place where emotion is in place, it is the
House of God. I wish that more of our
people might be moved so that they could
not hide their feelings.
The late General Booth, that wonderful
organizer of the Salvation Army, was asked
why he and his Army directed their appeal
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 Letters From the Dominie
__=>_== A A A Fi
so strongly to the emotions. He answered L
promptly: “Because that is the greatest
factor in human life.”
He was right, plainly right. Look about
you and see. What moves men? Cold
truth? No; truth warmed by burning emo-
tion. Will any stump speaker in the back-
woods or in a city district be content to try
to win men to his political faith by the mere
statement of hard facts? He gives them the
facts, if he has them; but he gives them the
impassioned appeal of his oratory, whether
he has the facts or not. Does the lawyer in
the courts disdain the opportunity to grip
the hearts of the jurors? He knows well
that eleven of the twelve will be led by their
hearts more than by their heads.
Or take another point of view. Does
your banker, engineer, clerk, grocer, black-
smith, make a success of his business when
he declines to be stirred to any enthusiasm?
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 Letters From the Dominie

Does your general or your army win with-

out being swept along by cyclonic emotion?
Was ever anything worth doing accom-
plished without the doer having put his
heart into it? Was ever any great truth
driven home to a man's mind without his
being thrown almost off his feet by the emo-
tion stirred up by its impact?
And yet we expect to become robust, ener-
getic, purposeful, successful Christians
while we decline to permit of the stirring
of our emotions! We expect to win the
world to Christ without stirring our own
hearts or the hearts of those we would win!
It is arrant nonsense, this conception of
cold-blooded Christianity. Did Moody
preach in cold blood, or his converts accept
Christ in cold blood? Was it so with
Spurgeon, Wesley, Whitefield, Savonarola,
Paul? Did Jesus preach in cold blood?
Did His hearers accept His gospel thus? or
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was He afire? Did not His converts some

of them weep, and bathe His feet with their
tears, and some go leaping and shouting for
joy? Cold-blooded Christianity is dead; it
never did anything, and never will do any-
thing, worth doing. What we need is the
very thing we are afraid of, to be disturbed,
fired, upset; to let our feelings be stirred,
our tears loosed, our desires awakened—it
may be our hearts broken—for Christ!
Cordially,
The Dominie.

October 8.
My Friend:
I have been rearranging the books on the
shelves of my study. Our good old-fash-
ioned housecleaning makes this necessary
every spring and fall; but I do not object in
the least. I like to have a good excuse for
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putting in a day handling my books. It is

like running in on old friends whom one has
not been able to see for months, for I have
little time to read except with definite aim
toward a sermon. And, too, it enables one
to make new acquaintances; for there are
always books on one’s own shelves that are,
even after years, total strangers.
Yesterday, browsing thus while I sorted,
I ran across a “Book of Anecdotes,” the gift
of a friend who was tenderly disposing of
the library her husband, a minister, had
left; and in the hodge-podge of it my eyes
lighted upon an old friend. It was the
story of that naval captain who, calling for
volunteers for a forlorn hope, thought his
men all cowards, thinking none had stepped
forward when, while his eyes were lowered,
every man had done so. When I was a
youngster I loved that stirring tale; now I
find it even more stirring.
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 Letters From the Dominie

I wonder, my friend, what would happen

if I asked my people to show their loyalty
to Christ Jesus by rising or just raising their
hands? Yet why not? I am convinced
that it would do us all good if we were com-
pelled to give visible sign of our allegiance
and willingness. The “good confession” of
Jesus before Pontius Pilate was Paul’s en-
couragement to Timothy to be steadfast in
his open allegiance to Jesus. It should be
to us as well an argument for a frank and
manly confession of the faith that is in
us.
Why should the people of the Church of
Christ hesitate for a moment when they are
asked to show their devotion to their Lord
by standing up or by raising their hands?
Why should they be ashamed to let the
world focus its eyes on their confession of
Christ?
You say it is unusual? Granted. What
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 Letters From the Dominie

of it? And is there any reason why it

should not be usual?
You call it sensational? In a way, yes;
but what valid objection is there to such sen-
sationalism if it assists in deepening the gos-
pel’s impression on the mind of a single
man, or if it assists a single soul to make de-
cision to surrender to Jesus?
If you personally object to such an act, or
shrink from it, let me put to you a plain
question: Since you do not care to show in
such a way that you stand with Jesus Christ,
in what way are you showing it? By at-
tendance at church on Sunday morning?
Not in the least; for all the world and his
wife goes to church on Sunday morning;
that has no great weight as a confession of
Christ. Well, by your gifts to the church?
Not in the least; for your giving is between
you and the church treasurer and God, a
private concern. Well, by partaking of the
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Lord’s Supper? It is true that in so doing

you “do proclaim the Lord’s death till he
come,” but is it a very open proclamation?
Is it not rather a quiet, somewhat secluded
act, not seen by many of those who should
see and hear our confession? Well, by
your daily life, then, you confess Christ?
To make this true it must be that your life is
different from and strikingly better than the
life of your worldly neighbor. Is it so?
Then, if it is, you are “witnessing a good
confession.”
But there is a confession to be witnessed
not only through the character of your daily
life, but through open, clean-cut words and
acts specifically intended as confession of
Christ. Do you in any word or deed ever,
for the sake of drawing others to Christ,
proclaim yourself a Christian? If you do
serve Christ, why should you refuse to
spring to your feet for his sake? It is time
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 Letters From the Dominie

for us to risk criticism, laughter, whatever

comes, if by any means we may help to turn
the scale in men's minds towards Christ.
Our own cowardice keeps many from Him. y
“Ashamed of Jesus? Sooner far
Let evening blush to own a star.

No; when I blush, be this my shame,

That Ino more revere His Name.”

Faithfully yours,
The Dominie.

