Prologue

Prologue

PROLOGUE 'THE GREATEST PEAcE Lover this world has ever seen, once said, 'Whosoever shall compel thee to goa mile, go with him twain.' (Matt. 5:41). There were probably many who listened to Him that spring day on the mount in Galilee, who turned away with a smile at the thought of such a 'ridiculous' doctrine! But that SECOND MILE was too vividly new an idea to this earth, and it has strangely clung to human hearts all down the centuries. Gradually, in common thought, it has seemed to slip from its setting and, so to speak, become opalescent with a variety of shades of the original meaning all more or less coloured with the thought of voluntary sacrifice.

It is as this 'unset' stone that we use it in these sketches. We look at it apart from any doctrinal teaching, and as we turn it over in our thoughts as one turns an opal in the palm of his hand, we see the flame-colour of sacrificial offering shoot from its still surface. Christ made a difference between that first and second mile. He says plainly the first was compulsory, but He puts the second up to you and me as His way of doing it — in other words He

SecondMile People suggests it as an offering that you and I may bring for the good and the peace of His kingdom.

Today one finds a general apathy in the church, an unspoken feeling that one mile for the Saviour is quite sufficient! The writer has more than once heard this remark, 'I am afraid to yield myself wholly up to Christ ..

. afraid of what He might ask me to give up, or to do!' There seems to be a fear of that 'second mile'.

But all in our generation are not so diffident. In fact, occasionally we have touched lives with an absolutely different point of view; lives that cried out, not 'How much will He ask?' but 'How much can I give Him?'; young hearts that have rung with gratitude, "All this for me? All this for me?' These have been as 'lights out of the night that flashed'.

They have shone across our 'first mile' pathway as splendid meteors trailing such radiance after them that something of their own 'celestial fire' has sought to enter into us also.

We introduce these selected few to you, more or less in the order in which God brought them on to our own horizons.

BACHELOR — A 'LOST?' LIFE

'FOR WHOSOEVER WOULD SAVE

his life shall lose it; but whosoever shall lose his life for My sake, the same shall save it' (Luke 9:24). It was only my second summer conference in a wooded spot by the borders of a mirror lake. Wanting something from the living room I rushed impetuously in, then found myself facing a gentleman, tall and slightly bald, who _ was sitting there quietly. (I did not take time to see what he was doing!) Something about him made me say to myself, 'Oh! ... some old bachelor or other!' and with all a young girl's horror of such, I as quickly rushed out again.

Not another thought was given to this stranger till evening fell, and the happy group gathered in the spicy air of the auditorium, which is a cleared glade among the fir trees. It was the opening session of the conference and I got settled in among the other girls before I inspected the platform, but when I did lift my eyes, I got a shock.

Why, there was that bachelor fellow sitting in the Speaker's chair! Surely he wasn't to be a conference leader? Was he who had looked so .

. well ...uncared for, going to turn out to be somebody

Second-Mile People 3 important? The chairman was introducing him before I knew it, and a few minutes later Mr

Bachelor was talking to us in a quiet but resonant voice. He said he was a tribes worker in far western China. He had gone to the mission field rather young (at 22 years of age) and was there for fourteen years before a furlough. The aboriginal tribe called 'Lisu', among whom he spent the most of that time, had no language in writing, and he proposed to take us on mental tours each night, through various phases of his work among these interesting people. One evening he would devote to telling how he put their language into writing, one to their customs, one to stories of life amongst them etc. This evening he wished to take us on a visit through their homes and villages.

From the first this tall missionary held one's attention, for there was something commanding about his address, despite its simplicity; but when he began to describe his dearly loved mountain fastnesses and their native children, he quite lost himself, and his audience went with him! Each evening we left the murmuring pine-boughs, the rustic platform, the twinkle of electric lights here and there in the foliage, and were transported in a second to far China to go wandering up and down on entrancing excursions in Lisuland with Bachelor as guide.

I remember one such time crossing a great river which cuts its way in serpentine coils through the rocky feet of a mighty mountain range. We could feel the precarious tip of the bamboo raft we stood upon, as the swift and dangerous current swung it

Bachelor— A 'Lost Life'

Il partially around from time to time; what a relief when the steep bank was finally reached! Then started the difficult ascent. The sun beat mercilessly upon our backs, the gravelly pebbles of the simple cow-path slipped beneath our feet, and all the time we felt clutching after us the clammy fever-smiting fingers of the malarial vapours which make that river bed a bed of death to many a traveller, and which the Chinese call the 'poison mist'.

What gladness when one has managed the first five hundred feet and stands upon a jutting rock, hats off, arms outspread to catch the welcome cold mountain breeze that whips against our hot weary bodies with all the zip and tang of a cold shower bath. 'Oh-oh' — (sigh of deep gratitude) "Thank the Lord for travelling mercies! What! Bachelor says we have only climbed about a third of the way? Ai-ya! Well, let us stretch out a minute on that grassy nob, and relax; tell that grinning Lisu boy who is carrying your bedding on his back,

Bachelor, that it is all very well for him to smile, but foreign backs and legs are not trained to these precipitous hillsides from babyhood like his were!

Ah, how beautiful that high jagged peak is yonder, with the soft little white cloud cuddled round its neck.

. looks like a scarf of chiffon draped around a proud Court Beauty's shoulders. All right! All right! 'll getup.

. ugh, those tired muscles. Here we are — on with you!'

So one travels on, hour after hour; there is no lunch place but about two o'clock we might see ahead of us a few rickety-looking shacks tilted

oe SecondMile People against the mountain side. As there are practically no level spots on the side of the ranges that border the Salween river, Lisu houses seldom rest entirely on the ground; to get their floors level they build on poles of varying lengths (according to the distance out from the hillside) and so their homes look like ragged boys on stilts! It gives one a 'suspended-in-the-air' feeling to stand in the doorway of one such, and see Mother Earth drop away from underneath you in a kind of monstrous toboggan slide of hundreds of feet.

One such hamlet, said Bachelor, was named Mock-Turtle village, and as we approach in sight the missionary sends a ringing 'halloo' up the steep path ahead — 'Ma-pa is coming' (In Lisuland the male teacher is called Ma-pa and the female, Ma-ma.) In a second out rush an army of dogs — 'Hark, hark! the dogs do bark!

Strangers are coming to Lisutown!'

People pour out of the houses and shouts of welcome and joy rend the air. As you approach

(especially if it is the Christmas festival) gunshots shatter the other noises into silence and boom in echoes down the mountain sides like bounding bomb shells. A long line of Lisu wait to shake hands, and they are singing.

'There's a stranger at the door, Let him in! Let him in!'

Punctuated with gunbursts it sounds rather more like, "There's a stranger at the door, Shoot him down! Shoot him down!' says

Bachelor — A 'Lost Life'

Bachelor with a chuckle.

However there is nothing but joyous welcome written on the radiant faces, and brown Lisu hands are thrust forward to shake yours. Oh, this handshaking in Lisuland! (It is the token of church fellowship.) Down the line you go, hot hands, cold hands, dry hands, wet hands, lean hands, fat hands, hands that grip heartily till you wince, hands that lie limply like dead fish and are worse than any other kind! Even baby strapped on mother's back must not be overlooked, and his is the only really soft hand in the line .

. for Lisu lives are only sustained by vigorous manual labour; even young girls go out daily to chop and bring in their own supply of firewood.

And then the eggs! Lisu hearts are deep and generous and they always want to give, and as everyone knows Ma-pa likes to eat eggs, in almost every hand there will be an unsuspected egg! So Bachelor says he always wears an 'egg bag' over his shoulder, and thus he goes down the line.

Shake. Egg? — into bag. Shake. Egg? — into bag! and so on. And speaking of eggs, I must digress a moment.

Do not let anyone think a Spirit-filled life such as Bachelor's is a very dry affair. No, indeed, it is the only 'abundant' life, the life Christ promised when He said, 'I have come that they may have life, and may have it in abundance'.

Bachelor has a keen sense of humour.

. indeed he told us young folk it would be a tragic thing to come to the mission field without it! In describing his experiences he soon discovered that certain

SecondMile People portions were horribly thrilling to the female part of his audience, and I am quite sure he mischievously enjoyed bringing in details just in order to hear the audible female shiver. I remember once, in speaking of the scarcity of meat and the small variety of food in those wild and barren mountain fastnesses, the casual way in which he said he went for weeks without tasting meat —

'However, once I had boiled rat'.

Among the young folk were quite a few who were themselves hoping to go to China as missionaries (five of us are at this very moment on the field). Bachelor gave himself unstintingly to this group; he taught deep spiritual truths, or discussed the life and customs of the people, or sometimes brought the darker side of missionary life forward, in order to discourage any who were merely seeking romance. Off and on his humour would gleam out in droll fashion, as once when talking with me he drawled, 'Have you ever eaten a bad egg?'

'No-o,' I shuddered, horribly fascinated at such missionary martyrdom.

'Oh' — casually — 'it's not bad, r-e-a-l-l-y.'

Long years afterwards, when I finally got to China, Bachelor himself was also a guest at my first real Chinese-invited feast. As that favourite dish of China — ancient pickled eggs — was laid on the tables, Bachelor leaned forward, with a naughty grin picked up a big shell-encrusted slice with his chopsticks, and said, 'Won't you have some?' He would have succeeded in getting me to swallow a piece (for being quite a newcomer I did

Bachelor — A 'Lost Life'

not know ifit were possible to refuse anything and not offend one's host) when another guest, an older lady missionary, came to my rescue, saying,

'Here — it is not necessary — don't let him tease ~ you!' whereupon Bachelor ate it himself with a quite unnecessary display of its lusciousness!

But to return to Mock-Turtle Village. All day ~ long adults and children are out chopping wood or farming their steep mountain plots, so evening is the time for study. Ma-pa's visits could only be so rare (he said even with travelling to different places all the time he scarcely covered his parish in one year) that probably everything would be laid aside and a short term Bible School held. Lisu build their own chapels, and often next to it they make a little room for Ma-pa which is styled "The Prophet's Chamber'.

My husband John and I have slept in one of these. It was a tiny room in a village so many thousands of feet up in the air that it seemed very near heaven; and perhaps that is the reason its people are the sweetest and dearest group of Lisu we have ever met. A curved bamboo matting placed on end and tied to slim pillars was the wall of our chamber; large shingles merely laid (not nailed, for Lisuland knows no such luxury as nails!) on poles were the roof; two huge broad slabs of wood laid on posts driven into the ground

(the 'carpet' there is Mother Earth's own brown face!) were pointed out as our beds; a long thick narrow slab on posts was our 'bureau', and when dusk fell we perceived the purpose of a large

~ soot-marked stone, or rock, placed in the middle

Second-Mile People of the 'bureau' — it was our unsuspected lamp stand! Pine chips placed on this stone and lit not only provided light, but sent forth a pleasing aromatic odour. Altogether we spent a most happy night in that rough-hewn little 'prophet's chamber', and never in our lives have we had more loving hospitable hosts than those dear Lisu.

