And it is because the postman spends his whole life among just such sacramental things that we welcome and honour him. We have an amiable way of transferring to the messenger the welcome that we accord to the message. Jessie Pope describes the joy of a mother on receiving a wire from her soldier-boy that he will soon be back again from the front.
‘Home at six-thirty to-day.’
Oh, what a tumult of joy!
Growing suspense flies away,
God bless that telegraph-boy!
God bless that telegraph-boy! Exactly. And that is why we honour the postman. The messenger always shares in the welcome given to the message How beautiful upon the mountains are the feet of [122] him that bringeth good tidings, that publisheth peace! We ministers often share in the postman’s benediction. We are welcomed and honoured and loved, not so much for our own sake as for the sake of the great, glad message that we bear. The heart leaps up to the message and blesses the messenger. God bless the telegraph-boy! God bless the postman!
[123]
II
CRYING FOR THE MOON
Let it be distinctly understood that nothing that I shall now say is addressed to the crowd. To the crowd it would probably do more harm than good. It is intended only for a single individual; and he, I think, will understand. I am told that there is a unique secret by means of which a wireless message from the British Navy can be transmitted to the Admiralty Office without risk of interception. At the Admiralty a superlatively sensitive and superlatively secret instrument is most carefully attuned to the instrument of the battleship from which the message is expected. Then, when all is ready, every wireless operator in the Grand Fleet pulls out all the stops and bangs on all the keys of his instrument, and the inevitable result is the creation of a din that is almost deafening to all listeners at ordinary receivers. But through the crash and the tumult the specially delicate instrument at the Admiralty Office can distinctly hear its mate, and the priceless syllables penetrate the thunder of senseless sound without the slightest loss or leakage. I am about to attempt a similar experiment. I [124] have a message for a certain man. It is important that he, and he alone, should get it. It would do untold damage if it were heard at other receivers. Let him therefore take some pains to attune his instrument to mine.
Now it is usual, and it is altogether good, to encourage people to entertain lofty ambitions, high ideals, and great expectations. It is a most necessary injunction, and I have not a word to say against it. It stirs the blood like a trumpet-blast. It rouses us like a challenge. But, however excellent the medicine may be, it cannot be expected to suit every ailment. No one drug is a panacea for all our human ills. And even the stimulating tonic to which I have referred does not at all meet the need of the man for whom I am now prescribing. John Sheergood is a friend of mine, and a really capital fellow. But I should not call him a happy man. His trouble is that his ambitions are too lofty, his expectations too great, and his ideals, in a sense, too high. He is crying for the moon, and breaking his heart because he can’t get it. I am profoundly sorry for this morbid friend of mine, and should dearly like to comfort him. His ideal is perfection, nothing less; and whenever he falls short of it he is in the depths of despair. If, as a student, he entered for a competition, he felt that he was in disgrace unless he secured the very first place. If he sat for [125] an examination, he counted every mark short of the coveted hundred per cent. as an indelible stain upon his character. He is in abject misery unless he can strike twelve at every hour of the day. I both admire him and pity him at the same time. His parents once told me that when he was a very small boy he contracted measles. The illness went hardly with him, and left him frail and debilitated. The doctor ordered a prolonged holiday by the seaside, with plenty of good food, plenty of fresh air, and, above all, plenty of bathing. He was only a little fellow, and when he approached the bathing-sheds for the first time his father accompanied him.