RADIANCIES OF SERVICE

I want to radiate by thought, word, and act the joy and blessedness of service. What a privilege it is to be able to do something for your fellows! How great and constant is the joy of ministering! How ready we are to run with willing feet to do some little or big thing for those we love! The lover will climb dangerous Alpine heights to get the rare and richly treasured edelweiss for his beloved. Leander gladly and joyously braved the dangers of the Hellespont that he might cheer and encourage his Hero. The lover has always cried, in all ages, to his loved one, asking her to send him on some difficult errand. He would gladly go anywhere, to any service, however arduous and dangerous, to prove his love. The records of chivalry are full of daring deeds accomplished by men in order to please the women they loved.

Against this kind of service I have nothing to say. At the same time, this is not the kind of service of which I now write. I would radiate the thought that in our service we should treat all men and women with the same willing gladness of ministry that the lover has for the mistress of his heart. I desire to be ready and willing to fly on the wings of helpfulness to do service for the meanest and most despicable of human kind, if thereby he, or she, may be benefited. I would radiate the belief that our willing service belongs to humanity, all men, all women, not to a select few, not to the small and chosen circle whom we call our loved ones and friends. I would radiate the spirit of service that possessed and animated the strong, pure soul of William Morris, that led him to place his precious time and service at the disposal of a committee of men, not one of whom knew enough to appreciate his exquisite and beautiful devotion, and under whose control he was ready to go and speak words of cheer, fellowship, and brotherhood in the lowest and most degraded parts of London. He was imbued with this passion for service and it was service to the whole of mankind—not the chosen few.

I once picked up some socialistic newspaper with which I was not familiar, but in it was an account of the life of a man who had recently died. According to the story of his biographer, this man was carried away with this passion for human service to the lowest and most degraded, and he had spent his active and busy life in ministering to those who, as a rule, are ignored by their more fortunate brothers and sisters. It was a story that thrilled me to a higher and nobler endeavor.

Many a time I have bowed my soul in reverence and humility before a group of Salvation Army lasses who, with sweet, gentle ministrations, have cheered the dwellers in the wretched hovels of London, New York, and other cities. I know one maiden, delicately constituted, and reared in a home full of wealth and luxury, who felt this passionate call of service so strongly, that, in spite of the protests of her relatives and friends, she went to London, united with the Salvation Army, and with her own beautiful and gentle hands, down upon her knees, has scrubbed into cleanliness the floor of a drunken wife and drunken husband whose children had never known a clean floor in the whole of their dirty and wretched lives. I have helped her clean out the accumulated filth, of what seemed to be months, in similar wretched places, and all this, as well as the more refined ministrations of the mind and soul, were offered with a sweet and gentle insistence that no one could take offense at, and without an air of conscious self-approbation that one so often finds in those who are seeking to minister to others.

But it is not only in this larger and devoted sense that I would radiate my desire to serve and minister to my fellows. It is in the small and every-day things of life, no matter what my work or surroundings may be, that I would radiate this ministering spirit. What a pleasure it is to do things for others. What a joy to realize that your friends love you enough to want you to do something for them.

I find, however, that in the mind of many is the idea that certain service is menial, and that they would not serve if they were not obliged to do so for the money it brings. I have a deep and profound pity in my soul for those who look upon life with this perverted vision. If I were a waiter in a cheap restaurant, it seems to me it would be my joy to serve the cheap meals as quickly and as cheerfully as I possibly could. Surely ministering to the bodily wants of men and women is a service which ought to be blessed. If I were a housemaid I feel that I should find joy in making and keeping everything as orderly and tidy as possible.

I have several times stayed in a semi-public institution where a great number of nurses were employed, and I have watched both men and women engaged in this beautiful service. In this particular place they all seemed full of this passion for service. There was no impatience at the often exacting calls and demands of the querulous and unreasonable invalids. Their very lives were a dedication.

Sometimes we meet with those who will refuse to do certain things because they regard them as more menial than those they were engaged to perform, as, for instance, the case of a bell boy who refused to take away a coal-scuttle when asked to do so because that was not in the list of his duties, and a man "lower down in the scale" was supposed to attend to work of that kind. Now, while I recognize that there must be for convenience's sake, a division of labor, I want to radiate the feeling and belief that there is no higher, no lower, in this call of personal service. It is just as honorable to be a street sweeper or a scavenger of the meanest kind (so-called), to be a farm laborer, to be a kitchen drudge, to be a factory hand, as it is to be a minister of a church that pays a salary of $20,000 a year. The real blessedness of life of all grades of service from the scavenger to the expensive pastor is determined by the spirit behind the service, and the kitchen drudge who does her work with the consciousness in her own soul that she is gladly, merrily, cheerfully undertaking her work and doing it well for the comfort, benefit, cheer, and blessing of her employers is of more benefit to mankind than the services of the expensive pastor of the exclusive church who regards his ministry as a proof of his own intellectual worth, and as a means of asserting his high social position.

Who can ever forget the wonderful picture of that sturdy Scotch Doctor depicted by Ian Maclaren in his Bonnie Brier Bush, whose passion of devotion and ministry was so pure that it reached every soul in the whole region.

Frances Hodgson Burnett, in her Dawn of a To-morrow, tells of a degraded street waif who yet had this passion of ministry in her soul, and I have come to the conclusion that wherever it is found, it is divine, and therefore blessed. Hence I would radiate it at all times, under all conditions, and under all circumstances to all classes and conditions of men.