Bachelor told us how patience was needed in teaching these warm-hearted but long neglected aborigines. He would begin with the first question in their catechism, 'Who created the world and all that is in it?' After drilling and repeating and explaining, patiently and clearly, what this meant, and what it included, he would close the book and say — perhaps to an old Lisu mother —

'Now Mother, do you see that tree out there?'

"Yés.

"Well — who made it?'

A look of blankness and then an engaging grin, and the happy unconcerned 'I don't know, Maa!'

'Well then listen and I will tell you. GOD made it. God made everything in this'world — the mountains, and the clouds, the river and the rocks, and trees and man. Now listen, Mother — who made that tree out there?'

Another drop-jaw look of emptiness, then the grin and 'Don't know, Ma-pa!'

'Well now, listen Mother, and use your mind.

Put your thoughts on to it!'

'Oh there's no use, Ma-pa. I'm old, I can't remember. You go ahead and teach the youngsters! I haven't got any memory. You mustn't

Bachelor — A 'Lost Life'

worry about me.'

"Mother, how many children do you have?'

'Six, Ma-pa. There's Peter over yonder, and Mary, and John who is the baby and three are dead.'

'Oh I'm sorry to hear you have lost three. Was it long ago?'

"Yes, our eldest boy was the first to go. It was four years ago in the rainy season. He was out minding the cows and a rock got loose in the cliff above and came tumbling down and hit him before he had time to jump. The rock was as big as a table. There were lots of rocks fell that summer.

Why I remember ..

'Say Mother, I thought you said just now you couldn't remember? And here you are telling me what happened four years ago! And you remember it as well as if it were yesterday. Now Mother you have got a memory, and God wants you to use it. Now I want you to remember thatGod made that tree out yonder and every other tree.

. .' and so on, never tiring, never getting vexed, never failing to love. And gradually his Lisu learned.

They also learned to sing. Conference was half over before I accidentially discovered that Bachelor was no mean musician. Trained by one of London's best masters, with a brilliant intellect that photographed page after page of whole symphonies and sonatas, he was 'buried' in his Lisu hills with only a portable organ for nine years, and yet when he came out, with a little brushing up he was capable of giving concerts all by himself.

One does not 'discover' a person like Bachelor

SecondMile People all at once. Some people seem to wear an inventory of their accomplishments hung around their neck; you are not in their presence two hours but you have learned how many university degrees they have, what honours they won, how many

'world lights' are their best friends etc etc. But that is not so with the life that is hidden in Christ. It is truly 'hidden' — if you wish to see it, you must patiently search and seek it out. It was quite some time later before I even knew that Bachelor was a science graduate of London University, and it was years before I discovered that anyone else in the world considered him a great man — a 'coming' man in the missionary realm: his references to himself were rare but always of the humblest, a simple humility that threw one off one's guard by its honesty. Christ had 'increased' so that Bachelor had forgotten just how far (as the world would review it)) he himself had 'decreased'.

So his Lisu were taught to sing in parts, and Bachelor afffirmed that he had never heard congregational singing that could touch theirs. This book is being written from a native shanty in Lisuland itself, and only the other night as a group of these children of the hills were in for a visit, they gathered around the baby organ and sang the Lisu translation of 'Hallelujah! 'tis done; I believe on the Son; .

I am saved by the blood of the Crucified One!'

As the song gathered volume the room seemed flowing with waves of wonderful melody until we

Bachelor — A 'Lost Life'

were bathed, drowned, in the beauty of it. Tenor, bass, alto, soprano flowed together into one exquisite harmony, and sung from hearts that believed and loved Him wholly. The music of it was so marvellous that John and I were thrilled through and through. One of the singers had been imprisoned for Jesus' sake, another had been beaten for that same dear Name, and almost all had suffered some persecution. We understood then why Bachelor boasted of his Lisu's singing — it is set on fire, made living, by joyous faith in the truth of the words of their hymns.

The days of Conference fled quickly and soon it was the last evening: the last message had been given, and we were supposed to retire. But hearts had been made tender during those days and almost with mutual consent we gathered in the sitting room of the bungalow. I can see it now, the room lit by the crackling pine logs in the big fireplace, the older people in chairs, we younger ones seated on the floor; we overflowed, and finally when Bachelor was asked to say 'a last word' he had to stand up in the doorway, so that those outside as well as those inside might hear. Tears were in many eyes as he stood there in his tall brilliant manhood — for was he not carrying all those splendid gifts, those rare educational privileges which only Culture can 'appreciate', that strong sterling manhood, and going to bury them alive in wild mountain fastnesses where there were none even to know how much talent and intellectual lustre was being 'wasted' on them?

Such feeling was in the air, and Bachelor must

Second-Mile People have felt it. He quoted simply, 'If any man will come after Me, let him deny himself, and take up his cross daily, and follow Me. For whosoever will save his life shall lose it; but whosoever will lose his life for My sake, the same shall save it.' (Luke

9:23, 24) As the leaping flames cast their playing lights and shadows on his face, Bachelor stood and said earnestly, "You must not pity me —

Christ has promised, "Verily I say unto you, there is no man that hath left house, or brethren, or sisters, or mother.

. or lands, for My sake and the gospel's, but he shall receive an hundredfold now in this time ..

. and in the world to come eternal life." (Mark 10:29, 30) 'There is a promise for this life — a hundred fold

— as wellas for the next,' said Bachelor with deep seriousness. 'And you who pity me, and think

Iam "losing" father and mother, brothers, sisters, houses, lands, do not know that already I have received the "hundredfold". On those Lisu mountains I have more than a hundredfold in fathers, mothers, brothers and sisters. I had typhoid fever among them, and there I was far away from medical aid or even friends of my own colour. I was delirious for a time, and in between delirium I would come to and find my Lisu fathers and mothers kneeling on each side of me, holding my hands and weeping and praying. For one mother's love I have gained a hundred, for one brother or sister's, many hundreds.

'Houses? Lands? Any house, any land over thousands of miles of most enchanting Alpine scenery are mine for the wishing, mine for the

Bachelor— A 'Lost Life'

taking. I can travel for days, and every spot I put my foot on is mine whenever I want to take it!'

Bachelor, most of your words that night are forgotten, but_youw_yourself, your strong, clean manhood, your intellectual keenness, your musical ability and many other gifts, all these laid at Christ's feet, all these 'lost' for Him — and the strong earnest tones of your voice as you attested to the 'hundredfold' already gained — will any of us ever forget that? How poorly the world measures loss and gain. Saving for a moment to lose for eternity; and in that moment finding that what was gained has not been worth it after all.

"Measure thy life by loss instead of gain; Not by the wine drunk, but by the wine poured forth; For love's strength standeth in love's sacrifice;

And whoso suffers most hath most to give.'

There was more 'loss' awaiting Bachelor — loss that his earnest thoughtful eyes brooding into the fire that night could not foresee. But the truth of the hundredfold gain which his heart proclaimed in ringing triumph is also true, and did not fail him even although he was not allowed to 'see' it until the pain of the loss and its heart tears, had cleared from his vision.

Conference broke up — each to his own city.

Bachelor's sailing port and my home were separated by a sea-journey. But before he left he was

a Second-Mile People asked to address the China Inland Mission friends in my town, and he had expected to stay there as the guest of an old friend. However, when he landed that friend met him on the wharf with the news that the night before his house had burned, so he could not accommodate him! Could he think of someone else he knew? My father had once invited him to come and see us, so he rang up and asked if he might come now. Of course father replied yes, even though in his heart he feared mother would not approve. Mother was a Christian, had been president of the Women's Missionary Society in the past, but when it came to letting her only daughter (oh what plans she had been making for that daughter!) go bury herself on the mission field — that was a different question. And upon that question she had become most hurt, resenting any touch with Missions lest they encourage my 'silly romantic ideas', and especially did she resent the China Inland Mission to which I wished to apply. And now here was one of them invited to live under her roof for a week!

Into such a difficult atmosphere did Bachelor walk that summer evening. How he did it we none of us know, but before the week was over no one in the house was so loud in his praise as our little mother! She declared that never had she had a guest who was so little trouble; and his cultured conversation ... not a bit fanatical ... was so broad, why, he knew a little on every subject! And as for his music.

. well, mother too was a musician, had composed some and had never had her compositions refused by a publishing house, but

. Bachelor — A 'Lost Life'

she declared she was ready to sit at his feet and learn. How much Bachelor quietly did to unlatch my door to China, I do not know. But I do know that this week of more intimate contact with him gave one or two opportunities for personal con_ versation on practical spirituality, which laid foundations in my Christian life for which I have

never ceased to thank God. It was Bachelor who first taught me 'the Second Mile viewpoint', and after one has once tasted its sweetness one cannot be satisfied with less.

Although Bachelor had gently and kindly won his way into mother's heart, he was quite conscious that that heart was still steeled against the offering of her child to Christ for China. In spite of all her church enthusiasm for Missions, mother inwardly considered them 'charities' (I wonder if there are others like her?). And that her carefully_ planned-for daughter should live on 'charity'! — her pride rebelled fiercely.

Before he left Bachelor gave over one morning to helping me with my problems. We walked to the ocean beach not far away and sat down to talk together in private. I knew there was persistent opposition to my 'call' to China and so I had asked

Bachelor to 'analyze' it for me. But he seemed burdened that morning, and as if his own thoughts carried him away. So to make a beginning I asked him to underline a Bible verse for me to take to Moody Bible Institute, if the Lord finally opened the way to attend there. This is what he gave me — 'Casting all your care upon Him; for He careth for you. Be sober, be vigilant;

SecondMile People because your adversary the devil, as a roaring lion, walketh about, seeking whom he may devour. Whom resist', and the last words he underlined twice. Again he seemed abstracted, his eyes brooding over the gay little blue wavelets as they danced in the morning sunshine.

'You want to go to China, Isobel?'

'Yes' — the question seemed superfluous. I wondered why he was acting so strangely, as if depressed.

'There is great opposition. I feel your mother will never consent to your going. .

. doubt if you ever get there.' ... a long pause in which the depression passed on to me also.

Then he said, 'You are very young, aren't you?'

I told him my age.

