“He looks so kind.” Could there be a higher compliment? The man’s face was an open invitation to come in and confide and get help.
Without speaking a word he gave this invitation, which led to so much for the friendless stranger.
But do you suppose that this kind look grew in a night or a day or a week? Can a fine steel-engraving be finished in a few hours? It takes line by line, day after day. Things worth while are not of instantaneous accomplishment. Now think of it. When is the best time to begin, if the art of looking pleasant and the possession of a kind face be achieved?
(1012)
Face Shows the Man—See [Countenance, Grace in the].
Face, The Benignant—See [Countenance, Grace in the].
FACE, THE, REVEALING THE GOSPEL
When Margaret Andrews was twenty-five, she received what she thought was a call to the foreign mission field. Her parents, altho they at first tried to dissuade her, put no obstacle in the way of her hopes, and, full of eagerness, she began training at a school in another city. One day, says the California Advocate, she received a telegram. Her mother had met with an accident, just how serious could not at once be known. Margaret packed her books and took the first train home, expecting to return in a few weeks. Long before the weeks had passed she knew that her dream must be given up. Her mother would never be able to do anything again, and Margaret, instead of making her journey to strange lands, saw herself shut in to the duties of housekeeper and nurse.
For a year or two she bore her disappointment in silence; then she went to her pastor with it. The pastor was an old man, who had known Margaret all her life. He looked at her steadily for a moment. Then he said slowly, “You are living in a city of two hundred thousand people. Isn’t there need enough about you to fill your life?”
“Oh, yes,” the girl answered, “and I could give up the foreign field. It isn’t that. But I haven’t time to do anything, not even to take a mission-class, and to see so much work waiting, and be able to do nothing—”