Dan B. Brummitt JOHN WESLEY, JR.'S BRINGING UP Those words of Phil Khamis at Morning Watch kept popping into J. W.'s head in the days following the Institute—"Everything I have to-day has come to me by the goodness of Christian people." "I know that must be true," he would say to himself, "but it's worth tracing back." The preacher was coming over to supper one night, as he loved to do; and J. W. made up his mind to bring Phil's idea into the table talk. He was on even better terms with the preacher than he used to be. J. W.'s mother hadn't said much about the Institute, though she had listened eagerly to all his talk of the crowded week, and she was vaguely ill at ease. She had hoped for something, she did not know just what, from the Institute, and she was not yet sure whether she ought to feel disappointed. But she provided a fine supper, to which the menfolk paid the most practical and sincere of all compliments. And since nobody had anything else on for the evening, there was plenty of time for talk. The mother had a moment aside with the minister, and there was a touch of anxiety in her question: "Do you think the Institute helped my boy?" And the pastor had just time to whisper back, "It helped him much, but he gave even more help than he got You have reason to be proud of him. I am. He's growing." It was not very definite, but it brought no small comfort to the mother's heart. "This Institute idea seems to be everywhere," said J. W., Sr., to the pastor, "but how did it get started? I used to be in the Epworth League, but we had nothing like it then." "That's not so very much of a story," said the pastor. "We have the Institute idea because we had to have it. And so the League gave it form and substance." "Well," J. W., Jr., chimed in, "I think it's about time more people knew about it. I've wanted to ask you to explain it ever since we came back from the Institute." The pastor nodded. "I know; but remember even you were not really interested until you had been at an Institute. Do you think our Institute just happened, J. W.?" "I know it didn't," J. W. replied. "Somebody did a lot of planning and scheming." "Yes," returned the pastor, "but did you notice that a large part of its work touched subjects familiar to you, the local League activities, for instance—the devotional meeting, and Mission Study, and stewardship, and the scope of the business meeting which not so long ago elected you to membership?" "Yes, you're right, though I don't see anything remarkable in that. It was a League Institute, wasn't it?" "Certainly. But still, if there had not been any local Chapter, there could have been no Institute, don't you see? What I mean is that the Institute came because your Chapter needed it, and you needed it; not because the Institute needed you. It's merely a matter of tracing' things back." J. W., Jr., thought of Phil's words. "Sure enough," he responded, "tracing things back makes a lot of difference. I've been going over what Phil Khamis said at the Morning Watch—you remember? How everything he has to-day has come to him by the goodness of Christian people. At first I thought that was no more than a description of his particular case, because I knew how true it was. But when you begin to trace things back, as you say, what's true about Phil is true about all of us—anyway, about me." "How is that, son?" Mrs. Farwell asked gently. "Well, I mean," J. W. smilingly answered her, though flushing a little too, "the Institute, that seemed to me something new and different, is really tied up to what you folks and the whole church have been doing for me as far back as I can remember." And so they talked, parents and pastor and J. W., quite naturally and freely, of the long chain of interest which had linked his life to the church's life, back through all the years to his babyhood. J. W. had been in the League only a year or two, but it seemed to him that he had been in the church always. And the memories of his boyhood which had the church for center, were intimately interwoven with all his other experiences. As his father said, "I guess, pastor, if you tried to take out of J. W.'s young life all that the church has meant to him, it would puzzle a professor to explain whatever might be left." J. W. had been born in the country, on a farm whose every tree and fence corner he still loved. His first recollections of the church as part of his life had to do with the Sunday morning drive to the little meetinghouse, which stood where the road to town skirted a low hill. It had horse-sheds on one side, stretching back to the rear of the church lot, and some sizeable elms and maples were grouped about its front and sides. It was a one-room structure, unless you counted the space curtained off for the primary class, as J. W. always did. For back of this curtain's protecting folds he had begun his career as a Sunday school pupil and had made his first friends. At that time even district school was yet a year ahead of him, with its wider democratic joys and griefs, and its larger freedom from parental oversight. When J. W. was six, going on seven, the family moved to Delafield, though retaining ownership of the farm, and for years J. W. spent nearly every Saturday on the old place, in free and blissful association with the Shenk children, whose father was the tenant. It was here that he and Martin Luther Shenk, already introduced as "Marty," being of the same age, had sworn eternal friendship, a vow which as yet showed no sign whatever of the ravages of time. There were three other children, Ben and Alice and Jeannette. Now, Jeannette was only two years younger than J.W. and Marty, but through most of the years when J.W. was going every week to the farm, she was "only a girl," and far behind the two chums by all the exacting standards which to boys are more than law. But there came a time---- J.W., Sr., reveling in reminiscences before so patient a listener as the preacher, though it was an old story, rehearsed how he had served for years as superintendent of the country Sunday school, and how Mrs. Farwell was teacher of the Girls' Bible Class. Their home had always been Methodist headquarters, he said, as old-time Methodists usually say, and with truth. When they moved to town the change brought no loss of church interest; the Farwells merely transferred it entire to Delafield First Church ("First" being more a title than a numeral, since there was no second). But First Church had not a few progressive saints. They wanted the best that could be had, so J.W., Sr., Sunday school enthusiast that he was, found himself in a new place of opportunity. The Board of Sunday Schools at Chicago had been asked to help Delafield get itself in line with the best ideas and methods, and J.W., Sr., found the beginnings, at least, of Sunday school science in active operation. At first, like a true country man, he was a little inclined to counsels of caution, but in his country Sunday school work he had acquired such strong opinions about old fogies that he dreaded being thought one himself. "And that's how it happened," he said with a laugh, "that I was soon reckoned among the progressives. In that first year I helped 'em win their fight for separate departments, and before long we had the makings of a real graded Sunday school. Don't you remember, mother, how proud you were when young J.W. there was graduated from the Primary into the Junior Department?" All this was before Pastor Drury's time, of course, but he had gone through the same experiences in other pastorates, and needed not to have anything explained. "How long have we had a teacher-training class in our Sunday school?" he asked. That called out the story of the struggles to set up what many openly called a useless and foolish enterprise. The Sunday school was chronically short of teachers, and yet J.W., Sr., and the other reformers insisted on taking out of the regular classes the best teachers in the school, and a score of the most promising young people. This group went off by itself into a remote part of the church. It furnished no substitute teachers. It wasn't heard of at all. And loud were the complaints about its crippling the school. "But, pastor, you should have seen the difference when the first dozen real teachers came out of that class; we were able to reorganize the whole school. Our John Wesley got a teacher he'll never forget. And, of course, we kept the training class going; it's never stopped since. The Board of Sunday Schools has given us the courses and helped us keep the class up to grade in its work, and you know what sort of teachers we have now." The pastor did, and was properly thankful. In some of his other pastorates it had been otherwise, to his sorrow.