October 15.
My Friend:
Much as 1 would like to run away with
you for an afternoon, 1 cannot do it now.
I am “going the rounds.” I like to call at
every home in my parish early in the fall,
to get in touch again as quickly as possible.
It is so hard for the dominie, in such a place
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as this, to get more than a cordial speaking

acquaintance with his people!
If you took a census of the ministers, you
would probably find that all of them con-
sidered “pastoral calling” at once the pleas-
antest and the hardest of their duties.
There are in every parish, God be
thanked, certain homes where the minister
feels it the keenest pleasure and the greatest
privilege to be allowed to enter. When he
leaves, it is with a thanksgiving psalm in his
heart for such oases in the social wilderness.
The curious thing about these homes is
that they are of all sorts. Some are rich,
some poor. In some sickness is rarely
known; in others it is a permanent guest.
In some there resides a continuous pros-
perity; in others pain and shame and an-
guish are frequent visitors. And yet all
produce the same blessed effect on the pas-
tor when he steps over the threshold.
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 Letters From the Dominie

It is not because they give him a more

effusive welcome than he receives in other
homes; for he is almost invariably kindly
received. In twelve years I have had dis-
courtesy shown me at only one door—and
then it appeared that I had threatened in-
trusion on a card party!
It is not the kindly reception that makes
some calls peculiarly pleasant. It is, I
think, simply this: that in these homes relig-
ion is an accepted element of daily life, en-
tering into all the home problems, the back-
ground, and the foundation, too, of every-
thing. Enter a conservatory, and even
blindfolded you will know where you are;
just so the sweetness of a Christian atmos-
phere cannot be concealed from him who en-
ters the home. These people who live here
are not afraid of religion! They do not
feel uneasy (and make the minister feel as
they do) because they are afraid their vis-
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 Letters From the Dominie

itor will “talk religion.” They live on re-

ligion; it is meat and drink to them; it is
breath to their lungs; it is a reality and a
necessity. And the minister feels it.
It is the home where religion is a mere
matter of form, where the emphasis is laid
on matters wholly worldly, that perplexes
the minister. He is heartily welcomed;
every one is friendly; but every main line to
vital affairs of the soul is deftly turned into
a sidetrack. He leaves the house feeling
that he has failed of his errand, because
these hosts of his, too obviously afraid of
“religion,” have declined to let the conver-
sation possess any real value. :
It is true that the minister will often talk
religion. He thinks it the finest and most
necessary subject of conversation to be
found in all the fields of thought. How
silly to talk, like the Walrus and the Car-
penter,
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 Letters From the Dominie

“Of ships, and seas, and sealing wax,

And cabbages and kings,”

leaving the affairs of our souls untouched!

Yet many people—Christians too—will
twist and squirm (conversationally) to
avoid any approach to religion. They will
let the dominie into the reception room of
their life, but never into the living room!
That is one reason—I grow personal—
why I like to cross your threshold. You
are all ultra-moderns, but still you are not
afraid to talk of the things most worth while.
Sincerely, as always,
The Dominie.

October 22.
Dear Friend:
I saw you smile to yourself last Sunday
when I urged people to come to prayer-
meeting. I suppose you thought it a use-
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 Letters From the Dominie

less invitation; you may feel, as many do,

that prayer-meeting is out of date, an anach-
ronism in this busy modern age.
I grow weary of hearing about “modern
conditions.” In every generation since the
world began conditions have been “modern
conditions.” Every age has, in its turn,
been “this modern age.” But humanity's
basic needs have not been observed to
change, so far. I am convinced that as
long as the Church shall last, so long
will Christ’s people need the prayer-meet-
ing. z
No, sir; no apologies offered for this
blessed institution! It needs none. It has
a place of its own to fill, and a very im-
portant place at that. Some people think it
is a secondary consideration, a suitable toy
with which to satisfy the desires of a few
old-timers, a few ultra-pious people.
On the contrary, I venture the assertion
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 Letters From the Dominie

that one who comes in the proper spirit will

probably get more benefit from the prayer-
meeting than from a regular church service.
This just because of its informality. It is
easy—and often unprofitable, barren—to
worship God in formal fashion; but an in-
formal service brings the fact of worship
nearer home, and makes prayer less a part
of a program than a cry of need or a psalm
of thanksgiving.
And is it this very informality that makes
you uncomfortable? Afraid you may be
called on to read a Scripture verse when
you can’t find the place? Uneasy when
some one rises to speak out of his heart’s
depths? A wee bit ashamed of the inti-
macy of it all? Precisely so. Don’t you
see that this is in itself a tacit confession that
your religion is itself largely formal, and
that you need the very spirit of intimate
fellowship with fellow-Christians and
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 Letters From the Dominie

closer communion with God which are man-

ifest in the-prayer-meeting?
And then, is a Christian only to get, and
never to give? Beyond any doubt you have
had experiences and you have thoughts, and
you can, at will, have power in prayer, all
of which your neighbors in the church need.
I am tired of having Christian people
speak and act slightingly toward the prayer-
meeting. It has the promise of Christ to
give it a value which should bring all of
our people to it: “Where two or three are
gathered together in my name, there am I
in the midst of them.” If you know any-
thing that we as a church need as much as
we need the presence of our Lord, you ought
to tell us of it. If you don’t, you ought to
do all in your power to secure that presence.
The prayer-meeting is one of your oppor-
tunities. Cordially yours,
The Dominie.
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 Letters From the Dominie

October 29.
Dear Friend:
It is easy to distinguish faces from the
pulpit. A minister soon gets into the habit
of looking over the congregation during the
opening service, not to see who is on hand,
but to find out who is missing.
There are certain members of this con-
gregation for whom I have long looked in
vain; some of them belong to your house-
hold. They are as much members of the
church as any one of you; they are in more
need of the church than most of you; and
they are absent through no fault of their
own.
Can you guess who they are? The chil-
dren of some of our homes.
But of course there are good reasons why
they are not here? I do not think so.
There are excuses given by those responsible
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 Letters From the Dominie

for their absence; but there is no good rea-

son, so far as I know.
Why aren't they here? Parents, take the
stand!
“Because they get tired.”
Nonsense! These children are not neu-
rotics. You take them to a three-hour pan-
demonium at the Hippodrome—infinitely
worse for little nerves! The trouble is that
you are unwilling to take the trouble to
train them to sit quietly, one of the finest
lessons they could ever learn.
“But I had too much church when I was -
a child.” .
It is quite possible that church was dull,
or that you were not taught what it meant,
which would result in the same dulness for
you. But if you had once had too much
medicine, or had it given in a wrong way,
would you never give your child medi-
cine?
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 Letters From the Dominie