'Yes,' he murmured — and brooded — then roused himself and said, 'Well, if ever you get to Moody, all will not be conquered then. Satan may try to get you away! Your mother is not strong — and it is quite possible that something like this may happen. She may get ill and feel herself worse than she is, and wire you to return immediately.

Then, perhaps if you did leave and come home, she might be well enough to meet you at the station, and your chance of Moody will be lost. How far away is the Institute — nearly a week's journey, I believe?' ese 'Well, ifany telegram of that sort should come, I would advise your doing this. You would have to take some time to pack your trunk and arrange for

Bachelor— A 'Lost Life'

your ticket .

. well, I would advise your wiring the nearest CIM secretary and asking for a reply as to whether the illness is really so serious or not.

Perhaps a reassuring answer would arrive and save your returning home.

. in short, keep you at the Institute till you graduated.'

I pause in awe at this point, for I am walking on very sacred ground. Who knows how deeply the Spirit-filled heart dwells in Christ?

Bachelor, do you know you prophesied that summer morning? No human foresight, no matter how clever the brain, could have foreseen the chain of events that were to fall before a year was ended. And Bachelor, though he did not get the details correct, had given me just exactly the weapon with which to defeat Satan in the coming unknown days.

To prove the power of a Spirit-filled life, I will tell you what happened subsequently:

I reached Moody in September; in December a telegram was handed to me simply stating mother had died, after an operation. What I did not learn till long after was that the night before she entered the hospital she wrote something like this to an old friend far away: 'As I look back over my life, its busy church work and all, I feel that much ofit has been "wood, hay and stubble". Perhaps my little girl has chosen the better part in wishing to give her all to Christ. If God will spare me after the operation tomorrow, I will try to build the "gold, silver and precious stones".' Although she never said to any of the family that she had yielded at

Second-Mile People last in the matter of my missionary call, I always have felt that I came to China with my mother's blessing upon me.

Just a few weeks after that grievously shocking telegram — it was so unexpected — a second telegram called me out of a student class. It was from my only brother, who at that time was very bitter against my going to China, and it said,

'Father fatally injured, elevator accident. Return immediately.'

After the first wild cry of sorrow — for it seemed too much to bear on top of the first — the words of Bachelor came to me like a flash, 'Satan may try to get you away from Moody' — and then his very practical advice. I told it to dear Mr Isaac Page of the China Inland Mission, who was living in Chicago then, and he said he would attend to the wiring. So I quietly prepared as I could and waited. Before evening the following telegram came from the nearest CIM secretary, and set my heart at rest — 'Father recovering sends love says by no means return'. And so, as one who knows these conflicts put it, "Satan was sold.'

* * * And now for Bachelor's 'loss'. He who had foreseen my future in such a wonderfully lucid way was quite unprepared for his own, and that is sometime's God's ways with His prophets. "The man who has no experience in the dark, has no secret to communicate in the light' says an Indian

Sister of the Common Life. Thus Bachelor was allowed to enter the dark.

i an Bachelor — A 'Lost Eijfe-

Arriving in Shanghai filled with the thrilling hope of soon being once more among his own dear people, he was staggered by a kindly yet urgent request that he should not reurn to Lisuland but, on the contrary, fill a need at the other end of China! The one who asked was so obviously a _ Spirit-led man, so sympathetic in realizing what it

- meant, that Bachelor felt it must be the will of God. But oh, must one 'lose' one's life more than once? And how about that 'hundredfold' — must one lose it too?

Yes, there is more than one second mile in the Christian's pathway. Remember — the first mile was compulsory, "If any man compel thee to goa mile,' but the second is only indicated, suggested, and then the Master waits for it to be offered —

'Go with him twain'; there is love in that whispered suggestion. Bachelor was not compelled to give up his Lisu, his 'hundredfold'. If he. had insisted he could doubtless have returned to them, but though it tore him to pieces, he could not refuse the Second Mile when Christ so lovingly indicated it. Once before had he lost his life and found it saved a hundredfold in the affections of his Lisu brothers and sisters. Now again he was to lose it and to lose the touch with his hundredfold also.

It seemed as if he could not write to any of his conference friends for weeks after that decision; and when word did finally drift to me it seemed to be just one thought. He quoted 'Whosoever will save his life shall lose it but whosoever shall lose his life for My sake and the gospel's shall save it',

Second-Mile People and the simple comment 'God is asking me to lose my life for His sake.' Oh the heart-tears, how they blinded his vision to the second hundredfold which must surely come from this second big losing!

The memory of that second losing never fails to still my heart into awe, even now. Always at thought of it comes Bachelor's face in the firelight and the ring of his voice, 'For one mother's love I have gained a hundred, for one brother or sister's many hundreds!' Why, the Lisu were Bachelor's life; how could he endure not to return to work among them?

Five years passed before I met Bachelor again.

At the beginning of those years stood Bachelor's comment, as he looked at the obstacles, "I doubt if you ever get to China'; at the end I stood in Shanghai, a probationer of the China Inland Mission, designated to the province over which Bachelor was now superintendent! And in between was — GOD!

Bachelor was to escort the party of new workers from Shanghai to his province, and so I watched for an opportunity to ask for the story of that second 'losing'. One had to ask very gently, for one may not pry into the sacred inner chamber of another's heart, but I got a wonderful answer.

Bachelor said simply, 'Y- (the land of his Lisu) was my Rachel, but K— (indicating the far place he was sent to) was my Leah'. His meaning was obvious. The Lisu were the love of his heart, but the other place had been even more fruitful to him in ministry. More fruitful than

a HUNDRED-

Bachelor — A 'Lost Life'

FOLD? But 'He that loseth his life for My sake shall save it' — big savings that!

* * * Then there is one more sketch of this inspiring life.

The scene is back in Canada, outside a church, in a town not very far from the conference. The Conference Speaker that year was a famous evangelist from Wales, a wonderful exponent of the Victorious Christian Life, and he had just given a message in this little church before returning to the Old Country. He was standing on the sidewalk surrounded by men of the congregation, and as I passed by I heard one of them ask him,

'Doctor, what is a Spirit-filled life?'

Interested in such a vital question, eager to hear the distinguished visitor's answer, I slowed up

_and hung on the outskirts of the little group.

Doctor's sunny smile beamed on the questioner. 'I will answer,' he said, "by an illustration. Two years ago I was first asked to be a speaker at The Firs Conference. The preceding year, a missionary from the China Inland Mission by the name of — (it was Bachelor!) had been at The Firs, and when I came the next year, the fragrance of his life still rested on everyone I met. THAT is a Spiritfilled life.'

The 'hundredfoild'! 'No man who hath left... for My sake and the Gospel's .

. but shall receive an hundredfold.' A hundredfold in Lisuland, a hundredfold in America, back to China losing his life again, and more than a hundredfold among the Chinese!

Second-Mile People 'There is that maketh himself rich, yet hath nothing; there is that maketh himself poor, yet hath great riches.' (Prov. 13:7)

DOROTHY — ARE YOU WILLING

FOR THIS?

THE YEAR BEFORE BACHELOR came to The Firs was my first summer conference. My coming had been prayed for by that incomparably dear and earnest pair — our Firs Conference 'Mother and Father'.

Quite unconscious of the burden for me that had cost them so much prayer, I arrived, alone and _ rather shy, wondering what this thing 'a summer conference' would turn out to be. Just groping my way out of modern agnosticism, I was as molten wax — ready for any impression that might fall upon me; how often have I praised God that the 'impressions' that fell upon me at that time were so fully from Second-Mile lives.

I can still hear Conference Mother's cheery voice in her cry of joyous welcome, as I was introduced to 'our Edna' and told that I was to share with her a little cottage hidden in the woods some hundred yards away. But first there was a meeting about to start, would I just step into the living room for now (that same living room where the next year Bachelor was to tell us of his hundredfold)

. The fire was sparkling in its place

SecondMile People . and a sea of young faces turned on me was slightly embarrassing, but their warm welcome soon made me feel entirely at home.

I would like to digress for a few pages in order to let you glimpse 'our Edna' and one other of that group on the floor. Of all these faces, only one stands out clearly in my memory — warm dark eyes and a beaming smile that of itself spoke of the kind loving heart that many recall with deep gratitude to God. "Twin-Sister' she gaily labelled herself, because Conference Mother declared we looked alike, and I gladly accepted the comphiment. Twin-Sister is a Vassar graduate, and Christian people tell you proudly that she comes from one of the richest families in her State, yet Christ has become to her the One who strips the seeming beauty from all other idols of the earth — riches, social position, and educational standing.

She was dressed so simply and moved so sweetly and unaffectedly among the other young women of the Conference, that girls from very different backgrounds felt completely at home in her company, and no heart could shut up its confidences from that dear smile and sympathetic touch.

For years she wanted to join the rest of us as a missionary in China, but the delicate health of a widowed mother was quietly put first. At length

God Himself opened the way, and added a fine husband for good measure. Conference Mother visited them in their home in China and wrote to me, "I'win-Sister and her husband are a very definite spiritual forceinC.

.and their home was a real centre for the Lord.'

Dorothy — Are You Willing for This?

'Our Edna' was leader of the young people's group that year, and we all treated her with the reverent gentleness which one naturally yields toa life with black crepe hung by its doorway, for Edna, still in her twenties, was newly widowed.

She and her husband, Ellis, had been splendid young missionaries in one of China's largest cities, and had only been married a few months when they chose for their summer vacation a wooded spot where there was a swimming pool. They were both good swimmers, and just as they reached the edge of the pool one morning a cry for help rang through the air. They saw that a lady missionary who had gone in just before them was in danger.

Without a pause Ellis leaped in after her, and shortly had her in safety, but strange to say he himself disappeared. Frantically the little bride plunged in after him, quite regardless of the wounds she was receiving as she was thrown against rocks, beaten and cut with plunging here and there in a desperate effort to sight her loved one. Long after hope of his life being saved must have gone, she kept cn hunting and swimming and finally his body was seen washed up behind the falls. Gathering up the remainder of her strength Edna dived in again and returned, slowly dragging her precious burden to the bank.

Those who saw her said that when safe on shore with the beloved body, she just sank on a nearby log with her face buried in her hands. Lifting her eyes after a little while she saw a group of petrified

Chinese watching her and the still tragic figure nearby. Forgetting her injuries and grief she got

SecondMile People up and ran to them, explaining that this was only her dear Ellis's earthly tabernacle; the real part of him, the soul that could never die, had gone to be with Christ, and this hope is for every man. Do you wonder we treated Edna with gentle reverence?