"Speaking of the Board of Sunday Schools," the elder Farwell resumed, for this was a hobby he missed no chance to ride, "it made all the difference with us in our work for a better Sunday school—gave us expert backing, you know. And I notice by its latest annual report—yes, I always get a copy, though J.W. thinks it dry reading—that it is helping Sunday schools by the thousand, not in this country only, but wherever in the world our church is at work. Of course you know how it starts Sunday schools, and how often they grow into churches. Well, it didn't quite do that here, but this church is a sight better and bigger because we began to take the Board's advice when we did. It was a good thing for our boy, and many another boy and girl, that the Board woke us up."

"It hasn't all been easy work, though," the minister suggested. "I remember that when I came I found there was a good deal of discontent over the Graded Lessons."

"Sure there was," said J.W., Sr. "We had all been brought up on the Uniform Lessons, and most of us thought they were just right. Besides, we rather enjoyed thinking of ourselves as keeping step with the whole Sunday school world—all over the wide earth everybody studying the same scripture on the same Sunday. And that was a big idea to get into the minds of Christians of every name everywhere."

"Yes, but, Dad," put in J.W., "what was the good of it if the lessons didn't fit everybody? Did people think that the kids in the primary and their mothers in ma's class ought to study the same lesson? or did they think they could fit the same lesson to everybody by the different notes they put into the Quarterlies?"