“But my children are restless, and would

disturb other people.”
Possibly. But restlessness is not de-
creased by absence from church, nor—in the
case of ninety-nine out of one hundred chil-
dren—increased by attendance. And on
the other hand, it will not matter at all if
a few people are disturbed; they can endure
it, and they ought to, for the sake of the chil-
dren.
“But the children don’t want to come.”
This, too, is quite possible. But it has
nothing to do with the case. Children are
not to be expected to know what is best for
them, even children of High School age (I
write it with fear and trembling!). And
then, have you done anything to make your
children understand what the church is?
what it means? what dear Presence is there?
“But the children won't understand any-
thing of the service or the sermon.”
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 Letters From the Dominie

Pardon me; they will understand far

more than you imagine. “The thoughts of
youth are long, long thoughts.” A child's
mind is fully as sensible to religious truth,
and his heart to religious impressions, as to
anything else that comes before him. In all
his life you will never have as good an op-
portunity to train the best side of his nature
as you have now.
Why should the children come to church?
To get the habit of coming, a habit more
easily formed now than ever in later years;
to gain familiarity with the forms of wor-
ship, and a knowledge of the great and no-
ble hymns of the church; to become used to
associating with Christian people, the best
element of society, and their proper ele-
ment; and to “grow in grace and in the
knowledge of our Lord and Saviour Jesus
Christ.”
If you had family prayers daily; if the
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 Letters From the Dominie

open Bible were an accepted fact in your

home; if a fine, cheerful, genuinely relig-
ious atmosphere were the air your children
breathed at home; if you took pains to teach
them the great truths of your Faith, then
they wouldn't need church-going! So?
My friend, as long as the Church founded
by Christ exists, as long as it is easier to turn
God-ward in childhood than when all one's
habits are formed, just so long will it be a
shameful robbery of the children to keep
them away from their Father's House.
There is another side to this grave ques-
tion.
One day, before I had reached my "teens,
I received orders from headquarters to
spend part of my Saturday looking over the
potatoes down cellar. The bin was in a
dark corner; there were enough potatoes in
it to make any boy’s back ache; but there
was one thing about those potatoes that
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 Letters From the Dominie

made one forget his back. Most of them

had sprouted, and their slender, greenish-
white arms were stretching out towards the
light—all of them, mind you, towards the
light—bending over in the direction of the
narrow window across the cellar. And
some had sent out longer arms than others;
two feet, four, five, six—eight feet long they
ran across the cellar floor to reach the light;
and if they had been left to themselves for
another month, they would have been found
trying to climb the wall under the window,
still striving to come to the light.
It is no far cryto a place where children
are found pathetically groping. after the
light. Too many homes will do for the
spiritual counterpart of the dark potato cel-
lar. The child enters the home with a God-
given appetite for the truth. He is a ques-
tion mark incarnate, a rightly inquisitive
soul reaching out for the truth about his
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 Letters From the Dominie

ever-expanding universe. And his loving

parents at once put this tender soul in the
potato cellar. They are irritated by his
questions, nagged by his never-ending curi-
osity; and they shut him up, literally and
figuratively both. “Children should be
seen and not heard,” is dinned into him until
he begins to feel that it is a breach of good
manners, not to say a sin, for a child to ask
a question. He would like to know about
everything he sees and hears—how things
grow; who made them; whether babies
come from heaven; where God is; why we
can’t see God; what makes some men stag-
ger when they come home at night; etc., ad
lib.; but he has no chance to know, for
father and mother have put him in the
farthest corner of the soul-cellar, and only
the least bit of light, murky and vague, can
reach him.
This is the exceptional home? God for-
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 Letters From the Dominie

give us, it is more nearly the average Chris-

tian home. How many Christian parents
take time, thought and pains to let the light
of the great truths of life in on the soul of a
child? How many actually introduce their
children to the friendship of their living,
present Saviour? How many do not leave
the most delicate questions of physical and
spiritual life to the secret whispered confer-
ences of playground and back alley? How
many actually enlighten the souls of their
children? Not very many. Some are ut-
terly selfish; it is too much trouble to ex-
plain things. Some are unable, and are un-
willing to confess it. Some deceive them-
selves with the thought that it is the
Church’s business. Some dodge responsi-
bility because the children’s queries bring
out the parents’ own inconsistencies of liv-
ing. Few lead their children to the light.
But the child differs from the potato.
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 Letters From the Dominie

His outreachings towards the light grow

feebler, and soon, to all practical purposes,
cease. Having little light, he becomes for
life a creature of darkness. His parents
A
find, when’ he is in his ’teens, that he does
is K not like church and religion. Why should
he? His soul is not used to the light.
They find that he has somehow obtained
false standards or developed alarming hab-
its. Why not? And he grows to manhood
with his soul in the dark—and content to
stay in the dark, which is the worst of it!
What else could be expected?
The cellar of ignorance and false ideals
is no place for the aspiring soul of a
child. “Whosoever shall cause one of these
little ones that believe on Me to stumble, it
were better for him if a great millstone were
hanged about his neck, and he were cast into
the sea.” Yours,
The Dominie.
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 Letters From the Dominie