It was my wonderful privilege to share Edna's inner life during those conference days. She slept with Ellis's Bible under her pillow; it was her last thought at night and her first in the morning.

What lessons in practical Christian living I silently culled from that dear association! So it was natural that, during Edna's last class with us, when she called for lives to be dedicated to God's service when or where He chose, I raised my hand with the others. After living for ten days with Jesus

- Christ revealed in a human life as He was in Edna's, how could one help but yield? I was surprised at her joy, surprised she did not expect it.

'I saw a human life, ablaze with God, I felt a power Divine; As through an empty vessel of frail clay

I saw God's glory shine!

Then woke I from a dream, And cried aloud — "My Father, give to me The blessing of a life consumed by God, That I may live for Thee."

I learned years afterwards the 'why' of Edna's delighted joy. None of us happy young people knew just how hard it was for Edna to 'lose' herself and her new sorrow day after day, in finding and

Dorothy — Are You Willing for This?

giving us messages from His Word. But on that last day she felt she was breaking. Before the class, she ran into the room where the Conference Council were meeting, and cried, 'O I can't take them today. Please one of you teach them! I haven't anything to say, and it is the last meeting — so important. Please let me out of this class!'

But Council knew well how Edna's life was telling quietly on that happy young group, and would not release her — just sent her back saying,

'We will pray for you all through that class'. And _God shone through the vessel of frail clay, and at this moment there are five of us in China (not to speak of those in other lands) testifying for Him, who gave ourselves at that class which Edna felt she 'couldn't take'.

* * * Indwelt 'Not merely in the words you say, Not only in your deeds confessed, But in the most unconscious way Is Christ expressed.

Is it a beatific smile, A holy light upon your brow; Oh no, I felt His Presence while You laughed just now.

For me 'twas not the truth you taught To you so clear, to me still dim But when you came to me you brought A sense of Him

SecondMile People And from your eyes He beckons me, And from your heart His love is shed, Till I lose sight, of you and see The Christ instead.'

(by A. S. Wilson) It was during the first few days of that Conference, while my ideas of the Christian life were still in a crude unmoulded state, that I remember seeing

Dorothy. She was brushing and fixing her wavy brown hair before a mirror, and as often was the case with this radiant young life, she was talking merrily with others, the dimples playing in and out of her pink cheeks with winsome sweetness. I thought her very attractive and was so pleased when she asked me to go for a walk with her.

Dorothy was secretly longing to 'speak just a word for Jesus' with this young girl so obviously still a question mark as far as the deeper things went, and she had really that purpose in mind in suggesting a walk. But somehow happy ridiculous nothings would come to the surface and the whole ramble was just one funny thing after another (I remember a squashed toad on the pathway sprang into symbolism as we attempted to discuss the disciplines of life). When we parted Dorothy felt she had been a failure, unconscious that the one she had hoped to help was going away enchanted with this glimpse into the very human sweetness of this Christ-like girl.

'... I felt His presence while You laughed just now.'

The Spirit-filled life cannot 'fail', it is fruitful

_ Dorothy — Are You Willing for This? af even when it may seem least to have done anything. That walk gave Dorothy 'influence' over me when a 'sermon' would have created a permanent barrier. In fact at that time I carried a mental suit of armour all ready to slip on quietly the moment any 'old fogey' tried to 'preach' at me!

Oswald Chambers says, 'The people who influence us most are not those who buttonhole us and talk to us, but those who live their lives like the stars in heaven and the lilies in the field, perfectly simply and unaffectedly. Those are the lives that mould us.' A great mistake is to think that a Spirit-filled man or woman must always be casting sermons at people. Being 'filled with the Spirit' (which is a first qualification of Second Mile

People) is merely a refusing of self and a taking by faith of the life of Christ as wrought in us by His

Holy Spirit.

; 'Many who claim by faith this fulness, and who, up to the measure of their light, are yielded and obedient, are disappointed and perplexed because they are aware of no particular manifestation.

They expect a glowing sense of power .

. But let us take to heart what others have pointed out, that the Spirit's chief work is to make us HOLY. The truest evidence is not gift but grace.

. The Spirit will divide the gifts. One man may have a gift for preaching, another a gift for intercession, another a gift for personal dealing, and another by administration. Still others may glorify their Lord by some kind of seeming drudgery, even as lowly as that of Brother Lawrence, who "practised the presence of God" in the monks' kitchen.

SecondMile People "A work of lowly love to do For Him on Whom I wait."

'But let it be said again, once you open your being to His fulness your life must be enriched; you will never be the same again.'* Dorothy threaded her way back through the pine-scented air, and along the earth path in and out among stately tall tree trunks. What was wrong with her anyway? She had wanted to go for that walk with Isobel to speak to her about her soul, she had started out to do it, and then at the end found she had not done it after all! There were

Edna and Twin-Sister, tactful soul winners both .. catch them doing such a trick, being such a failure! But then they were clever — college graduates, both of them — and Dorothy wasn't.

Was it cleverness that taught them to bring other souls through. to a decision for Christ? No.

Dorothy was too well taught seriously to believe that — only the Holy Spirit can convict of sin, and bring a soul through that mystery 'the second birth'. Well then, was it that the Holy Spirit could not use her, Dorothy? Discouragement and unbelief had gripped hands and for a moment she was defeated.

Five hundred years before, a monk used to pace the cloister of his monastery at Mount St Agnes, and perhaps such thoughts assailed him. His was a long and uneventful life, spent in copying manuscripts, reading and composing, and in the peaceful routine of monastic piety. Thomas 4 Kempis

*from A. S. Wilson's book, Concerning Perplexities, Paradoxes & Perils in the Spirit-led Path

Dorothy — Are You Willing for This?

longed for nothing more than to be wholly his Lord's and used of Him, yet year after year passed and nothing spectacular or wonderful happened to him or through him. True, he was composing a book he meant to call the Imitation of Christ, but then it was hardly an original work at all. Only too well did he realize how much of it was merely culled from others' thoughts and clear vision, and how little was the simple product of his own mind.

What he would not see was the beauty and depth of his own spiritual life, which runs throughout, weaving all foreign parts into one lovely mosaic, creating a book which has been for five hundred years the supreme call and guide to spiritual inspiration.

We fall in defeat when we try to 'judge' the work of the Holy Spirit in our lives; ours is to yield to Him in joyous faith, and not worry as to the kind or value of the fruit He is producing.

Dear Dorothy's special gift of the Spirit was her radiance, her shining happy joy in her walk with the Saviour, but I doubt if she ever knew she possessed it. She thought she should have been preaching, when as a matter of fact the Holy Spirit was using her gift of shining, to the very fullest extent in the life she had prayed to touch, and she

| need not have been so discouraged that afternoon.

We must take the Spirit's fulness, as we take our salvation, by faith in God's promise that He is given to us.

A few days later, as we listened to a lecture, someone pointed to Dorothy and said, 'I suppose you know she is sailing for China, under the China

Second-Mile People Inland Mission, in a few months' time?'

It came as a shock — for those days I was only beginning to think of yielding my own life for home service; foreign service had not yet loomed up on my mental horizon. I looked at the swect earnest face — maybe she was not beautiful to others but she always was to me — the sparkling blue eyes, the pink cheeks where dimples loved to bask as in sunshine, the soft wavy brown hair. 'That girl go bury herselfin China! Why, what on earth for? She could easily get married and have a happy home in America; why waste all that sweetness on yel- — low old China?'

That old idea of mother's was in my mind too.

Only old maids, misfits, folk who could not make good at home turned to the mission field .

. else why did they go? I was baffled and annoyed. I learned later that Dorothy could have 'married and stayed home'; what then was calling her away?

* * * Conference ended, and everyone went back to the old routines of life, to apply the new vision to the old tasks. One day, a month or so later, in Port

City, a phone call brought a happy sweet voice to my ear. 'I'm sailing tomorrow! Can't you run over and see me?"

Dorothy in Port City and only a few blocks away! What joy. 'Yes, I'll be there in five minutes

— goodbye!' and out I ran, not waiting to change the clothes in which I had come from the schoolroom — for I was now a school teacher.

Dorothy — Are You Willing for This?

Dorothy was in the midst of last-minute packing, but soon cleared a place for me to sit, while she went on with her work, laughing and chattering and dimpling.

'Had some scare on the way here! We came by boat, and Mamma and I were just comfortably seated on deck, when suddenly Mamma said,

"Dorothy! Have you got your ocean liner ticket which Mr Thompson (then secretary of the CIM in Port City) sent you?" We looked at each other blankly, the same thought in both our minds. If that ticket wasn't packed away in the bottom ofa trunk which most likely was already in the bottom of the liner itself!

*"Oh Dorothy!" Mamma gasped, "All the money it cost — there will never be time to get hold of that trunk! What wll we do?"

'I had Daily Light in my pocket, and took it out — I've often gotten help from it — and sure enough, there it was: "September 4th. Sit still, my daughter." You know the rest of that verse? —

"until thou know how the matter will fall." Well it was just as if the Lord Himself had spoken to us, so we just took it from Him and refused to worry.

'When we got to Port City I had to face Mr Thomson and tell him, but' (here the dimples played enchantingly) 'he said it was not as bad as it looked, for he could get the ticket duplicated without much trouble. Now doesn't it pay to trust the Lord?'

And the blue eyes sparkled joyously up at me from the suitcase into which she was packing.

She'd got in a 'preach' after all! But then her time

Second-Mile People

had come; the Holy Spirit is never too early and never too late. It did not take her long to see I looked careworn.

'What's wrong, Isobel?' No dimples now, just sweet sympathy.

'Oh, it is the school teaching; I'm so unhappy, I feel such a misfit! All my life P''ve planned on teaching but now that I'm doing it I just seem to" be a failure', and a long tale of the woes of early experiences in the schoolroom were poured into Dorothy's patient ears.

Finding it was nothing tragic the dimples returned — but carefully guarded — for Dorothy realized 'her time' had come, and she loved nothing better than to tell someone else about all her wonderful Lord had done for her. Leaving her packing she came and sat down beside me. I wish

I could remember all she said, but Dorothy's preaching did not always stick in the memory

— it was herself that was her most potent sermon.

'For me 'twas not the truth you taught To you so clear, to me still dim; But when you came to me you brought A sense of Him.'

I only know she told me stories out of her trials as a business girl, and how her Lord, as she continually looked to Him, unfolded new lessons of the Spirit-led life, the resting-in-Him life, the anxious-for-nothing life, the 'more abundant' life which is continual peace and frequent joy. Her dear laugh is forever associated now with Phil. 4:6 as she gave me 'her own' translation — 'Be anxious for nothing! — not even for your failures!"