"Well, son," his father replied, "I reckon we thought both ways. And I'm not so sure yet that it can't be done. But if one thing more than another reconciled me to the Graded Lessons, it was that they made being a Sunday school teacher a good deal bigger job than it had ever been. It was harder work, because every lesson had to be studied by the teacher, and in a different way from what was thought good enough in the old days. And I'm for anything, Graded Lessons or whatever, that'll make people take Sunday school teaching more seriously."

Then Mrs. Farwell ventured to take up the story. It was about that time, in the very beginning of the Drury pastorate, that J.W. joined the church on probation; much to her surprise and humbling.

"I hadn't even thought of it," she said, "though I should have been the first one. He had been getting ready in the Junior League, as I very well knew, but one day, as you may remember"—Brother Drury did, for that day was the real beginning of this story—"you made an invitation at the end of a real simple sermon, and if J.W., Jr., didn't get right up from my side and walk straight to the front!"

After that there had been a probationers' class, with J.W. and perhaps twenty others meeting the pastor every week for straight religious teaching, so that at Easter, when they came up for membership, what with their Sunday school and Junior League training, and what with the pastor's more personal instruction, they were able to pass a pretty fair examination on the great Christian truths, and on the general scheme of the church's work.

"For a time mother was a trifle disappointed that J.W. hadn't waited for the big revival we had the next year," said J.W., Sr., "but I think she was glad afterward."

"Yes, I was," the mother said. "You see, I had been brought up to believe in revivals, and I do yet, but we had no such chance to get the right Christian start when we were little children, as J.W. has had, if you'll let his mother say so, and that made a revival a good deal more important to us when our church did get ready for one. But the other way is all right too. I'm mother enough to be glad J.W. hasn't known some of the experiences the boys of my time went through, and the girls as well. He's no worse a Christian for having been right in the church ever since I put him in short dresses, are you, son? And I will say that his father was always with me in holding to the promises we made when he was baptized. We've not done what we might, but we've never forgotten that those promises were made to be kept."

J.W. felt none of his old shrinking from such talk, especially since the Institute, and yet he had the healthy boy's reluctance to discuss himself in company. But this was interesting him, outside himself.

He turned to the pastor. "That's what I meant when I told you what Phil said. I'm all for the church, and church people and church ways; why shouldn't I be? I've never known anything else. I remember well the one thing I didn't like when it first came along; and that was the new sort of Christmas celebration Dad and the others planned when I was ten or eleven. You know what Christmas means to such kids, and I guess we were all selfish together, because we didn't use our heads. Well, the Sunday school proposed that instead of us all getting something we should all give something. It looked pretty cheap to us little fellows at first, and our teacher had all he could do to hold us in line. But let me tell you, every boy was for it when the time came. We found that we could have as much fun giving things away as we could grabbing things, and, anyway, nobody really cared for those mosquito net stockings filled with nuts and candy and one orange. It was only the idea of getting something for nothing. That first 'giving Christmas,' I remember, our class dressed up as delivery boys, and we came on the platform with enough groceries for a small truck load, that we had bought with our own money. The orphanage got 'em next day. And one class was dusty millers, carrying sacks of flour, and another put on a stunt of searching for Captain Kidd's treasure, and they found a keg of shining coins (new pennies, they were)—more than a thousand of 'em. Everything went to the orphanage, or the hospital; and then when the Board of Sunday Schools began to get us interested in other Sunday schools and in missions—I remember a scheme they call a 'Partnership Plan' that was great; I don't know what happened to it—I got right into the game every time."

"How do you happen to know so much about the Board of Sunday Schools, J.W.?" asked Mr. Drury.

"Oh, that's easy. You know how it is in our Sunday school: they don't make one or two of us young fellows serve as librarians and secretaries and such and miss all the class work: they have more help, and we all get into class for the lesson. Well, two years ago Dad told me you had nominated me for something at the annual Sunday school meeting. It was only a sort of assistant secretary's job, but very soon I began to catch on, and I've seen a lot of the letters and leaflets that come from the Board in Chicago. Well, let me tell you that Board of Sunday Schools is a whale of a machine. Why, it's the whole church at work to make better Sunday schools, and more of 'em. They have Sunday school workers in all sorts of wild places, and Sunday school missionaries in foreign lands. Yes, and last year I happened to meet one of their secretaries, at your house, you may remember. But you'd never think he was just a secretary, he was so keen and wide awake. He knew the Boy Scouts from A to Z, and that got me, 'cause I'm not so old that I've forgotten my scouting. And he knew baseball, and boys' books, and all that. Don't you think, Brother Drury, if more of the fellows knew what the real Sunday school work is they would take to it like colts to a bran mash?"