November 5.
Old Friend:
I suspected that you would not agree
with all of my sermon on Sabbath-keeping.
—a suspicion of narrowness about me, nicht
wahr?
I wonder if you realize two things: the
extent to which our Christian Sabbath has
been broken down, and the power the Sab-
bath has been as an institution in history?
Before you call me narrow, look up these
points; then we'll get together for a “con-
fab” over the matter.
It will not be hard for you to discover
conditions in our community—open shops
and stores, amusements going full blast, the
whole atmosphere a holiday one. But
there is one condition I fear you may not
observe:
Sunday is a wide-open day in the homes
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 Letters From the Dominie

of some of our Christian people. There

are many homes in this town, where father,
mother and children are members of the
Church, where the Lord's day is no more
than a common holiday. A visitor in the
house would have difficulty in detecting one
single act or event, outside of the morning
excursion to Sunday-school and church,
which would be valid evidence of the pres-
ence there of any religious atmosphere or
influence.
There is one habit in particular which
seems to me to be absolutely and altogether
wrong and pernicious. It is the habit the
boys and girls have of doing Monday’s les-
sons on Sunday. It is the usual thing in
many homes where a more Christian be-
havior might be expected. Books are
brought home on Friday and put away until
Sunday afternoon or evening, when they are
brought out, and the one day of the week
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 Letters From the Dominie

which God gave as a way of escape and rest

from secular things ends up with algebra
and commercial geography.
What a fine way of aiding in the digestion
of the Bread of Life gotten at church and
Sunday-school! What a fine sort of en-
deavor, to go from a Christian Endeavor
meeting to this! What a glorious prepara-
tion these youngsters are being given for
getting profit out of their Sundays in later
years! What a fine opportunity Christ will
have of using their time when they are al-
lowed to steal His time now!
What are we to expect of our young peo-
ple ten or twenty years from now, when
they are in the prime of life? Why
should you, who close your office over Sun-
day, let your son keep his open? And when
that son happens to be a Church member
(like you), doesn't it seem worth while to
let him feel that Sunday is too good for
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some things? You'd have to reform your

own Sunday? Well?
Just there's the rub. The trouble is with
the general attitude of our Christian par-
ents: that they do not sense the vital poison
in the atmosphere of compromise.
As to another point, conditions in our
community life, the source of the trouble
is identically the same. The authorities
are under constant temptation to cater to
the lawless and irreverent element. But
why?
Gladstone said it was “the duty of the
government to make it easy for the people to
do right and difficult for the people to do
wrong.” That appeals to us all as sound
doctrine. But it cannot be realized until
our Christian citizens make their will felt
for the right, which they will do when they
themselves cease to hold civil and divine
law in contempt. For while responsibility
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for our lax Sunday lies largely with the

municipal authorities, it lies largely, too,
with the members of the Church in the com-
munity.
While it is obvious that the authorities
should not cater to such public opinion
as demands laxity in law enforcement, it is
even more obvious that public opinion of
that unworthy sort is fostered by the lax
example of many of our Church members.
The professed Christian who gets his Sun-
day morning shave, trots down town for his
Sunday cigar, treats his children to Sunday-
purchased soda or candy, is giving his open
approval to habitual lawlessness and is him-
self a law-breaker. No amount of varnish
will hide the ugly fact.
There are a few facts to be soberly pon-
dered in this connection:
1. Even if stores and shops are open on
Sunday with the consent of the public, that
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fact, while it puts an additional responsi-

bility on the store-keeper and the official,
does not lessen the responsibility of the cus-
tomer in the least degree.
2. Even if other people, in crowds, pat-
ronize Sunday shops and stores, that fact
does not take away a jot of your culpability
if you do so. Being one of a crowd does
not make you less of an individual.
3. The apparent littleness of the offence
does not make it inoffensive. ‘The purchase
of a nickel's worth of candy on Sunday
seems a petty affair; but it is a big affair in
reality, being the proof of your attitude of
mind and heart. The only place to draw
the line is on the near side of lawless-
ness.
4. Your personal convenience as a factor
dwindles into nothingness when you are con-
fronted with the law of your State. The
formulated will of the people is an infinitely
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bigger and more sacred thing than the whim

of one man.
5. You, as a Church member, represent
your Church in the eyes of the community.
But every branch of the Church represented
here has protested, through its national or-
ganization, against the open Sunday. If
you, then, patronize the Sunday store, you
injure the honor of the Church of Christ.
6. You, as a Church member, are doubly
bound to observe the law. For you are
openly pledged to obey not only the civil
law but the moral law of God; and it would
puzzle the cleverest lawyer to justify the
man who, so pledged to observe a higher
law, is found to be habitually breaking a
lower one based upon the higher.
Think the matter over. It is not a small
matter at all. It is the question of basic
public morality; and on its answer hinges
much of the future welfare of the town.
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Think it over; and see if it is not your part

to take a higher stand.
Heartily yours,
The Dominie.

November I2.
Dear Man:
It did my heart good to hear you speak
out in such fiery style during the discussion
at the Men’s Club. I wish more of our
men felt so strongly about the evils that ex-
ist in our community. I have no patience
with the man who never finds due provoca-
tion to whole-souled anger.
I like the stalwart doctrine of the
Apostle: “Be ye angry—and sin not.”
This is rather startling, at first sight; yet the
Bible not only preaches it but illustrates it
times without number. On certain occa-
sions God is pictured as filled with righteous
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wrath. On similar occasions Jesus is shown

exhibiting the same sort of anger—Jesus,
meekest, mildest of men! Yet we are bid-
den to cultivate self-control, meekness, love.
How can these things be reconciled?
The anger Jesus shows, the anger the
Father reveals, the anger we are bidden to
cultivate, is simply self-possessed, judicial
indignation against moral evil. Such an
emotion must be a part of any lofty and pure
moral character. It is revealed to us as es-
sential to the very character of God; and
we are urged on to that moral height where
we shall find it a part of our character too.
Furthermore—and this is the important
point—we are to infer that the lack of
ability to feel such righteous anger is a most
lamentable lack. Its presence or absence,
when occasion arises, is a striking and ac-
curate test of the genuineness of our Chris-
tianity. “Do not tell me,” writes a keen
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student of human nature, “that a man loves

virtue and purity, in whom a deed of shame-
ful impurity and injustice awakens no moral
revulsion.”
It is proof of moral dulness or obliquity
when one can pass by the wounded man on
the Damascus road and feel no anger
against those who have treated him so bru-
tally. It is proof of the low level of our
moral aspirations that we can accept with-
out a single quiver of indignation the moral
evils past which our steps lead daily, the
age-old injustices which we still regard as
integral parts of the social order, as our
fathers regarded slavery.
One of the products of -the Christian’s
new heart is inevitably this: the ability to
feel just such a reasonable, righteous anger,
not at personal injuries, but at the great
moral evils infesting society. He who can-
not hate a great wrong, who cannot flame
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_ out in honest wrath at it, like a Wilberforce

or a Wendell Phillips, a Luther or a Knox,
like Jesus himself, must come near to being
looked upon by God as morally worthless.
It is characteristic, too, of such anger that
it is no mere flash-in-the-pan. It is a fire
that continues to burn while the evil that
causes it continues to exist. Such a deep
and virile emotion Browning had in mind
when he cried:
“. . . Endure no lie which needs your heart
And hand to push it out of mankind’s path.”
Cordially,
The Dominie.