Where would have been the work of Judge Lindsay of Denver, Golden Rule Jones of Toledo, McClaughery of Elmira Penitentiary, Chief Kohler of Cleveland, Governor Hunt and Warden Sims of Arizona, if they had worked only for the worthy? It was the very openness of the unworthiness of those for whom they strove, that made the appeal to these large-hearted men.

It is so easy to criticise men of this stamp because they have dared to break away from the conventional rendering of service only to the worthy. It is so easy to cry that they are doing more harm than good. But those who know the work and know the hearts that are constantly being touched and molded into betterment by it are better able to judge of its higher results.

Shall I hesitate to render service because I myself am not perfect? Shall I refuse to give the shivering and hungry beggar on the street a twenty-five cent meal ticket because I myself am not free from debt? Shall I refuse to guide the lost wayfarer because I myself do not know all the winding pathways of life?

By no means! Let me do the best I may while I may, and seize every opportunity that arises. It was a Christian minister that dared to rebuke Father Damien by claiming that he was not immaculate in his service to the repulsive and loathsome lepers of Molokai. And it was Robert Louis Stevenson who showed that Christian minister what true Christianity would have led him to say instead of what he did say. Father Damien's ministry was self-sacrificing, noble, and divine, even though,—granting for the moment the truth of the minister's slander,—his service was touched of the earth, earthy. Yet the beneficence and blessedness of it was so supremely above the smug, self-satisfied, standing-aloofness of the "immaculate" ministerial critic that Stevenson's colossal rebuke to the latter found perfect echo in the heart of every decent man and woman throughout the world. Joaquin Miller expresses the same thought in his beautiful and strong poem on Father Damien when he says:

Why do ye not as he has done?

If we can do so much better than those we criticise, why, in the name of heaven and suffering humanity, do we not go ahead and do it? Let us do our best regardless of our own infirmities and weakness and the consequent criticisms of others.

So I want to radiate to the needy and unworthy my readiness, nay, my anxiety to serve them whenever and wherever I possibly can. And though my service be not unmixed gold, though there be in it some of the dross of imperfection, I would not withhold my hand on that account, but I would serve the more readily and gladly in the hope and assurance that by suffering with the needy and unworthy in their need and unworthiness the fire of their pain and sorrow may help refine away the dross in me and leave only that of pure gold.

"Give to the needy! worthy or unworthy!" should be the battle cry of him who wishes to be a blessing to his fellows, and the more unworthy the needy are, the more loving and wise the service should be. When Walt Whitman was shedding blessing, benediction, comfort, and joy on every hand throughout the hospitals of Washington, he had little or no money to give. He asked no questions when he went to the bedside of the sick and dying soldier boys as to whether they were worthy or not. They were needy and that was enough for him. He stayed and soothed their weary hours by telling them stories, reading to them, writing letters home for them, and in a thousand and one little and big ways seeking to make their sick beds more tolerable during the long hours of enforced confinement.

One of his rules for the making of a true poet was that he should "give alms to all who ask," and that he should "stand up for the stupid and crazy." I have a friend in Chicago who seeks absolutely to live these two rules in his daily life. Even though he may often give to the unworthy, he feels he can better afford to do that than to miss once giving to a really needy person lest he might be giving to some one who was neither needy nor worthy.

A poet, whom I am very fond of quoting, once wrote:

It is impossible properly and wisely to differentiate, and because a man is unworthy is all the more reason that his fellows should seek to help him into a state of worthiness.

How I wish I could imbue all with the spirit that moves Charles Montgomery, the prisoner's friend of San Francisco. He goes to the state penitentiaries at San Quentin and Folsom, and arranges to give help to the prisoners as soon as they are released. Nay, he provides places for them and then goes before the board of parole and secures their release. He takes a true brother's interest in the men and seeks to win them to a nobler life. Doubtless he is often deceived, but in scores of cases he starts the men on the up-grade. What is one failure or ten, to one success or ten? If it were my son that was saved I should be most grateful even though he saved but one. It would make his work glorious and blessed to me. Then try to feel what it must be for some other father or mother to learn that his, or her, son is saved from the life of hell, to the life of heaven, here and now, and do as much for that son as you would for your own.

I doubt not that some of the boys Judge Lindsay seeks to save in Denver, are not all they ought to be, and that sometimes he is disappointed in the results. But does this make him lose heart, or cease to work for the new cases that come? By no means! It makes him more determined than ever to reach their hearts. He is more tender, more long-suffering, more patient, more sympathetic, more loving. The greater the need the greater the endeavor.

The other day I sat down to the dinner table with a friend who outlined to me a project in which himself and four others are interested. It is to buy a farm, on the shores of a small but beautiful lake, a few miles out from one of our great cities, and there establish a home and a school for needy children. These five devoted young people are now working hard and each one is saving every cent he can out of his own earnings that, without calling upon any one else, they may be able to buy the farm. I had asked my friend why he did not go to hear the great actress Bernhardt. The reason was that he preferred to put the three dollars that a ticket to hear Bernhardt would have cost into his "child farm fund." Here was self-denial with joy, for the privilege of service. And whom will he serve? There will be no question asked as to the worthiness or unworthiness of the children that will be received into this home when established.[E]