There is something missing in the life of one who cannot enter into the feelings of a boy like Muir or Taylor or Drummond. And when such a boy grows up, the gap in the life will be more conspicuous than ever.
Think of the poverty of the stranger to whom a traveler, feeling that he must give expression to his keen delight in the autumn foliage, said, "What wonderful coloring!" "Where?" came the reply. "Oh, the trees! Well, I'm not interested in trees. Talk to me about coal. I know coal."
V
COMPANIONSHIP WITH GOD
Some people insist that it is impractical moonshine to speak of making a companion of God, that folks who talk about such things are dreamers, far removed from touch with the cold reality of daily life.
Then how about the nephew of whom Dr. Alexander MacColl told at Northfield? He was surely a practical man. For four years he had been in the thick of the fighting in France. Yet at the close of one of his letters to his uncle he said: "I hope when the war is over that I may be able to spend a month somewhere among the hills. I often think that if more people in the world had lived among such hills as we have in Scotland there would have been no world war."
"When I came yesterday afternoon, and saw again the glory of these hills," was Dr. MacColl's comment, "I found myself sharing very deeply in that feeling of my good nephew, and wishing that more people in the world had known what it is to commune with God in the silences."
That fine young Scotchman would have known how to take a college student who, while having a country walk with a friend, was explaining the reason for his belief in God and his trust in Him. As he concluded his message he pointed to a large tree which they were passing, saying as he did so, "God is as real to me as that tree."
He had a right to say such a thing, for he not only believed, but he was conscious that God was with him, his Companion wherever he went. This being the case, prayer became for him the simplest and most natural thing in the world. God was by his side; then why should not he talk to God, by ejaculation as well as by more formal utterance? Yet his talks with God never became formal. They were always intimate and confidential—like the approaches of Principal John Cairns, the famous Scotch minister. His biographer tells of a time when he was at the manse of a country minister in whose church he was to preach next day. The minister's wife withdrew to get a cup of tea for the old man, leaving her little boy there. By and by she heard a strange, unaccustomed sound, as it seemed to her under such conditions. And as she listened and looked, she saw that the old man was kneeling with the boy. It had seemed to him the most natural thing in the world to speak to his Great Friend about his little friend.
Dr. Arthur Smith was like that with God, and his son Henry took after him. One January day in 1905 the father reached New York from China and sought his son. They went to a hotel room to bridge the time of absence by "a tremendous lot of back conversation," as the son wrote to the mother. But before they had any chance to talk of other matters the father said, "Come, boy, let's have a prayer." "Wasn't that just like him?" Henry asked his mother.
A minister who was spending his vacation in the northern woods was called in to see a dying lumberman. Before leaving the visitor prayed with the sick man, and suggested that he pray for himself. The objection was made that it was useless to pray—God understood a man's trials, and He knew what was wanted before a request was made. The minister asked him if he didn't know what his children needed before they asked him, if he didn't know they were disappointed or troubled; yet didn't he wish to have them talk over these things with him?