November Ig.
My Friend:
I’ve been dipping again into the pathos of
Robbie Burns; and I’ve found a most pa-
thetic thing. When the poet dropped into
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 Letters From the Dominie

a pew in a certain church he found nothing

of the warmth he sought; and he wrote on
the fly-leaf of a hymnal:

“As cauld a wind as ever blew;

As cauld a kirk, and in't but few;
As cauld a minister's e’er spak’:
Ye's a’ be het ere I come back!”

And he went out. No one knows how

greatly his sinful, broken life might have
been changed, had he only found himself
that day in a warm, welcoming, friendly at-
mosphere!
It so happened a few days ago that one of
our workers, calling on a family of one-time
church-goers, invited them to attend this
church, and received from the good-wife
the flat answer: “Oh, the churches aré not
for poor people.”
Also it so happened, not many days before
that, that when 1 urged a man with a vicious
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 Letters From the Dominie

habit to come to church, I received the an-

swer, “Oh, they don't want fellows like me
in church!”
Also it happened, during the winter, that
I invited a man who had been having a hard
time to keep the wolf from the door to come
to church; and he said, “Oh, my clothes are
too ragged. They don't want people like
me in church!”
Also I have been hearing such remarks,
off and on, ever since I entered the pastor-
ate; and I do not like them, not because they
are not sincere, but because they are. Don’t
tell me that these people who say such things
are looking for excuses. They are not.
They really have a feeling that the churches
are not for them.
Is it so? So far as this church and
ninety-eight other churches out of a hun-
dred are concerned, it is decidedly not true.
The Church is Christ's, instituted by Him
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 Letters From the Dominie

for the distinct purpose of reaching and

winning and developing and using—whom?
All sorts and conditions of men, no less,
It is easy for the well-to-do churchgoer
to sit back in his pew and say indignantly
of these stay-at-homes, “What nonsense!
Let ’em drop their pride!” It is not non-
sense at all. Most of us, had we been in
straitened circumstances for years, would
have developed just as sensitive a cuticle.
Most of us, receiving just one slight from
the occasional snob found in church, would
show to-day that we possessed far more
pride than the man who does not feel in
place in the church.
And it is easy to say that the church—this
church—is a democratic institution. It is.
There are in it people of every walk in life,
of every grade of pocketbook. There are
few churches whose membership roll will
show as great a variety of occupations and
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 Letters From the Dominie

incomes; and we take honest pride in the

fact. But even so, is there not something
yet to be done to make the man of whom I
am thinking feel more at home here?
We can make church-going less of a dress-
parade. There is, after all, no reason what-
ever for anything more than decent, quiet,
unostentatious dress on the Lord’s Day.
Too many people excuse their silly pride in
clothes on the plea that they dress thus in
honor of God. Isaiah 3 and James 2 will
help us to see how it is possible to let the
glory of dress overshadow the glory of God.
And we can lay so much more emphasis
on men’s souls than on their purses that they
will be more easily convinced of what is
the truth: that it is the men, the souls, we
want, and that we want them for Christ.
It is the truth, but we have not always, nor
all of us, shown it to the newcomer. As soon
as the people of this church begin agonizing
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 Letters From the Dominie

for souls for Jesus, just so soon will the poor

man forget in this place the size of his purse.
And we can go out of our way to make
every one feel that he has a place here. To
be sure, we have been doing this; we can
conscientiously say it; and the church has
felt the benefit of this access of welcome and
fellowship. This is the right road. Let us
pursue it! But do not forget that the man
we are speaking of is of all men in the world
the quickest to discover when hospitality is
assumed. It is the genuine article he craves
—the heart, not only the hand, to welcome
him.
We do not all dress alike, talk alike, or
have the same tastes; we have not all com-
mitted the same sins; but we are all, never-
theless, sinners; and the church is for such.
That church sins against Christ himself that
is a “respecter of persons” where Christ is
not. If He, the Stainless, could eat and
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 Letters From the Dominie

drink with gross sinners as well as with

Pharisees, if He could spread out His arms
in welcome to the Magdalen as gladly as to
the rich young ruler, surely we, who are not
(to say the least) stainless, can not afford
to make distinctions, especially when we
are under orders to deliver His message “to
the whole creation.”
Yours,
The Dominie.

November 20.
My Friend:
What years these have been, these last
few! Another Thanksgiving season comes
around, and for what, in this still seemingly
chaotic world, shall national gratitude be ex-
pressed?
The one thing for which I am most pro-
foundly grateful as an American is the
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 Letters From the Dominie

vastly increased seriousness with which we

are taking ourselves. I know that the
cynics of Europe for many years sneered at
our idealism, calling it mere sentimentalism.
But I rejoice that on the one hand we have
not merely retained but have more highly
exalted our ideals since the Great War be-
gan, and that on the other hand Europe has
looked to us, in pathetic reversal of her
former attitude, as the one nation above
others best fitted by its ideals and its very
sentiments to serve the world in the long
crisis.
You remember how we felt when the
war begane From unqualified criticism
of the aggressor we advanced quickly to an
analysis of the life and ideals of all the na-
tions represented in “the far-flung battle-
lines.” I soon gathered, from what I heard
and read, that the average citizen came to
the conclusion that by none of them had the
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 Letters From the Dominie

title “Christian” been any too well won.