Dorothy — Are You Willing for This?

I tried to learn, but the truth to her so clear, was to me still dim; it remained for Bachelor at the next year's Conference to teach me the practical

'how' of that life. From Dorothy I just drank in the inspiration of herself, the 'sense of Him', and the fact that this life of undisturbed peace was no mystic dream but a possible Reality who sat beside me with earnest sweet eyes, and soft pink checks.

I asked her for 'a verse' before we parted; Edna had given me 'My grace is sufficient for thee' (2

Cor 12:9). Dorothy, after a moment's thought said, "his is my life verse, I will leave it with you.

Col. 3:1: 'If ye then be risen with Christ, seek those things which are above, where Christ sitteth on the right hand of God'... and her name is still written over that verse in my Bible.

At my request she also gave me a photo of herself, and all through that endlessly long teaching year it stood on my bureau, and during many an hour of doubt and trouble I would come and gaze at it, and somehow it helped.

'And from your eyes He beckons me, And from your heart His love is shed, Till I lose sight of you, and see The Christ instead.'

* * * Letters came after a while ... happy Yangchow ones of studying the language, and trying to keep warm in the awful cold.

. an excited one telling of designations, Dorothy to far inland ... a funny one filled with laughter over the ridiculous malad-

Second-Mile People justments of Chinese road travel. Dorothy was tall, five feet ten I think, and correspondingly heavy, but she had to journey with a little girl who had been a cabaret dancer before she was saved; the two were to journey balanced on either side of a mule litter, with the natural result that Dorothy's side was always diving earthward, while tiny Miss Dancer was always flying skyward! It is surprising that they only had a real upset once, but it was quite a serious one; however the trials of that long month and a half's tedious bumping, dust and hot sun were glanced over, and always Dorothy's fountain of joy found something to laugh about.

By this time I had reached Moody Bible Institute, and there I found Dorothy was still lovingly remembered. Satan does not shrug his shoulders and bid you goodbye when you enter Bible Institute... the entrance is perfectly familiar to him, and he has his own 'Master Key'. Trials and temptations came in a flood upon the new student, there was sometimes a desire to throw it all up, but at such times the thought would come, 'Dorothy has walked these halls, and went through many of these same temptations; she did not run; if she stuck to it, so can I,' and again I would go up to the sweet picture-face on my bureau and sometimes talk to it.

One of my greatest blessings while at Moody was the group of wonderful young lives that God gradually brought into mine; they are scattered all over the world now . .

. 'for His Name's sake'.

. but they taught me more of practical Christian

Dorothy — Are You Willing for This?

living than classroom lectures. One of this dear number was the John of these pages. A quiet tenacity of spiritual purpose was what marked him out, and there was a thrill of joy when he told me he was accepted by the China Inland Mission.

He sailed for the mission field while I had still a term's study to complete, and by the time I myself was ready to go, the door had closed.

Spring of 1927 found missionary work in China at a standstill. To John in the training home at Anking, and to Dorothy far inland, and to Bachelor who was then in Dorothy's province, came the order, 'evacuate!' An all-night wait at the river side with some ten men all in one tiny room, a crowded boat journey, and John was in Shanghai.

But not so Dorothy and Bachelor.

Dorothy had found a nook in that far western province, with an older lady worker, older in the deep things of God as well as in years, and our young friend drank in joyfully all she had to teach; they were very happy. When ordered to flee they decided to sell all they had, rather than leave their things to be pillaged, and so in a short time they were ready to join the band of escaping missionaries. Travel overland, with anti-foreign feeling running so high and such dreadful deeds in Nanking still shuddering through one's memory, was out of the question. Bachelor was in charge of the group, and it was decided to flee by the Yellow River, on rafts of bloated skins.

There were several rafts needed, and peril and death tracked them. Robbers on shore, whirlpools that caught one of their rafts for several hours, and

— N

SecondMile People al then the tragic, grievous death of Dr King lifted the smaller trials out of sight — the trials of cramped space day after day in the tiny tent-like

— shelter erected in the middle of the raft where they slept, and the distressing lack of privacy. But again all that discomfort was lightly touched upon and a steadfast cheerfulness seems to drift across the memory as one seeks to recall Dorothy's account of those days.

On their arrival at Tientsin (the civilised world) she had a joke on herself to relate. In those far inland parts the woman missionary wears

Chinese costume, so when suddenly 'dumped out' into such a stylish up-to-date city there was a general consternation at the lack of appropriate garments. Dorothy had retained a pretty satin dress which she used to wear at home, and when she heard the other ladies bewailing their plight she hugged herself complacently at her own good fortune — she had not only a foreign dress but a lovely satin one! When, however, it was time to - 'dress for dinner', Dorothy discovered to her immense chagrin that her treasured robe sat upon her shoulders and refused to come down any further — she had grown so plump that the dress was now useless!

'Whatever did you do, Dorothy?'

With gales of laughter she replied, 'Made mea dress out of my ponjee nightgown and wore that, till better could be obtained.'

John, of course, was no stranger to the names of Bachelor and Dorothy — he had loved to listen to me tell of them in the old Moody days, and so

al Dorothy — Are You Willing for This?

when he heard they had finally arrived in Shanghai, he was most eager to meet them. He was disappointed in neither. Bachelor's stories of Lisuland brought him what mine had not, a desire to give his own life to those dear people, but he said nothing to anyone. When, however, the 'uninformed' Shanghai Council designated him 'to tribes work in Y ..." (the province where Lisuland is) he was sure that it was God's call, and sure also that many small leadings in another direction had now been crowned with all that was needed to complete the revelation of God's will. So one evening he electrified his unsuspecting comrades by the announcement of his engagement to Isobel!

Shortly after, during a social time among the 'evacuators', a tall young lady with roguish eyes and pink cheeks stood before him, and with proffered hand challenged a welcome — 'I-knowIsobel!' I do not know which enjoyed that meeting the more — each was enthusiastic about the other in recounting it all to the far-away waiting one.

It was natural, therefore, when John heard that Dorothy had been granted an early furlough for purposes of further Bible study, that he should come and ask if she would kindly take something to Isobel. Shyly he produced a modest little engagement ring — would she please be responsible for this reaching her friend?

WOULD she! How fast the dimples poked in and out of the pink cheeks! Of course she would be simply delighted at the opportunity. Inwardly she was thinking up a thousand ways to tease that same Isobel. Unfortunately for her mischievous

Second-Mile People — plans, she had to get off the boat before she came to my home, and the treasure had to be entrusted to an older missionary. I still remember the way this lady looked me up and down and then said significantly, 'You're a lucky girl!'

But Dorothy wasn't going to miss her chance to 'take a rise' out of her friend. In not many weeks time I got word to prepare for a visit from her, and that Twin-Sister would be coming with her. It was with beating heart that I threaded my way to the wharf that early morning — to see Dorothy was excitement enough, but I was also going to meet someone who had just lately seen and talked with — John! Sure enough as the crowd poured up the gang plank there were the two beloved forms, and soon I was in their arms. Twin-Sister, with that sweet modesty and fine sense of feeling which always marked her, immediately fell into the background, and from there silently 'glowed' her sympathy and joy, knowing full well how much

Dorothy and I had to talk over.

From the wharf to the quiet-nooked restaurant, for breakfast, only laughing nothings were discussed. I was pronounced to 'look tired' and ordered not to work hard. Dorothy herself was as young looking, as pink cheeked and as radiant as the day she left us four and a half years before, but decidedly plumper. 'Fatter!' she insisted disgustedly, 'And oh, my family! You know I've a very stylish young brother and sister at varsity! They say I'm quite 'impossible' and are all on the rampage to get me thinned to a willow line! No chance of being the "fogey old mish" in my family'

Dorothy — Are You Willing for This?

— and so on, mischievously avoiding all topics that were so obviously languishing on the tip ofmy tongue. But when we finally got seated, TwinSister in the corner beside Dorothy and I opposite, when the little waitress had carried our order out, then Dorothy leaned across the table and with blue eyes roguishly fixed on me, and dimples tripping in and out, let loose her bomb, 'Well,

Isobel, I just love him!' The naughty tease had so obviously planned it, was so obviously wishing to see if | would 'turn the other cheek also' that I couldn't help rising to the occasion, so eyeing her steadily back I said solemnly, 'So do I!' whereupon we all broke into happy laughter.

Joyous teasing sank frequently into earnest talk of deeper things, things touching the One Who stood as an invisible loving Presence over that small breakfast party — we did not have to mention His Name, it was graven so deeply, so dearly, on each of those three hearts that it was like a silent pervading perfume.

* * * That summer conference lives in my memory in terms of Twin-Sister and Dorothy. I suppose we admire most in our friends those qualities in which we feel ourselves to be lacking. I, who was made to plunge and blunder, found a deep joy in watching Twin-Sister. There was a steadiness of spiritual gait about her that lifted her quite above other younger people of her age (neither she nor Dorothy was out of her twenties) and she had 'a

SecondMile People wise head set on young shoulders'. I never knew her when that bright engaging smile was not easily on top; I never knew her to preach a standard that she herself did not live up to; there was not a breath of the spiritual prig anywhere about her, ever; and I never knew her to be in the slightest influenced by that most insidious flattery — the only too obvious adoration of the crowd. She was idolized, and her company esteemed a high privilege, but she took it all with that good-natured laugh of one whose eyes are fixed on something quite different .

. fixed on Someone who had so captured her heart that it would seem there was no room in it any longer for love of things, or love of self.

That year we lived in tents, and for every couple of immature Christian girls there was placed one who was older and deeper in the knowledge of God. Dorothy was given the hardest two of all — the kind of pert young rebels whom Christian parents often send to a Summer Conference, fondly hoping that they will 'come back different'!

Only a Dorothy could have influenced this smart, pretty pair of teen-aged girls, and even Dorothy had a hard time at first. They resented the obvious reason for her presence in their tent, and were even more alarmed to learn she was of that dreadfully octopus-like species called 'missionary', so they insisted on treating her as a kind of pious spy come to discover and thwart all their best-laid plans for dodging meetings and getting a good time out of this pale thing — a Bible Conference!

On the surface they wore an elaborate politeness

Dorothy — Are You Willing for This?

towards her, but each gentle effort to get beneath was met by a stiff backed, icy, 'Hands off'

Dorothy, who was accustomed to warm atmospheres of love, felt keenly the chilly air of her tent, and more than once assured us that we had chosen the wrong one to deal with that difficult pair. But we just smiled .