"They couldn't help it," said the pastor. "And you may have noticed that your father and the other people of our Sunday School Board are trying to get them to find out some of the things you have found out. For instance, you know what the two organized classes of high-school freshmen are doing, and the other organized classes. Seems to me their members are finding out that Sunday school is something big and fine."

"That they are," Mrs. Farwell agreed, "and you mustn't forget my wonderful class of young married women, and the men's class of nearly a hundred. I think our Sunday school has really begun to change the ideas of a lot of people. Just think how little trouble we have now with what Graded Lessons we have, and how happy all our teachers are because they have the helps they need for just the sort of pupils that are in their classes."

"That's so," said J.W., Sr. "I don't suppose even old Brother Barnacle, 'sot' as he is, would vote to go back to the times when the superintendent reviewed the lesson the same way the teachers taught it, from a printed list of questions. Seems as if I can hear Henry J. Locke yet—his farm joins ours down by the creek—when he conducted the reviewing at Deep Creek. He would hold his quarterly at arm's length to favor his eyes, and then look up from it to the school and shoot the question at everybody, 'And what did Peter do _then_, HEY?' He sure did come out strong on Peter; but I'll say this for him, that he never skipped a question from start to finish."

All three laughed a little over Henry J. Locke, and then the pastor said he mustn't stay much longer. But he did want to back up J.W.'s belief that what Phil Khamis had said was true of everybody—we are all debtors.

"Look at this young J.W. here, will you," he said to the father and mother, for once letting himself go, "with a name he's proud of, and a home life that many a Fifth Avenue and Lake Shore Drive family would be glad to pay a million for, if such goods were on sale in the stores. I'm going to tell him something he already knows. Young man," and there was a gleam in the pastor's eye that was not all to the credit of the work he was praising, "you owe a big debt to the Sunday school. I'm not jealous for the church, or for any other part of it, but by your own admission the Sunday school has had a lot to do with your education. Very well; remember it is a part of what Phil said, and what you are because of the Sunday school you have become by the goodness of Christian people. I don't think you'll forget it, seeing that you have two of that sort of people in your own home all the time."

And then, with a fine naturalness the little group knelt by the chairs, and two of the four, he who was pastor of the whole flock and he who with simple dignity was priest in his own household, gave thanks to God for the manifold goodness of Christian people, of which they were all partakers every day.

As he went home, Walter Drury thought of the long days that stretched out ahead before he could see the outcomes of the great Experiment, but this night had seen a good night's work done in the laboratory, and he was content.

One tale of the past had been much in J.W.'s thought that night, but nothing on earth could have induced him to talk about it, especially since the happenings at the Institute. Only one other person knew all of its inwardness, though the preacher guessed most of the secret pretty shrewdly, and everybody was familiar with its outcome.

It was the story of Marty Shenk's conversion.

These two had been David and Jonathan from their little boy days, no less friends because they were so unlike; Marty, a quiet, brooding, knowledge-hungry youngster, and J.W. matter-of-fact, taking things as they came and asking few questions, but always the leader in games and mischief; each the other's champion against all comers.

Marty's father, tenant-farmer on the Farwell farm, was steady enough and dependable, but never one to get ahead much. Before the Farwells moved to town he had rarely stayed on the same farm more than a year or two, but, as he said, "J.W. Farwell was different, and anybody who wanted to be decent could get along with him." So, for many Saturdays and vacations of boyhood years J.W. and Marty had roamed the countryside, and were letter-perfect in their boy-knowledge of the old farm.

Marty came in to high school from the farm, and often he stayed with J.W. over the weekend. His school work was uneven—ahead in mathematics, and the sciences, and something below the average in other studies. That, however, has no place in this story.

Of course he and J.W. were thick as thieves. Except when class work made temporary separations necessary, they lived the high-school life together. That meant also, for these two, the social life of the church, which occasionally paid special attention to the students.