And then the men with whom I talked, the
papers I read, veered around, in their think-
ing, to the point where they began seriously
to examine our American ideals and life,
asking themselves soberly, “Are we, as a na-
tion, any less guilty than these, our brethren,
across the water?” “I tell you,” said one
man, a man of insight, to me (it was last
Thanksgiving Day), “we are not a bit bet-
ter than they.”
Our Thanksgiving Day, coming to us at
that time, was not at all inopportune. It
provided for us another “quiet hour,” in
which, sobered, chastened by events over-
seas, we were forced to turn our eyes inward
for the profitable study of ourselves as a na-
tion. So, each year’s Thanksgiving affords
the same blessed privilege.
And there are few surely who now, more
than a year or two ago, are so blind as not to
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 Letters From the Dominie

see that the exalted position of a superior

nation exempt from war’s ravages by her
righteous character is not for us to assume.
We are tarred with the same brush that has
tarred Europe. We live in a glass house,
and can ill afford to throw stones across the
ocean. Our national ideals have not been
altogether Christian: we have assumed that
compromise is necessary on many points; we
have accepted with the humility of a Heep
the confident assertions of our men in pub-
lic life that “Christ's ideals are too chimer-
ical for practical men to follow to the end.”
It would be easy to point out our sins;
there is no need. The most sobering con-
sideration is not so much the thought of spe-
cific evils as the consciousness of a tendency,
an atmosphere, that is not easily recognized
as truly Christian. That spirit of pride,
greed, self-righteousness, that has so re-
vealed itself abroad, is found here at home.
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 Letters From the Dominie

It is not easy to see that we are very differ-

ent, in the general spirit of our national life,
from the Christian nations that have been
crucifying Christ anew on the battlefields of
Europe. We call ourselves Christians; but

“A daw’s not counted a religious bird

Because he keeps a-cawing from a steeple.”

What Jesus demands of our nation to-day

is the far more consistent practice of Chris-
tianity. And the fundamental principle
that lies back of such practice is this: Na-
tional recognition of the proposition that
the standard of Christianity for a nation is
not one whit lower than, or different from,
the standard for a man. The acceptance or
rejection of this principle is, I believe, the
touchstone that proves a nation Christian or
non-Christian.
I said that I was glad that we were nearer
to realizing our ideals. I am not incon-
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 Letters From the Dominie

sistent. I believe that; but I believe that

there are many more steps to take. Europe
is right in one criticism: conceit is our weak-
ness. Weare a Christian nation, just as the
individual, though a sinner, may be a Chris-
tian man; but like the individual, the nation
must climb St. Augustine’s ladder. You
know what that means.
Faithfully yours,
The Dominie.

December 3.
Dear Friend:
I have gone back to my boyhood, reading
again, or rather devouring, the story of
David Livingstone. You ought to dig into
it; you'll be sure to dig your way through.
The extracts from his diaries are the best
parts—show up the man, lonely, pathetic,
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 Letters From the Dominie

gifted with a prophet's vision and a mar-

tyr's devotion.
Livingstone, like Dan Crawford of later
day, learned to think not only “black” but
deep, during those long years in the tall
grass of central Africa. Among the many
pithy sayings of those diaries of his there is
one that is well worth stamping on our men-
tal tablets. Hereitis:
“One ought to endeavor to devote the pe-
culiarities of his nature, whatever they may
be, to the Redeemer's service.”
That pierces pretty deep into the nature
of our self-dedication to the cause of our
Lord and Master. We commonly offer to
Him the usual, the commonplace elements
of ourselves; but what of the unusual? the
odd? the peculiar?
Suppose—just suppose—that you have a
violent temper. What an easy thing to
offer Jesus all but that temper! to leave it
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 Letters From the Dominie

still violent, still uncontrolled, still master!

But to give to Him that temper, tying it
down, subduing, controlling, mastering, till
you find that you have at last put at your
Lord’s disposal not an unwieldy, unfit thing,
but a powerful, determined will, under con-
trol and useful in His work—what a fine
gift is this! You have made of your un-
couth peculiarity a valuable asset for Christ.
Or suppose—we are merely supposing—
that your peculiarity is of some other sort, a
queerness, an oddity, which has marked you
as “peculiar” in your own eyes and, as you
perhaps rightly think, in the eyes of others.
The same process can be gone through with,
you shaping and getting into proper control
that which has seemed to be an obstacle in
your way, until of it you have made, again,
an asset for Christ.
We are too sensitive about our peculiar-
ities, and too well used to regarding them as
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 Letters From the Dominie

obstructions to our usefulness, useless in

themselves. Livingstone managed, by the
grace of God, to turn some of his unlovely
qualities into lovely ones, some of his ap-
parently bad qualities into good ones. His
method was simple; he gave himself to God,
entirely to God; and he endeavored to make
every side of his nature serve God.
A good program to follow! There is a
scarcity of people who are not possessed of
some unlovely, unfit habits or characteris-
tics. You remember what the old Quaker
said to his wife: “All the world's peculiar
except thee and me; and sometimes I have
doubts of thee.” All of us are needing this
Livingstonian, or better, Christian, disci-
pline! It will take patience and prayer and
humility and good courage; but who doubts
that it is well worth while “to devote the pe-
culiarities of his nature, whatever they may
be, to the Redeemer's service”? What a lot
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 Letters From the Dominie

of energy, now misspent, would be turned

into right channels if all our unruly tempers
were harnessed for Christ! What a vol-
ume of speech and song for Him, if all the
peculiar, gossipy tongues were trained to ce-
lestial speech! What a tremendous object
lesson of the power of Christ, if physical
weakness or peculiarity or pain were de-
voted to the Redeemer’s service!
« Paul accomplished this with his infirm-
ity, whatever that was; somehow he made
that infirmity work for Christ. Living-
stone did it. We can do it, with the help
of Christ. Sincerely,
The Dominie.

