McLaughlin handed out another sandwich.
"Did the old man eat that one?"
"He did not. He took it over and gave it to an old woman near by."
And so it continued, until every last piece of food was disposed of. That old man; whom we had decided was an animal; saw to it, that every man, woman, and child in that crowd was fed before he took a single bite himself.
Then he suddenly disappeared. In half an hour he came back with an armful of great, broad, palm leaves. He spread these out on the ground in the shade of a tree; did this old man; this hideous looking monster; and then motioned for me to lie down on the bed he had made for me. He saw that I was sick.
Then he disappeared once again, and when he returned he was carrying a long Bamboo-tube full of clear, cool water which he had gotten from a mountain spring. He brought it to where I was lying on the bed he had made for me and with this water he cooled my fevered, burning head; and from this water he gave me to drink; he whom we had decided was the lowest type of a human being on earth.
And I am writing here to say; that I have never seen a "cup of cold water given in His name" that was given with a higher, or a deeper sense of the Divine spark of God in humanity than I saw that tropical summer afternoon, and this water was given by the naked Negrito whom we had decided was the lowest human being on the earth. Yet even in this animal-man; even in this naked savage; there was a spark of the Divine that made us forever have a deeper and a more abiding faith that God never did and never shall make a man to live on this old earth that He did not have some purpose in making him.
A few days before I took this trip up into the jungles of Luzon to visit this Negrito tribe I had received a copy of a slender volume of poems by Edna St. Vincent Millay. In the cool beauty of the tropical evening preceding this trip I had read the last lines of its introductory poem called "Interim"; and these lines came flashing into my mind, even as I lay on the hot earth on that Luzon hillside. I can still remember the honey dripping like rain from the Cocoanut trees, and I can still hear the ceaseless and maddening cry of millions of Locusts that hot day; but suddenly came this beautiful outpouring of faith from, the cool depths of a woman's woodland soul:
"Not Truth but Faith, it is
That keeps the world alive! If, all at once
Faith were to slacken,—that unconscious faith
Which must, I know, yet be the corner-stone
Of all believing—birds now flying fearless
Across would drop in terror to the earth;
Fishes would drown; and the all-governing reins
Would tangle in the frantic hands of God
And the worlds gallop headlong to destruction!"
That day bred new faith into my soul!