So you might find them at Epworth League socials, Sunday school class doings, in the Sunday school orchestra—violin and b-flat cornet respectively—and, most significant of all in its effect on all the later years, they went through Win-My-Chum week together. The hand of the pastor was in that, too.

Marty was not a Christian. J.W. had been a church member for years, and early in his course he had faced and accepted all that being a Christian seemed to mean to a high-school boy.

There had been hard places to get over; some of the boys and girls were merciless in their unconscious tests of his religion. Some were openly scornful, and others sought by indirect and furtive means to break his influence in the school. For he had no small gift of leadership, and he cared a good deal that it should count for the decencies of high-school life. By senior year the sort of trouble that a Christian boy encounters in school was almost all ended, but it had been more through his dogged resistance to opposition than because of any special zest in Christian service.

And then came the announcement of Win-My-Chum week, with J. W. confronted by two stubborn facts. He had only one real chum, and that chum was not a Christian. Pastor Drury had let fall a remark, a month before the Week, to the effect that any Christian who had a chum could dodge Win-My-Chum week, but he couldn't dodge his chum. When the week was past, the chum would still be on hand.

Think as he would, there was no honest way of escape from whatever those facts might require of him, so J. W., long accustomed to go ahead and take what came, had known himself bound by the obligations of this matter also, days and days before the activities of Win-My-Chum week began.

The two were out one Saturday on the north road. They had been up to the woods on Barker's Hill for nuts, and with good success. The day was warm, the way was long, and there was no hurry. When they came to the roadside at the wood's edge they sat on a fallen tree and talked. At least Marty did. For J. W. was not himself.

It was his chance, and he knew it. But a thousand impulses leaped to life within him to make him put off what he knew he ought to say. The fear of being misunderstood—even by Marty—the knowledge that Marty, in the qualities by which boys judge and are judged, was quite as "good" as himself; and, above all, his sense of total unfitness to be a pattern of the Christian life to anybody, filled him with an uneasiness that actually hurt.

And Marty soon discovered that something was amiss. Willing as he was to do his full share of the talking, he became aware that except for inarticulate commonplaces he was having to do it all.

"What's the matter with you all at once, J.W.?" he asked. "You're not taken suddenly sick, are you? You were all right when we were among the trees. _Are_ you sick?"

J.W. laughed shortly. "No, old man, I'm not sick. But I'm up against a new game, for me, and I'm not in training."

"Sounds interesting," said Marty, "but sort of mysterious. Is it anything I can do team-work on?"

"It surely is, but first I've got to say something, and I want you to promise that you won't think I'm putting on, or butting in, because I'm not; nothing like it. Will you?"

"Will I promise?" said Marty, much bewildered. "Course I'll promise not to think anything about you that you don't want me to think, but I must say I don't know within a thousand miles what you're driving at. Out with it, and even if you're the train bandit who held up the Cannonball or if you've plotted to kidnap the Board of Education, I'll never tell."

Marty's quizzical humor was not making J.W.'s enterprise any easier. He had always supposed that what the leaflets called "personal evangelism" had to be done in a spirit of solemnity. But how was he to acquire the proper frame of mind? And certainly there was nothing solemn about Marty just now. Yet the thing had gone too far; it was too late to retreat. He tried to think how Mr. Drury would do it, but saw only that if it was Mr. Dairy's business he would go straight to the center of it. Desperately, therefore, he plunged in.

"Well, Marty," he said, speaking now with nervous haste, "what I'm up against is this. What's the matter with your being a Christian?"

He will never forget the swift look of blank amazement that Marty turned on him, nor the slow-mounting flush that followed the first astonished start. For Marty did not answer, and turned his face away. J.W. was sure that in his blundering bluntness he had offended and probably angered his closest friend. The distress of that thought served at least to drive away all the self-consciousness which thus far had plagued him.

"Say, Marty," he pleaded, putting his hand on the other's arm, "forget it, if I've hurt your feelings. I know as well as you do that I'm not fit to talk about such things to anybody, and, honest, I meant nothing but to say what I knew I'd got to say."