December Io.
My Friend:
May I tell you something?
I am heartily sick of hearing our people
adopt the apologetic tone.
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 Letters From the Dominie

We—lI include the dominie with the rest

—do altogether too much of that sort of
thing.
There is no such tone in your voice when
you invite some one to your house, or to the
“movies,” or to a club meeting. You urge
it, heartily, enthusiastically. Here is some-
thing good; and you want them to share
in it.
But so many of us take a different tone in
speaking of anything religious. We are
deeply embarrassed if religion be touched
upon in conversation, and we gently turn the
subject. What nonsense! The most truly
religious people are just like children in
that religion is to them the natural thing,
not out of place anywhere. Moreover, you
will find no other topic so weighty, so profit-
able.
We evade the embarrassing use of the
names “God” and “Jesus” by circumlocu-
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 Letters From the Dominie

tions. We are willing to talk about “the

Lord,” strange to say, when we hesitate to
bring Jesus in by name.
And we adopt the same tone in asking a
friend or neighbor to come to church, as 1f
to say, “Of course, I know it's a bother to
you to get started; and I appreciate the fact
that the gospel does not compare with the
Sunday paper; and it may be the minister’s
off-day; but, if you have nothing better to
do, and if it’s a good day, and if you get up
early, I hope you'll come.” Who would
come if such words invited him? Yet they
are implied in the tone and casual nature of
our invitation.
So, too, we apologize when we talk per-
sonal religion with a man, and this in so ~
many words: “I know I am intruding, old
man, but just let me get in a word. < .”
Or else our apology takes another form:
we simply avoid direct approach to religion,
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 Letters From the Dominie

but we invite the man to the Men's Club, or

the woman to the Ladies’ Aid, “to get ac-
quainted”—and then we stop.
This will never do! Is your church a
thing to be ashamed of? Is the gospel to be
apologized for? Is Jesus to be carefully
disguised when you introduce Him to your
friends? Let us cease apology. Your Sav-
iour, your faith, your Church, your Bible,
your Christian friends—none needs any
such thing. It is time for us to show our
neighbors that we have the greatest thing in
the world, which they, too, should have.
Out in the West cities have been trans-
formed by what you smile at. as “Booster
Clubs.” Ah, but there’s good psychology
back of the “booster” idea, the same truth
that lies back of good salesmanship. When
people act and speak with pride and en-
thusiasm, others are impressed.
Tell us, what degree of conviction and
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 Letters From the Dominie

zeal do men detect in your voice when you

speak for Christ?
“Jesus, and shall it ever be,
A mortal man ashamed of Thee?
Ashamed of Thee, whom angels praise,
Whose glories shine through endless days?

“Ashamed of Jesus! Yes, I may

When I’ve no guilt to wash away,
No tear to wipe, no good to crave,
No fears to quell, no soul to save.

“Till then—nor is my boasting vain—

Till then I boast a Saviour slain!
And, oh, may this my glory be,
That Christ is not ashamed of me!”

Faithfully yours,
The Dominte.
 Letters From the Dominie

December 17.
Good Friend:
For weeks past the postman and the ex-
pressman and the newspaper have advised
us that Christmas is coming. For that mat-
ter, the planning and whispering, the lock-
ing of drawers and closets, the amazing
busy-ness of the youngsters and oldsters in
our own homes, would have been sufficient
to remind the dullest of its happy approach.
My mind has been dwelling on one of the
great anomalies of the season. For, strange
to say, there are some people in this Chris-
tian land to whom Christmas, instead of
lightening burdens, brings heavier ones.
We think of it as the one happiest day in the
year.

“Carol, carol, Christians,

Carol joyfully!”

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 Letters From the Dominie

We expect to see nothing but happy faces,

wreathed in smiles.
But there are some who will heave a sigh
of genuine relief when Christmas is over
for another year.
Who are they?
Some are shop-girls, errand-boys, clerks,
delivery men, postmen, package tiers,
scrub-women—shall I go on? They flinch
from the thought of the “holiday season.”
They think at once of late hours and early
hours, of a rush that leaves no time for
meals, of solid weeks of breathless haste and
unbroken weariness. And all because you
and I and the rest will insist on putting off
our Christmas shopping until the day is
upon us. If you want to give such people a
better feeling about Christmas, you ought to
put aside your convenience and consult
theirs. A little careful planning, a little
sacrifice, and you will have done your part
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 Letters From the Dominie

in lightening their Christmas burdens. At

Christmas-time our procrastination is the
thief not only of our time but of other folk's
treasures Of health and strength.
Then there are the unhappy people to
whom Christmas gifts are a sort of social
function, to be sacredly attended to at any
cost. How they scheme and skimp; how
neatly they pass on year-old undesirables
(with the aid of the eraser) ; how they groan
under the obligation to send Mrs. X. a pres-
ent because she sent them one last year!
What silly, nerve-racking, superficial busi-
ness this is! No wonder Christmas is a
bugbear, with all the heart taken out of it in
this fashion. The cure? Sincerity, noth-
ing less.
And then among the unhappy ones are
the men and women who, holding the purse-
strings that confine moderate incomes, yet
feel bound to give gifts far beyond their
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 Letters From the Dominie

means in number and price. What a lot of

this there is! People with a $1,500 income
suddenly, for the week before Christmas,
living, so far as purchases go, at a $5,000
rate; and the $5,000 people spending money
—or “charging it”—at a princely rate!
And then the reckoning! Bills run up only
to be paid in driblets through the spring;
other bills delayed to give these the right of
way; worry and care a-plenty into the bar-
gain. Christmas a joy? Not for these
people! The cure? Simplicity, nothing
less.
There is something for us all in the spec-
tacle of people who do not feel unalloyed
joy in the thought of Christmas. God
keep us from being of their number and
from contributing to the causes of their lack
of joy at Christmas-time.
Cordially,
The Dominie.
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Letters From the Dominie

