CHAPTER XI. "It is a great thing to be a Universalist minister, thoroughly furnished -morally, intellectually, spiritually-for the work which our Church needs and the time demands. No higher office can be aspired to; no graver responsibilities can be assumed." Our New Departure. THE stillness of summer was in the air; the majesty of nature rested on plain and forest and brooded in misty glory above the encompassing hills—the hills of northern Arabiaat the base of which, thirty-six centuries ago, the straggling camp of a nomadic host dotted the landscape with its myriad tents. Wanderers and fugitives, slaves and the sons of slaves, they had for forty years traversed plain and desert -the fertile wheat-fields of Egypt, the sterile ridges of Suez, the sand-dunes and oases of Arabia, and the rising slopes of Palestine. Fleeing from a land of bondage, too often in the presence of hardship and defeat they had hankered after the flesh-pots of Egypt;" but learning wisdom through bitter experience they had followed, now grudgingly, now willingly, the mysterious directions of a single leader; and oft in rebellion, oft in doubt, but always led onward towards a certain goal, they had borne forward the ark of the covenant, and now rested, their journey almost accomplished, on the very borders of the promised land. A half million restless and turbulent spirits were these unhoused fugitives, bronzed and swarthy with the suns and seasons between Nile and Nebo, and the men of Gilead and of Bashan, of Midian and of Moab, had heard the trumpet peal and tested the prowess of this invading host, while the Amalekite robbers had fled in dismay before the spear, the arrow, and the short, sharp sword of the men of Israel as the high-peaked caps and leathern breastplates pressed forward in fight behind the bullock-standard of Ephraim led on by Joshua, the warrior-chief. Behind them lay the wilderness, which they and their fathers had traversed for forty years; before them, just over the ragged peaks of Pisgah, spread the fair valley of the Jordan—the land towards which they had toiled and struggled, and which, not however without further trials and troubles, they were soon to possess, from the green slopes of Olivet to the snowcrowned head of Hermon. Above them towered the forbidding heights that barred their passage, gray limestone and black basalt dulling even the blue of the early summer with a stern and sombre cast; while, stretching far away, the thronging tents dotted the brown verdure and scarlet interlacing of those North Arabian foothills. Now, in the sight of all the host, of all these wanderers who, led by him, have passed from slavery to freedom, out of the cloud-shrouded Tabernacle and up the sharp ascent of Nebo, passes the "servant of Jehovah"-Moses, emancipator, leader, and lawgiver. The mists of two-score centuries dim the solemn scene, and hang, an almost impenetrable screen, between those restless nomads of the Arabian hill-slopes and the prosaic, pushing world of to-day, but above all the tangling masses of revelation and romance one figure stands supreme -the great prophet of God, like unto whom there arose not a prophet since in Israel "-Moses, "whom the Lord knew face to face." Forty years a prince of Egypt, forty years an exile in the tents of Jethro, forty years a leader of the hosts of Israel, his one hundred and twenty years of life were crowded with experiences and eloquent with action. Himself half shepherd, half diplomat, he could feel all the woes and wants of his nation, and could educate and train them for the higher duties they were to assume. 'Meek above all the men that were upon the face of the earth," he could yet front undauntedly the wrath of a tyrannical Pharaoh, the rebellious threats of his factious followers, and the supreme glory of the Great and Revealed Presence. From the burning bush of Horeb to the thunders of Sinai he had obeyed the " word of the Lord" as it came 66 66 to him; and whether in this age of fact and materialism we regard his acts as the results of revelation or of sagacity, we know that, the Lord Christ alone excepted, no man has ever walked the earth more loyal to conviction or more lofty in aim. Now to him has come the last divine command: 'Get thee up unto Mount Nebo, and die in the mount, and be gathered unto thy people." Unhesitatingly, without a remonstrance at this will of the Lord which grants him but a sight of the promised land, he prepares to depart. His last word spoken —that double song of prophecy and blessing that rings through the ages, grand and solemn in its strength and pathos-he goes with firm and unfaltering step up the bleak ascent of Nebo, until, lost from view, he passes out of the lives and ken of the weeping throng that gaze after him from the tents of Israel-out of human life into the greater life of that Hereafter from which the Lord he served so faithfully sends down his memory for the strengthening of imperfect man. Cloud-enwrapped, he vanishes from human eyes; wrapped in the mystic glory of the Eternal Presence he surveys all the promised land "unto Dan and Gilead and the utmost sea.' All these he views from the heights of Nebo, and then— So Moses the servant of the Lord died there in the land of Moab, according