In the eighth place, we may advert for a moment to the proof of Providence from the common consent of mankind, with the single exception of atheists. The Epicureans may be classed with atheists, as they are generally thought to have been atheists in discourse, and a God after their imaginations would be, to all intents and purposes, no God. The Stoics were also atheists, believing only in a blind fate arising from a perpetual concatenation of causes contained in nature. The passages acknowledging a Providence in Cicero, Seneca, Plutarch, and all the ancient moralists, are numerous and decisive, but too accessible or well-known to need being quoted.
In the last place, the doctrine of Providence is abundantly proved by the Scriptures. Some times it is declared that the Most High ruleth in the kingdom of men, and giveth it to whomsoever He will; as much as to say that nothing can withstand His power. Again, lest we may think some things beneath His notice, we read that He numbereth the hairs of our heads, careth for lilies, and disposeth all the lots which are cast. The care of God for man is generally argued, a fortiori, from His care for inferior creatures. One Psalm (xci) is devoted to show the providential security of the Godly: another (xciii) shows the frailty of man; and a third (civ) the dependence of all orders in creation on God's Providence for food and breath. In Him, it is elsewhere added, we live, and move, and have our being. He, in the person of Christ, sustaineth all things by the Word of His power, and from Him cometh down every good and perfect gift. But nowhere perhaps is a Providence so pointedly asserted and so sublimely set forth as in some of the last chapters of Job; and nowhere so variously, winningly, and admirably exhibited as in the history of Joseph.
And nowhere could be found more brilliantly illuminating its substance than in our own hearts and lives. The fool hath said in his heart, there is no God. To undervalue God's Providence it is the most dreadful insult that a fool could dare conceive in his mind against God's existence. But the wise hearken to His voice.
My son, if thou wilt receive my words,
And hide my commandments with thee;
So that thou incline thine ear to wisdom,
And apply thy heart to understanding;
Yea, if thou criest after knowledge,
And liftest up thy voice for understanding;
If thou seekest her as silver,
And searchest for her as for hid treasures;
Then shalt thou understand the fear of the Lord,
And find the knowledge of God.
CHAPTER VII
New York to California
When I was but a little boy, I can well recollect, a nice little pond in the hollow of two hills beautifully situated, near the school house where the pupils would enjoy the intervals of their school time. How I would wonder at the experiment of throwing a stone in the pond and watching anxiously the circles of water growing larger and larger till reaching the banks of the pond and there they would break, as though in despair for the limitations of their enlarging tendencies. It seems to me, now, a parallel despair threatens my heart, for being obliged to compact this story of my conversion. Yet, in view of the fact that the American reader is a greater admirer of quality rather than quantity, I must content myself by giving a brief account on the practical side of my personal experience as a Christian worker, among the rich and the poor, the high and the low classes and masses, in cities and towns, sunshine or clouds, rain or snow, by day or by night; I made myself servant unto all men, that I might by all means save some, and this I do for the Gospel's sake. And, it is only proper, to confess, publicly, that I am prepared to suffer all things, for the love which I feel in my heart to be of some service to my own people, an historical race of people they are, drifting away from God, blindly allowing blind priests to lead them into the ditch. There is a cheering prospect about this people, for whose salvation I have devoted my life, that when Christ enters into the heart of a Greek, there is very little hope left for the devil to induce him to be a backslider. A truly converted Greek soul is worthy of all the joy that the angels in heaven rejoice over one sinner that repenteth. How much more rejoicing shall be there, if we get converted all the Greeks that are living in the United States and use them as a kindling matter to start the fire of salvation in the hearts of the millions of people under the Greek and Russian church slavery, all round the Mediterranean countries?
With this and many other social and industrial problems laying upon my heart, I find the atmosphere, in New York, too close for any opening and very little encouragement for a beginning. And the atmosphere grew more asphyxiating every day with the arguments of my friend George N. He never had any sympathy with the subject so dear to my own heart, his highest ambition being money-making, for which end he relinquished the Presbyterian pulpit, after being duly graduated from a Presbyterian Seminary for ministerial ordination. It was only natural that our thoughts and our ambitions should face each other suspiciously from the diametrical opposite ends. And with all due respect to my old teacher and gratefully acknowledging his hospitality for entertaining me many a day, I find out that at the best I had to be in his mercy, as long as I was not able to explain myself, to the American people, speaking in their own language. And, as difficulties have always had a peculiar effect upon my personal character; to face them, and fight them out with one object in view to die or to win, I left New York right after Christmas of 1903, in the midst of an unusually severe winter, rather a wanderer; but determined to ramble among the American people and learn the language by ear, which proved in my case, and I believe, it is in every case, to be the best school for learning the correct pronunciation of any language you might desire to speak, and be not laughable when you address the natives of that language.
Where should I direct my wandering steps, it was the all important question, under my consideration in the first place. Boston: I had been scouring the ground before, and from a thorough-going I was convinced that to begin in a place where the most superstitious, if not fanatic, Greeks are situated, at all appearances it should be a wonderful failure without any dose of wisdom in it; while I was not able to take my stand before the people, whose sympathies I needed in judging my purposes and my efforts. In the great wild West, way out there, where some of the best easterners by leaving their homes and their comforts therein, and enduring all the hardships of pioneering life they succeeded at last to put a solid foundation of a new and permanent civilization astonishingly wonderful not only in the development of this great land of liberty but revolutionizing the whole commercial and social system of the world.
Who hath known the mind of the Lord? We have been taught, that His purpose is to glorify Himself through human agency, and we know that all the great movements in history were originated in an insignificant way by insignificant persons at the beginning. Who could say, at the time, when the daughter of Pharaoh came down to wash herself at the river, and there she drew out of the water an ark with a child in it, that that child would be the chosen one of God to deliver his people from the Egyptian bondage? Or, when, a poor carpenter with his wife went up from Galilee, out of the city of Nazareth, into Judea in a small village of Bethlehem, and Mary brought forth her first-born son, and wrapped him in swaddling clothes, and laid him in a manger, because there was no room for them in the inn; that that baby was the King of Kings, Christ the Lord and Saviour of all mankind?