. we knew what prayer and the unaffected sweet joyousness of Dorothy herself were bound to do. There was nothing of the pious prude about our dear girl .

. she was so natural and human in her Christian life, and so unconscious of possessing any power to influence others.

It was a wide-eyed surprise to that attractive but naughty pair of young rebels, when some little incident in the tent life brought forth ripples of laughter and genuine enjoyment from their tall

'ogre'. Cautiously they began to test her out... was this part of her 'game', or was she really as simple and as lovely as she seemed? And at every test she rang true. To those alert young things who had firmly and resolutely closed their pretty ears to every message or word about the Christ, came that subtlest of wooings ... the Master's own winsome life lived out in human form, lived naturally, sweetly, abundantly. They suspected deep astute traps to 'catch' them, they quite believed if it were possible they would be dragged, as it were, by the scruff of the neck, to the feet of the Lord — what they never expected was this life of inexplicable beauty which enthralled without making any attempt to do so.

I do not know their after career, but I do know that before Conference ended each had given

Second-Mile People .

Dorothy some token of that enthralling, and the tent atmosphere which began as veiled warfare ended in warmest fellowship.

Autumn again brought a parting of our ways; Twin-Sister returned to home duties; Dorothy left for Biola for further study; I, at last, sailed for China.

Spring of 1929. Yangchow, with its blessed restful days and interesting new studies and friendships, was over, and our party had arrived in Shanghai en route to its inland designation. A casual remark, 'Do you know Dorothy B... is here? Just got off the boat,' sent me pelting along verandas, upstairs and bursting into the bedroom which I was told she was sharing with her beloved fellow worker. What a joyous cry of welcome! How proudly and roguishly Dorothy turned herself around and challenged my congratulations —

'I've lost 30 Ibs! 'Then the introduction to Fellow Worker of whom I had heard so much and whose quiet thoughtful maturity was a splendid background to Dorothy's radiant youthfulness. A Lisuland scene has sometimes recalled them. Our

Lisuland is rock but scattered about, embedded in the surface soil, are multitudinous smaller rocks.

These have the mellowed appearance of age and experience, for every year the blazing heat of forest fires scorches them black, and then the fierce mountain wind comes and blows them clean and cool again. In the springtime, lovely purple

Dorothy — Are You Willing for This?

violets appear at the edge of these stones, their white slender roots slipping down and under, almost into the gray granite, and their soft fragrant heads lifted against its protecting solidity.

Gray rock and sweet violet were these two.

Fellow Worker was the embedded rock which had zone through the fire and bitter blast of missionary life lived in the midst of heathendom, and Dorothy was the gentle flower whose roots clung affectionately to the firm strength of her experienced comrade.

Of those Shanghai days two pictures of Dorothy plead for admittance. One is chancing upon her and Fellow Worker one early morning before breakfast as they paced up and down the compound walk, talking together in low tones. As I approached, Dorothy cried out, 'I am being scolded for not having my packing done by the hour ordered. You see,' casting a loving glance at Fellow Worker which showed the 'scold' must have been a very kind one, "She is my "Mamma" as well as my partner, and thinks and orders for me... and expects obedience!' with a mischievous slance. Dorothy had often told me that this

Mamma-Partner' had also been a richly deep Bible teacher to her, and the loving relationship which existed between them was beautiful to see.

The second picture is Dorothy on the train that ook her far inland. I was down to see her off, secause she was 'Dorothy' but also because she was taking some new workers — my fellow Yangshow-ites — in with her. At that station trains were invariably off schedule and overcrowded,

Second-Mile People because they sold more tickets than they had seats. Therefore to get a compartment you must go early and grab places for yourself and party, for your boxes and suitcases and whatnot. The 'grabbing' often involves diving and dodging, knocking heads, bumping, with eddies of dust filling throat and soiling person, and it can be trying, but with Dorothy it was only an excuse for letting loose that merry tongue. Soon she had the party in an uproar of laughter and at my last sight of her she was saying, 'Here! Here! this won't do at all! New workers to take their seniors so lightly! I must teach them to respect the dignity of their elders,' and she was trying to straighten out those uncontrollable dimples and assume a mien of sanctimonious gravity when the train pulled out.

* * * Three or four months later and many hundreds of miles distant, in a busy little market town on a busy mountain-girt plain, I and my fellow worker were just settling down for what we hoped would be some months of intensive work. One evening, the door of our sitting room was suddenly darkened by a tall, quick-moving form — our senior missionary, to whom we had just said goodbye in the provincial capital city nine days previously, not expecting to see him again for many another month. He spoke with suppressed excitement, waving our exclamations into silence. 'I've come to get you two, and take you back to the capital!

The governor's army is away fighting the neigh-

Dorothy — Are You Willing for This?

bour province and a huge band of brigands have seized this moment to attack us. They are marching on their way to attack the capital now and it is believed you are right in their path. .

. we must be off by dawn tomorrow and race them to the city. God grant we get there first!'

Pushing us into seats, he himself sat down and continued, "That isn't all. Yesterday the arsenal exploded, destroying a large part of the city; our house was badly shaken, some windows smashed and the roof cracked, but the other CIM compound was quite wrecked. ..

. No, no lives were lost, praise God.'

It was not till we were seated for a cup of tea that he remembered a third piece of news. 'Oh yes, there is something else; I am afraid it is bad news for you, sister', turning sympathetically to me.

'News has come that Dorothy B... is dead... died of typhus fever; there has been a lot of it there following the famine, you know.'

The words dropped on my consciousness with a thud that 'brigands' and 'arsenal explosion' had failed to effect.

'Dead ... my Dorothy DEAD?' ... the sitting room and its inmates faded out of sight and I seemed to be left in space with the great big terrible letters D-E-A-D written across the darkness. 'My bonny Dorothy .

. those pink dimpled cheeks ... that radiant young life .

. gone? Oh no!' Rebellion hot and insistent rose within; it was surely a mistake, perhaps it was someone else; blinded with tears I looked up to say so, but the kindly pitying eyes of my senior missionary told

Second-Mile People | all too plainly there was no mistake. 'But I just saw her a few months ago, said goodbye to a laughing bonny girl with years of splendid life ahead'! ... Dead.

The pain of that evening reaches out over the years to me and grips afresh. It does not seem possible (when it is your loved one it happens to!) that so much radiant young life can be laid cold in a few feet of earth and covered over with soil. Oh no! That is not the end, blessed be God!

'He that doeth the will of God abideth forever.'

And where that bright spirit is now, I am persuaded I will be someday also, for did we not have the same faith, live the same life, His life? If heaven held no Christ, it must still be heaven because of the Dorothys there, because of those marvellous ones who have gone on before us; surely having lived the same, fought for the same, believed the same they must also share the same?

What a wonderful heritage of friends is waiting for us over yonder! And yet to each of us, One Face must outshine all the others, a Face the love-light of which is past the brightness of the sun, and does away with need of candle or burning planet.

'And His servants shall serve Him, and they shall see His Face'... it is our promise, our hope, our heaven.

In the midst of her grief, Fellow Worker whose life, so to speak, had merely brushed close to mine in passing, she who turned from the new grave to the house with its empty chair and room, she remembered the love I had for Dorothy, and wrote a dear long letter of those last days. She had

Dorothy — Are You Willing for This?

| faithfully nursed her, and often had their conversation turned on the way of the Cross. 'Of all plans of ensuring success,' said Thomas Ragland, years before in India, 'the most certain is Christ's own — that of becoming a corn of wheat, falling into the ground and dying.' As Dorothy's last hours were approaching she seemed to know it, and her eyes called the tender nurse to bend over and listen. 'Are you willing for this?' she whispered.

It was her last word, but its searching question has echoed and re-echoed in my heart. It comes whispering down over these intervening years...

'Except a corn of wheat fall into the ground and die, it abideth alone; but IF IT DIE, it bringeth forth much fruit' (Jn. 12:24) What if the corn of wheat be young and lovely? ... What if it be a literal dying? ..

. 'Are you willing for this?'

Said Earth's loveliest and strongest of all her manhood, in the flower of His youth, "The cup which My Father hath given Me, shall I not drink it? ... and they 'led Him away to crucify Him.'

'Captain beloved, battle wounds were Thine, Let me not wonder if some hurt be mine; Rather, O Lord, let my deep wonder be That I may share a battle wound with Thee.

O golden joy that Thou, Lord, givest them Who follow Thee to far Jerusalem; O joy immortal, when the trumpets sound,

And all the world is hushed to see Thee crowned.'

(Amy Carmichael)

BUD — THE INDEFATIGABLE

SOUL WINNER

IT WAS DINNER TIME around the table of a China 'Inland Mission Home in Canada, where I was spending five weeks as a candidate. The conversation happened upon the young missionaries of the previous summer who had been in the Home in. their turn, most of whom had been my fellow students at Moody; but one boy, who had sailed in John's party, was a stranger, and the description of him caught my imagination.

'He is an indefatigable soul winner,' said the hostess. 'I will never forget going down to the train to see them off for the western coast. He did not travel with the rest of that party but by himself, and he would not get into his own coach but hung on the platform till the train was about to pull out.

Then I knew why! On the end was a car crowded with men going to work in the harvest fields of the prairies, and he jumped into their coach, forgoing the roomy comforts of his own, in order to do personal work among them. An indefatigable soul winner — that's what he is.'

* * *

Bud — The Indefatigable Soul Winner

When John's letters began to arrive at my door, 'Bud' figured in many. He had a grand contempt for compromise, or diluting the Word of God with 'but's and 'however's.

'From subtle love of softening things, From easy choices, weakenings, O Lamb of God, deliver me!' might have been written of Bud.

He was very business-like in his Christian life.

He had previously been a telegraph operator for one of our great Canadian railways; when he received an instruction over the wire, it was his custom to accept it implicitly for just what it said; and the instructions were not always attractive — sometimes they ordered him to far lonely and distant outposts. When he received one like this, he did not greet it in the dubious manner with which many modern Christians approach God's

Book of Instructions. He did not eye it all over, then say to himself, 'Now I wonder if this really did come from the Boss! Just as likely as not it is a forgery by his secretary .

. though why, I cannot for the life of me think! But I had better be very careful about this and investigate it thoroughly before proceeding to obey.'

Nor did he receive it in a second favourite attitude — 'It doubtless is from the Boss ... sounds like him.

. but how very drastic! Sending a young single inexperienced fellow like me to that kind of a place. It must be he did not quite mean what he says. Now let me see, just how could we interpret this to make it more plausible?'

Nor did he adopt a third even more popular

Second-Mile People — plan — 'Oh dear! This looks rather disagreeable; guess I'd better not read it very carefully .

