485
October 1929
T h e
K i n g ’ s
B u s i n e s s
A verse or two from Genesis forty-one was haunting Donald as he concluded his relationship with “The Chef Shop” and doffed forever that square white hat. With a new hat, and some really collegiate shoes, and a new suit in the making, and the letter of gladness to Aunt Margot in his pocket ready to mail, he turned to the Bible on his desk. “Forasmuch as God hath shewed thee all this, there is none so discreet and wise as thou art. . . . And Pharaoh said unto Joseph, See, I have set thee over all the land of Egypt . . . and arrayed him in vestures of fine linen, and put a gold chain about his neck.” And Donald read on until he came to the last part of verse 51, when he bowed his head and made a prayer of thanksgiving: “For God, said he, hath made me forget all my toil, and all my father’s house.” “Be Not Entangled Again” B y -D r . W. E. B iederwolf D URING the attendance on the General Assembly of the Presbyterian Church, in Tulsa, Oklahoma, I visited the Osage Indians at the time of the annual celebration of their old-time war dance. A dozen red skins. were tom-toming on a single big drum while one hundred and seventy-five men, women, and children, ar rayed in the most elaborate costumes, with feathers and bells, “stomped” about in rhythmic motion to the beating of the drum and the -weird intonations that came from what the Indians doubtless thought the “tuneful tongues” of the drummers as they drummed. The native charm was there, majestic far above the gloss of art. The scene I shall never forget. Among the dancers was one magnificent figure in gor geous array, but with a quiet, thoughtful face. He was a graduate of one of our great state universities and had been a professor of psychology in the same institution. He had been a football star, and later the coach of the team. He had married a white girl and become the father of two fine little children. But, leaving them, he had mar ried an Osage Indian girl, and as I saw him dancing about in gala attire among his Indian friends and companions of earlier days, his face was written all over with content ment and supreme happiness. The “call of the wild” had been too much for him; the old Indian nature within began to assert itself, and the pull of the old life was too strong for him. The charm of a purer civilization could not hold him ; he forsook his wife and his children; he forgot his God and his duty; and he went back-back to the forest and the field, back to the music of the Indian drum, back to the old life again! Is that you? Has the house of God been losing its attraction for you ? Has the world been beckoning to you with its bewitch ing smile? Do you find yourself alarmingly indifferent to the call of your devotional life? Must you confess to a lack of power in prayer? Have you been falling in the presence of some seem ingly irresistible appeal of the flesh? Has the pull of the old life been too strong for you, and have you gone back? There is a remedy for all this. There is a pathway of purity, and peace, and power and consequent satisfaction in the Lo rd ; but the way that leads to it is the way of the altar and the cross, where the fire falls and the nails are driven.
“No, no! You old thistle! Things don’t happen that way outside of books. You ate a nightmare and dreamed i t !” “They don’t happen that way aside from one Book, Lawrence,” said Donald softly. And his friend instantly sobered as he asked: “And did you really have prayer with Jeremiah Snowdon, and did he tell you he had been in a Christian home as a boy ?” “It’s all true, Laurie. And then he said, ‘How did you have the nerve to stand up to Althea Sumner ? That girl always scares me, and I ’m an old man.’ And I could not help but remember how Joseph gave God the glory before Pharaoh and said, ‘I t is not in me; God shall give Pharaoh an answer o f peace.’ So I told him where the strength came from, just for the asking, and he said he had not heard talk like that since his mother’s death. And then we talked a long time and he told me all about his early life as a country boy and how he had grown rich without meaning to. And he went on to say that he and his family had drifted into a careless worldly life, al though they really loved and believed in the Lord Jesus Christ. ‘And when my young daughter came home and told me how troubled she felt when you preached your little sermon over the- soda water counter, I was reminded of many things in my own early life and in my good mother’s teachings that I never ought to have let slip,’ he said. And then, Laurie, he told me that he and his wife regretted the influence of Althea Sumner in Mar garet’s life. I suppose they are what you’d call worldly Christians.” “Like Lot, sitting in the gate,” agreed Lawrence, “and then feeling sorry their children take on the ways of Sodom. Don’t you let down on him a bit, Don. Don’t spare any of ’em. What they need is good stiff out-and- oitt consecration talk.” “I ’ll never!” promised Donald. “No more than Joseph did when Pharaoh lifted up his head. Y’ know, y’ know, that boy Joseph has been the greatest help to me all through! And when I realized the other morning how he believed God’s Word, before the Bible was written, and left the commandment that when the children of Israel went up out of Egypt, they were to take his bones with them, it came to me that we ought to be looking forward to the sure return of our Lord Jesus with the same cer tainty ; no, with even more certainty than that Joseph felt, about Israel going up. We have centuries of Chris tian experience and all God’s wonderful Word to strengthen our faith, where Joseph believed like a little child the thing God had told to his great-grandfather Abraham about the return of his people. “I suppose Jacob used to take him on his knee when he was a little fellow, and tell him the story again and again, and he never forgot it. And so ‘by faith Joseph, when he died, made mention of the departing of the chil dren o f Israel.’ And that verse came to me: ‘We have also a more sure word of prophecy; whereunto ye do well that ye take heed, as unto a light that shineth in a dark place, until the day dawn, and the day star arise in your hearts.’ And then, Laurie, I got down on my knees with the Lord and asked Him to forgive me for not just reg ularly building on His coming again.” “And it was after that that God was able to bless you in this new way, just as He trained Joseph out in that Egyptian prison until He got him to where you might say, “ ‘The soul that He sought was trusting in Him, And nothing on earth beside.’”
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