to the word of the Lord. And He buried him in a valley in the land of Moab, over against Beth-peor; but no man knoweth of his sepulchre unto this day." No man of mettle rusts out. He must work in harness until he drops. The active life is alone the contented one, and even beneath the frosts and snows of winter may lie the ceaseless endeavors of an eternal spring. Grit," says Whipple, "is the grain of character," and grit and action will keep the mind in play, though the back may be bent and crows'-feet and wrinkles seam the worker's face. "He lives longest who lives best," once said Dr. Brooks in a sermon on Growing Old; "but many spared to totter into the grave, and said by the world to be gathered at length like shocks of corn fully ripe, have never really begun to live, and would still be babes or dwarfs-never really old as men and women, though they should live to the age of Methuselah." The man of purpose balked in one endeavor will not sit down discouraged, but while life and strength remain will work on to the end. Looking calmly back over the years that lie behind him, he can accept all of life's experiences as helps to wiser action, and can even see around his heaviest cross and above his stoniest pathway the pillar of cloud that hides the loving purpose of his Father and his Guide. So the following words, written almost at the sunset hour by the man to whose life-record these pages are devoted, may not be here amiss. In a document found among his private papers he has written : My life has not been without its trials; and how heavy I have sometimes found the great cross which was laid upon me in my boyhood, and which I have ever since had to bear, only He who knows all things and myself have known. But life, notwithstanding, has been a happiness to me, and I desire to express my undoubting conviction that the trials I have known, as certainly as the choicest blessings I have received, have been appointed or permitted by my Heavenly Father for my welfare. I see a wise and gracious Providence as having been always attendant upon me. I charge none of my shortcomings or sins to God's account. For them I hold myself solely responsible; nor, however He may have overruled or used them, or may hereafter overrule or use them, do I believe that it was in any sense good for me, or that in any sense it ever will be good for me, that I committed them. Sin is always a curse: none the less a wrong and a curse because God may contrive to accomplish His purpose in spite of it, or even in the use of it, making the wrath of man to praise Him.' Only the path of duty is or can be the path of good. But Providential allotments are God's; and when we have tried to adjust ourselves to His requirements, it is our privilege to discern His hand in every event that concerns us, and to be calmly confident that He designs it somehow to subserve our profit. To strengthen you, my children, if I can in this assurance, I leave this testimony with you. As I look back over the road I have travelled, I see many things which, when they occurred, seemed to me very dark and hard and discouraging, but which I now perceive have resulted in desirable issues · which could only thus have been reached; and, sore as it has been, I am satisfied that even for the cross so early laid upon me I have reason to be thankful as a merciful means of guiding me into a better path than I should otherwise have chosen. I have no doubt that my life has been made thus to answer higher ends than it would have served had I been left to myself." came. It was a severe trial when, in 1868, the warnings of physicians compelled him to cease from further work as General Secretary, and to resign his office. Absorbed by his labors and full of plans for future effort, he had never deemed it possible that he could break down until the break actually Thus forced to retire, he reluctantly withdrew from the field of active work as General Secretary, and once more went into the ranks as pastor and preacher. But his interest and zeal in the Convention work never slackened, and, elected one of the Board of Trustees, he served the Church in that capacity until the day of his death with a fidelity and devotedness that found fitting expression in words of tribute thus placed on record by his associates : "In view of the solemn event which has deprived the Board of a wise counsellor, a most diligent and faithful trustee, and each member of the same of a warm personal friend, we would put on record our sense of the loss which this body has sustained. The ability and consecration of our late associate are matters of common report. His praise is in all our churches. As a member of this Board he was constant in the discharge of his duty; and not only owing to his large wisdom and conscientious devotion to every interest of our Church, but by his thorough knowledge of the plan of our work in all its details from its inception, his counsels were of incalculable worth. We feel that by his death a gap has been made which cannot easily be filled." Experience, which is often the hardest of taskmasters, is not unfrequently the most lavish of recompensers, and when the shadows on life's dial mark the fiftieth year-that "Fair time of calm resolve-of sober thought! |