. it is just as well to be a little ignorant ... one can always say then, that one did not understand.'

He simply took it at face value — and went; and incidentally some small western Ontario towns owe a new spiritual blessing and revival in their little churches to Bud because he did not question, but just went.

Near to one home we had in China was a big fascinating water-mill. A bright little creek tumbling down an embankment had been captured and turned into usefulness; as its waters made the small descent they were caught by and made to turn a big wooden wheel, which in turn was attached to a huge stone wheel on the floor above which revolved in a narrow groove where the rice to be ground was placed. That massive stone was made to roll simply by the pressure of the brook upon the water wheel, not at all by the fact that there was, or was not, any grain to grind! We more than once peeked into the floury interior and watched that big imposing stone come rolling along at a great rate, but over an empty trough, wearing itself out and accomplishing nothing!

Some Christians are like that stone wheel. They are moved by the pressure of public opinion, which expects some amount of 'church activity' from a church member, and so they go round and round, often a dignified and interesting spectacle, but grinding nothing, wearing themselves thin and nothing to show for it.

Bud — The Indefatigable Soul Winner

Bud never wasted his strength to grind air, but he never begrudged it, either, if there was real grain in the trough. At the Training Home in Anking there was the usual six-hour-a-day sche- -dule of study to go through, which very often leaves one fatigued and unable to bring the usual freshness to prayer and Bible study. Whenever

Bud felt this spiritual barrenness about to clutch, he would forego his dinner and take that extra time for nourishing his inner life. The 'mother' at that home is famous for her delicious cooking, and undoubtedly tempting odours and the happy buzz of voices in glad fellowship would drift up to him, but they did not lure him away. He would stay with his Lord until that inner thirst was quenched, and preferred to feed his spirit rather than his body. If it increased or bettered the Boss's business, what did a meal now and then signify? It does not in the money world — why be more lustful of physical comforts in the spiritual realm?

Another individual trait in this singular boy was his intrepid insistence on getting the most out of his investment — the life he had given over to Jesus Christ. Again his business-like attitude is exhibited. He was determined to know how others, who were notably successful spiritually, planned their lives and habits. On arriving in Shanghai he inquired who were the outstanding

Christian leaders, and on learning their names and addresses took himself off to look them up. It made no difference that he was a nobody and they were prominent and busy men, he introduced

Second-Mile People himself and his questions, and I do not think he ever met with rebuff. .

. but he no doubt learned a great deal.

Said Dr Goulburn, "The greatest saints who ever lived, whether under the Old or New Dispensation, are on a level which is quite within our reach. The same forces of the spiritual world which were at their command, and the exertion of which made them such spiritual heroes, are open to us also.' If one can be a great spiritual force, a great channel of blessing to mankind, or a nobody, merely by one's choice, why not choose to get and give the most out of life? Especially as one has only one life to invest.

Shanghai evacuation days brought a delightful opportunity to the keen soul winner. The streets teemed and thronged not only with the usual motley of Chinese, Indians and Japanese, but with foreign soldiers and sailors of several nations.

The forces of evil were working 'in season and out of season' to entrap these easy victims, and no one who loved God and His kingdom could stand by in idleness. Spare hours often saw Bud slipping out of the door with his pockets bulging with tracts, to be distributed with eager loving word to the men he encountered; and evenings would find him at some gathering place where the souls of men were loved and won.

A strong friendship was growing up between John and this fellow missionary whom he admired so much, and at last one day, a snapshot of the two of them arrived in Canada. I could hardly wait to examine it, and after one long look I laughed

Bud — The Indefatigable Soul Winner

_ outright, 'So that is "Bud"! Well, who ever would have thought it!'

I wonder how you picture an 'indefatigable soul-winner', a 'man of prayer'? Short, stalky, grim, serious-faced with burning eyes? Well this snapshot revealed a tall slim debonair youth, decidedly good looking with dimples, real dimples, in his cheeks. 'A man of prayer' ... with dimples! How God loves to surprise us; how often life is not as we picture it.

Bud and John were designated to neighbouring provinces. Several years later, after John and I were married, Bud had to come all the way to our provincial capital in order to get suitable glasses.

~ Meanwhile, a little drama was being enacted ina busy Chinese town, a day south of the capital. I was sitting on the very narrow upper ledge we liked to style the 'veranda', with the whole changing panorama of Chinese life right under my feet, so to speak, when I saw John coming down the street with the mail. His manner betokened excitement. .. upstairs he dashed two at a time and burst in on me waving a Shanghai letter,

'What do you know! We're appointed to go west, to start right away, WEST, think of it!' West had always been spelt in golden letter to both of us.

After a jig of joy (behind closed doors) we settled down to read details. We were to make our home at an old centre of the mission's and the

Second-Mile People purpose was twofold. First, members of The Two Hundred, designated to forward movement work in the west, were to live with us till they got on their linguistic feet (and so be saved the trials of housekeeping without the language) and secondly, John was to scout around those vast unworked districts, preaching, but also hunting for suitable centres, suitable houses for the young people eventually to occupy. And we were to start at once!

'A new vision for a new task.' How often has the Lord had to stop this eager pair, and give us just that. Arrival at the capital city revealed the bald fact that horses and coolies to go west, or anywhere else, were not to be had ... the Military were busy, and had commandeered all that were

available.

Another pair of newly weds were also held up in the same city. I wonder if you noticed, that in quoting Mk 10:29, 30 Bachelor left out a word or so?* The verse says if any man has left house, lands etc and 'wife and children'! Well, the time had come for the Lord to give him his hundredfold in that respect too, not a harem of wives but quite really 'one in a hundred'. Her spirituality united to unusual charm had finally given Bachelor a happy marriage. Two beautiful baby girls came gradually in after years, and now Bachelor no longer has that wistful look in his eyes which I remember seeing at Conference one day, when a_ sweet little girl ran past him and he put out his hand and caught her close and drew her onto his

* See page 20

Bud — The Indefatigable Soul Winner

knee. His 'hundredfold' would seem to be complete.

It was a breathtaking moment when John learned that Bud had arrived in the same city! But not until after the Chinese prayer meeting that Saturday evening did I at last meet him face to face. It was a happy occasion, for one sometimes learns to love these Second-Mile People long before it is granted to meet them in the flesh, and Bud's spiritual fire and earnestness had been a blessing to me. But the greater joy was when the two men friends clasped hands, and it was not surprising when, one evening soon after, John burst into our bedroom with the words, 'Isobel!

Bud wants me to spend the night with him in prayer — you don't mind, do you?' And soon he was running .over to the chapel, eager for that fellowship which binds closer than any other.

It was a sadder and a wiser man that returned the morrow morn. I knew something had happened the moment I saw his face, and when the door was closed we sat down to 'share'.

'Well — Bud just broke me all up last night, dear', he began slowly and obviously with difficulty. 'After we had prayer for a while, Bud told me he had something to tell me, and it was that he was very disappointed in me — especially after hearing me preach in Chinese Saturday night.'

'Disappointed in you!' His bride was all sticking out with porcupine quills.

'Yes dear, now don't get excited, for he is quite right. He said that after the spiritual times we had had in Shanghai he had expected a lot of me, and

SecondMile People he feels the Lord expects it too. And then in my message Saturday — well that earnest fire-forChrist just wasn't there, and he was so disappointed he could not help but tell me, though it cost him a lot to do so.

'You see, Bud is not like other people. He views things from a different angle. Most other missionaries would have complimented me on my clear Chinese ..

. you know how they do lately, and' — here John hung his head — 'to tell the truth I notied Bud did not say a word about it and I guess .

. I guess I was rather looking for him to do so. Anyway,' the head came up with a jerk, a_ determined jerk, 'I know heis right, and I am sure that a spirit of loving earnestness and care for the souls of men might have done something more than was done that night. But I guess I had gradually got to like to hear people talk about my good Chinese, and unconsciously I was thinking more of my idiom than I was of the souls of the men before me. Anyway I know Bud was right, and there in the chapel I broke down and cried and asked to the Lord to forgive me ... and I believe He has...

. .I think, Isobel, it would do you good to have a time of prayer, too?'

So together we knelt down and asked the Christ whom our souls loved, not to let anything blur our vision of His Cross, and its message to China.

'From all that dims Thy Calvary, O Lamb of God, deliver me.'

How unexpected and subtle are the temptations on the foreign field! How many a missionary has dulled the fine edge of spiritual earnestness by

Bud — The Indefatigable Soul Winner

an ambition to become an accomplished Chinese speaker; not that that ambition is wrong — for how can one 'adorn the doctrine of God' if he does not give heed to the necessary vehicle of his speech? — but it is fraught with danger.

On the same boat that brought me (and six or seven others) to China, was Miss Ruth Paxson.

She was tired from many meetings and needed a rest, yet at the sight of that eager little group of going-to-be-missionaries, she was touched, and consented to give us an hour a day. She spoke on 'life on the highest plane' and touched intimately upon missionary temptations and problems. I remember so well the slow emphasis and earnest look with which she said, 'You are not all going to get the language equally well.' In the silence that followed it was as if a blank wall slit open for a moment, and threw into view vistas of unconceived experiences.

One usually comes to the foreign field with one thing in mind — winning the Chinese for Christ.

Happy the one who has had deeper knowledge, and comes just focussed on Christ Himself; not on service, not on soul winning, just on the Lord, our

Life. The first thing that meets you is 'the language', and it invariably has favourites. One, perhaps, gets it quickly, becomes elated and plunges in to try and break the record made by the previous Brilliant One; another, who was quite as clever at home, is unconsciously piqued, and strains to keep up; still a third finds herself slow, and before she knows it, is working overtime, endangering health and peace of heart, to try and

Second-Mile People hide the prickly fact. There is a subtle tendency for the focus, which is on Him, gradually and unwittingly to swing a little off until it is pointing on to Chinese Study, not on to Christ alone. A sly whisper sometimes comes, to offset that peculiar

'disturbed' feeling, 'After all it is for Him. The sooner you can get the language well the sooner you can win souls' and often the result is "While

Thy servant was busy here and there .

. He was gone.'

It need not be so, but how many times it seems that between the hour of landing in China, and the hour when full-time evangelistic work is begun,

'something' gets lost! After a year or so one is at last able to speak! .

. and finds he has nothing to say. One came to China rich; 'Quiet Times' were alive, luxuriant-with the unveilings of truths from His word. Then, the language acquired, one goes to draw on the old fount, and it is dried up, or worse still, one is unconscious that the previous power has left.

I wish to digress a moment to show the 'cure' for this, by a picture.