Then Marty turned himself back slowly, and J.W. saw the troubled look in his eyes. In a voice that trembled despite his proud effort at control, he said, "Old man, you needn't apologize. You did surprise me, I'll admit; I wasn't looking for anything like this. It's all right, though, and I'm certainly not mad about it. But, say, J.W., let me put something up to you. Why did you never think to ask me that question before?"

"Why, it was this way," J.W. began, somewhat puzzled at the form of the question, and still thinking he must set himself right with Marty. "You know the Epworth League is planning for those special meetings soon—'Win-My-Chum Week'—and I've been asked to lead one of the meetings. But you can see that I wouldn't be ready to lead a meeting like that unless I had put this thing of being a Christian up to you, anyway. You're the only real chum I've got. Mr. Drury said something a little while ago that made it mighty plain."

"Yes," said Marty, "I can see that. But why did you never say anything to me about it when there wasn't any meeting coming? Haven't we always shared everything else, since away back? This is the one subject that you and I have kept away from in our talk of all we've ever thought about, and I was wondering why."

"Well, I don't exactly know," J. W. replied. "It may have been that it never seemed to be any of my business; that it was the preacher's business, or the Sunday school teacher's, or somebody's. And you know I've always been surer of what you really are than I have of myself. I think I was always afraid you would either make fun of me or believe I was letting on to be better than you were. But when the League got into this Win-My-Chum plan, why, the name itself was an eye-opener. And I've seen lately that a fellow's got to be a Christian, out and out, or his religion is no good. And when I heard the preacher say, not long ago, that a fellow might dodge Win-My-Chum week, but he couldn't forever dodge his chum, I knew I had to speak to you. But you're sure you're not offended?"

"Let me admit a thing to you, J.W. I've never said so before, but I've been wanting somebody to ask me to be a Christian for a long time. I was a coward about it, and wouldn't let on. I've been wanting to find out what I've got to do, but I wouldn't ask. Do you think I _could_ be a Christian?"

"I know you could be a long way better Christian than I am," J.W. answered with unwonted feeling. "And if you did take Jesus Christ to be your Master, it would be more than just your getting religion. You would be the biggest kind of stand-by for me and for other people I know of. It's the one thing you need to be a hundred per cent right. I'm a pretty poor Christian, myself, Marty, partly because I don't know how to think much about it, but you'd be dead in earnest to get all that there is in the Christian life, and maybe I could follow along behind. You've always helped every other way, and I've always wanted you to help me be a genuine Christian."

Marty put his hand on J.W.'s shoulder and looked him straight in the eye: "You've got me rated a lot too high," he said. "How can I help you? But we two have been pretty good chums so far, haven't we? Well, there's a lot to settle before I can be sure I'm a Christian, but it means everything for you to think I can be of some use. And I promise you this, J.W., I'll not let up until I am a Christian, and we'll stick together all the more, when I am, us two. Is that ago?"

It was a go. J.W. was ready and far more than ready to call it a go. It had been easier than he had expected, but then it had all been so different from the vague and formal thing he had been afraid of. He could hardly believe, but he had one request to make. "I know you'll settle whatever has to be settled," he said, a bit unsteadily, "but when it's all done, and you tell people about it, as I know you will, please, Marty, don't bring me into it. Publicly, I mean. Let's just have this understanding between ourselves. I can lead my meeting now, but there's no need to say anything about me. Besides, I made a mess of it."

"It may be the best mess anybody ever stirred up for me, J.W., but I won't say anything to worry you, if the time comes for me to say anything at all. And I believe it will."

It did. Marty and the pastor had two or three long interviews. From the last of them the boy came away with a new light on his face and a new spring in his step. Evidently whatever needed to be settled, had been settled.

He kept his promise to his chum, but that did not prevent him from choosing the night when J.W. led the meeting to stand up at the first opportunity and make his straightforward confession of love and loyalty, since God had made him a sharer in the life that is in Christ. Then for a moment J.W. feared Marty might forget their agreement, but Marty said simply, "And part of the joy that is in my heart to-night is because there is a new tie, the only other one we needed, between myself and my old-time chum, the leader of this meeting."

In the back of the room Walter Drury, quietly looking on, sent up a silent thanksgiving. The great Experiment was going well.