December 24.
My Friend:
Do you remember the name our early
Anglo-Saxon ancestors gave to the day on
which they celebrated the birth of Jesus?
“Christs Mass” they called it. The very
meaning of the words sets it above all ordi-
nary holidays and festivals.
Christmas is a holiday. There is no fes-
tival known to our civilization that is so rich
in social customs and pleasures. All Chris-
tendom tries to reach home before Christ-
mas! It means reunion, gifts, kindnesses,
smiling faces, happy hearts; it conjures up
visions of a table groaning with good things,
a row of stockings stuffed out to grotesque-
ness, a tree glittering and blazing and
topped by Santa Claus.
But did it ever occur to you that most of
our Christmas customs have come to us
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 Letters From the Dominie

from heathenism? When Christianity con-

quered the Roman Empire it adopted and
transformed, for its use at Christmas-time,
some of the old Roman customs. When the
missionary of the Cross penetrated the for-
ests of Germany he found our ancestors
keeping their great Yule festival at the time
of the winter solstice, when, as they thought,
the gods of earth and air began to stir into
life again as the fiery sun-wheel began to re-
turn towards spring. And the preacher of
Christ, while he won these forefathers of
ours, borrowed their Yule-tide customs and
cleansed them and transformed them.
Back of our Christmas feast, our Christmas-
tree, our Christmas plays and pantomimes,
our Christmas carols, there is the story of a
wonderfully beautiful transformation of
things heathen, unclean, to the service of
Christ on Christmas day. The very social
customs and pleasures of your Christmas
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 Letters From the Dominie

(your Christmas dinner included) are elo-

quent of the power of your Saviour.
And Christmas is a holy day. That is
the original meaning of the word “holiday,”
and it holds true in regard to Christmas. It
is a holy day. It is a day of good feeling,
of merriment; it is rightly our great social
festival for high and low, rich and poor;
but it is more: it is the day which com-
memorates the birth of our Saviour. There
is a contagious happiness about the season
in which all people share; but there is a pe-
culiar happiness about it in which only
those who know Jesus and love Him can
share.
It is surprising, when one stops to think,
how much of mere sentiment can be given
to Him and to his Birthday, while every-
thing beyond sentiment is withheld. To
feel the heart stirred by the sweet harmonies
of Christmas carols; to be moved to an un-
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wonted benevolence; to feel a vague, unac-

customea, yet not unpleasant, exaltation of
spirit for a fortnight—this is very far from
the tribute Jesus asks and deserves. To
bring our reverent and kindly sentiments out
for a Christmas airing, and no more? To
become temporary Scrooges—renovated, but
for the holidays only? Surely this is but
worthless sentimentality if this is all.
A Merry Christmas to you! And may
it be the kind of merriment that springs from
a heart that has good right to be joyful, a
heart right with God and man. The cheer-
iest handshake, the brightest smile, the sin-
cerest greeting, the heartiest laugh, at this
season of laughter and good cheer, should be
his who has interchanged gifts with his Fa-
ther, receiving the unspeakable Gift that
was given on Christmas Day, and giving in
turn the incalculable gift of self. May they
be yours!
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 Letters From the Dominie

“I have brought to thee, down from my home

above,
Salvation full and free, my pardon and my
love.
Great gifts I brought to thee;
What hast thou brought to Me?

“Oh, let thy life be given, thy years for Me

be spent;
World-fetters all be riven, and joy with suf-
fering blent.
I gave myself for thee;
Give thou thyself to Me!”
- Cordially,
The Dominie.

December 31.
My dear Friend:
Here we are at the year’s end, facing the
unknown, like a certain ancient traveller
with whom you are acquainted.
Paul is at the wharf. The elders of the
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church of Ephesus have walked the thirty-

six miles to Miletus to say good-by. They
are afraid for his future; but he is not
afraid: “Now, behold, I go bound in the
spirit unto Jerusalem, not knowing the
things that shall befall me there: save that
the Holy Spirit testifieth unto me that...
bonds and afflictions abide me. But I hold
not my life of any account as dear unto my-
self, sc that I may accomplish my course.”
The last bale and cask are aboard. Paul,
rising from his knees, tears himself from
the tearful embrace of his friends and steps
on deck. The gangplank is withdrawn—
“Cast off!” So Paul sails into the future.
In much the same way we ought to begin
the year.
The ship is getting under way; willy-
nilly, we are passengers; and we know not
what lies before us. The future, even the
morrow, is hidden. Bonds and afflictions
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may await us too; or the more insidious trials

of prosperity and ease may lie before us!
But, while we’re casting off, what of the
old year? Few can speak as confidently as
Paul of the record of the past—“serving
the Lord with all lowliness of mind, with
tears, with trials, shrinking not.” We have
made a muddle of the old year. It has a
sorry tale to tell of unfinished work, of
wasted energies, of follies and sins. What
of it? Just this: set it right, and at once,
with God. “If any man sin, we have an
Advocate with the Father, Jesus Christ the
righteous.” Let’s start the new year with no
uncomfortable past as luggage. :
And for the unknown before us? Just
what Paul did: go straight ahead into it,
whatever may come, “holding not our life
of any account as dear unto ourselves, so that
we may accomplish our course.” There's
Paul’s secret: the future held no terrors
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for him: the mystery of the unknown did not

blanch his cheek; he could board ship and
head into any weather with perfect confi-
dence, because he was on the path of duty.
His Lord had ordered him aboard; and,
dark as the future was, aboard Paul went
cheerily. There can be nothing to dread in
the new year for him who enters on it with
the determination to serve Christ through it
all.

“I know not what awaits me;

God kindly veils my eyes;
And o'er each step of my onward way
He makes new scenes to rise;
And every joy He sends me comes
A sweet and glad surprise.

“I see not a step before me

As I tread on another year;
But the past is in God’s keeping,
The future His love shall clear;

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And what looks dark in the distance

May brighten as I draw near.

“So on I go, not knowing;

I would not if I might;
I'd rather walk in the dark with God
Than go alone in the light;
I'd rather walk by faith with Him
Than go alone by sight.”

If conscience be clear and you be bent

on the Lord’s business, no need to wish you
a Happy New Year: it will surely come.
So, throughout the New Year, old friend,
“the Lord bless you and keep you; the Lord
make his face to shine upon you and be
gracious unto you; the Lord lift up his
countenance upon you and give you peace.”
Sincerely your friend,
The Dominte.
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 4399

DATE DUE BORROWER'S NAME

Pee aad: ests ase

Letters from the Domnié

29E. Y

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