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.