Among the members of The Two Hundred who later came to live with us was one young man we call our 'Saint'. For pure goodness and real humility none of us can touch him. Although a college graduate (which he would never tell you) he rates himself, simply, as nothing — and there are people who see no further and accept him at his own rating... but being a saint, he does not resent it.

'Blessed are the single-hearted, for they shall have an abundance of peace' said the old monk of

Bud — The Indefatigable Soul Winner

'uneventful' life, and Saint, single-hearted unto God, carries about with him an atmosphere of unruffled peace. Single-hearted from the start, his

'focus' never swerved a point.

The 'picture' is one John drew for me, and it has often blessed me in this language problem. One afternoon John had occasion to go into Saint's room and found him, not at his Chinese studies like everybody else at that hour, but seated with his open Bible in front of him, meditating. He rose and greeted John quietly and courteously, and seemed quite oblivious that, to his senior missionary, his occupation was unexpected.

'I think that is Saint's secret,' John said in recounting it later, 'he takes time to feed on the Word.' The only safe way to avoid pitfalls at home or in China, is to keep close to the Source independent of other's actions or opinions.

It is notable, we think, that during this can'tspeak-the-language period, Saint was instrumental in a Chinese man coming to the Lord

Jesus.

The next Friday afternoon, Bud was chosen to be the speaker at our usual weekly China Inland

Mission prayer meeting. I do not remember much that he said, but we can never forget the results.

He finished by saying he felt sure God had not brought so many of us together at that time (for gradually more and more missionaries had got

'shut in' with us) without a purpose, and surely

Second-Mile People He longed to pour out upon us special blessing, if we would only take time to wait upon Him for it

... did anyone else have this same feeling?

Mrs Bachelor immediately spoke up, and in her sweet way voiced a desire for just this very thing.

She was followed by John, while I sat, feeling as if all within was scorching fire; I knew perfectly well that if anyone needed a fresh quickening it was me.

_ That field was, at that time, much hampered by disunion among its missionaries. There was a surface courtesy but no real love, such as the Christ commands us to have. "This is My commandment,' He said, in those sacred last hours,

'that ye love one another, AS I HAVE LOVED YOU.' Outspoken criticism did not heal matters, and if you agreed with one circle, it naturally followed that you did not have much fellowship with the other. And in this matter of 'talking'

[had been guilty, too.

I was really without excuse, for I had been carefully warned against this very thing, before I ever sailed for China. However by 'gossip.' I had imagined was meant the passing on of puny tittletattle, and to resist was more or less prepared; but Satan is a wily foe who does not attack the place that is being guarded; so when it assumed the form of 'discussion' of a certain course of action, or a certain method of work, it seemed but natural to fall in line.

Later, Bachelor explained the biblical position on this question — 'If thy brother trespass .

. go and tell him his fault BETWEEN THEE AND

Bud — The Indefatigable Soul Winner 7!

HIM ALONE' (Matt. 18:15). Bachelor himself never fell into this trap. When he thought he saw me being entangled he had taken me aside and urged me to refuse to listen when others wanted to 'talk'. But those others were senior missionaries and it seemed a costly thing to do — it had obviously cost Bachelor his popularity with each group, for his quiet strongly-visible disapproval, and his absolute refusal to listen to criticism when the person discussed was not present, aroused keen resentment, and he was disliked as a result. I had been too weak to pay that price, yet I always knew that the party I sided with did not like me in spite of my compromise, and so I really gained nothing in friendship, and on the other hand lost out terribly in another direction, for I had seemed to 'turn sour' spiritually.

Bud's message that afternoon, and the earnest desire for more holiness expressed by people like

Mrs Bachelor who could not have had any scorching fire within such as I had, were too much, and in a flood of tears I tried to make my confession.

Others also were touched, and confessions and longings were poured forth. Bachelor, whose heart had been nearly broken over the condition he knew existed, was delighted beyond words, and was not slow to reach out after what the Lord was so Clearly offering.

As superintendent he ordered all work that could possibly be laid aside, to stop, and the missionaries were invited to give their time to prayer for revival. No period was 'set', for who

Second Mile People knew how long the Holy Spirit needed to search us? But it turned out to be about ten days; each day we spent from early morning till noon before the Lord, and again met together in the evenings.

Bud was in his element, and was a blessing to older people, even to Bachelor himself. Sins were confessed and forgiven, and a new spirit of affection in the Lord was manifest. Bachelor was anxious to see that under-the-surface feud wiped out, and Bud was anxious to see the missionaries burdened to pray for revival, so these two subjects were constantly brought before us, and God answered prayer.

When finally, coolies were obtainable and we scattered to all points of the compass, a real and definite work of the Spirit of God had been accomplished.

We have never seen 'the indefatigable soulwinner' since, and as neither he nor John took letter writing seriously we know little of the details of his after life. But that it was poured forth for Christ, there is no doubt.

Conditions in his own province were much similar, missionaries given to criticising one another's methods, and the Chinese churches

'dead'. (By the way, after our prayer meetings ended, a similar series had been carried on among the Chinese church members, with somewhat similar results.) Bud went back with definite purpose of praying down revival in that district also.

Bud — The Indefatigable Soul Winner

We had all been stirred by having our attention called to the place prayer has had in all the famous revivals, and in fact in the lives of those men who have meant most to Christ's church.

Hudson Taylor said: "The sun has never risen upon China without finding me at prayer'; in our province, in the summer time, it is light enough at four-thirty in the morning to read one's Bible.

Bishop Andrews . .

. spent five hours every day in prayer and devotion.

'John Welsh.

. thought the day ill spent which did not witness eight or ten hours of closest communion..'* The saintly Fletcher spent a whole night once a week in the presence of his Lord.

Christmas Evans continually gave long periods to prayer; in.his diary he says of one occasion, 'I waited three hours before God, broken with sorrow.

. .on the following day I preached with such new power ... that a revival broke out that day and spread through all Wales.'

Matthew Henry, whose Commentary 1s still a treasure house for students of the Bible, arose regularly at four a.m. for purposes of devotion and meditation; and so one could go on.

To this matter of prayer, Bud applied all the strength of that 'out-for-business' quality, which marks him.

'Jesus Christ demands of the man who trusts Him the same reckless sporting spirit that the natural man exhibits. If a man is going to do anything worthwhile, there are times when he has

* Meyer

Second Mile People to risk everything on his leap, and in the spiritual domain Jesus Christ demands that you risk everything you hold by common sense and leap into what He says, and immediately you do, you find that what He says fits on as solidly as common sense: ~ But to pray as the men abovementioned did, means sacrifice.

'Notice,' wrote Dr Taylor to his wife 'in Cor. I:

18, the connection of the Cross with power. Do not many lives lack power because they do not love the Cross?'

Bud was bound that he was not going to 'lack power' because his flesh shrank from the sufferings of the Cross.

Ina year or so's time (notice it was not in a day) we heard of special quickening among the missionaries in his province and ofa similar intensive prayer session for revival; Bud brought his bride to it to pass their honeymoon in this ministry. It was not long afterwards that Bud had a 'breakdown' — brain fag it was named — and they returned to Canada.

Last year we received a circular letter from someone in Bud's province, telling of deeper revival spreading from missionaries to the hitherto

'dead' Chinese churches.

China calls rumour a 'wind sound'. Can you not feel that these 'wind sounds' have a very definite voice running through them.

. the voice of a man praying, hour after hour, day after day ... praying for the revival of God's work?

* Oswald Chambers

Bud — The Indefatigable Soul Winner

He had 'risked everything on his leap'; what if it did mean an exhausted brain? An early furlough home?

'Then took Mary a pound of ointment of spikenard, very costly, and anointed the feet of Jesus, and wiped His feet with her hair; and the house was filled with the odour of the ointment'

(John 12:3).

'But when His disciiples saw it, they had indignation saying, "To what purpose is this waste?"

(Matt. 26:8) "Then said Jesus, "Let her alone; she hath wrought a good work." '

Bud has taken the costly spikenard of his life and his young manhood, and recklessly poured it out at Christ's feet. Dare you and I stand aside and call it 'waste'? Christ did not. He accepted it, and gave a loving commendation. You and I may not criticise where Christ commends.

* * * Bud once told us this story, in answer to a question as to what method of preaching he preferred. He said that he usually gave just the message of the life and resurrection of our Lord, for he felt that to one who had no Christian background, this was the most potent introduction.

'I have had wonderful experiences in giving that story,' he said. 'Once I was walking along the road, and I was tired. I sometimes have spells of awful nausea and faintness come over me' (I learned later from his wife that his digestion was

Second-Mile People nearly ruined by eating poorly prepared food made by an incompetent cook-boy in his bachelor days) 'and on this occasion, one of these spells overtook me. I felt I was going to go unconscious if I did not sit down, but the only thing in sight wasa

- stone by the side of the road, so I sank on to it. A Buddhist nun, attracted I guess by the sight of a foreign man alone and obviously ill, came up and stood and looked at me. I felt I should preach to her but was so sick and nauseated that for a moment I faltered. However I started on my usual text, the story of Christ, and do you know that by the time I had finished, all the illness had left me and I felt as if I had a new fresh body? I can never forget the physical exhilaration that the Lord gave to me at that time, and though I never saw her again, I believe that nun will be saved — she seemed so deeply impressed.'

He told me this sweet little 'second mile' tale, perfectly unconscious of the picture of the indefatigable soul winner he was drawing; he was simply thrilled with the healing power of the mere story of Calvary. But the revelation of the selflessness of Christ's servant, striving to preach through physical nausea and illness, never left us.

It brings to mind the form of Another, who weary and tired, sat Himself upon a well to rest. But when a woman, a needy one, chanced by, He forgot self in longing after her soul, and He too, preached up through the exhaustion which was laying Him low, and reached out for her salvation.

And He also, found a new strength come into the tired body — a strength so fresh, so sweet, that

Bud — The Indefatigable Soul Winner iB. when food was finally put before Him, He had lost desire for it, and gently said, 'My meat is to do the will of Him that sent Me, and to finish His work.'

Do you not think that as Christ in heaven looked down upon that tired sick missionary-child of His trying to push his spirit up through the - weight of the physical that chained and bound it down — do you not think as Christ poured into that spent form an 'exhilaration', a new fresh strength, that He remembered His own time of need, there by the well of Sychar? 'My grace is enough for you, for my strength FULLY UNDERSTANDS in your weakness'

(as a Dohnavur schoolboy once translated 2 Cor. 12:9).

How loving is that 'fully understands', how restful just to lie back upon it and receive the freshness, the 'exhilaration'!

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