112
T h e
March 1931
K i n g ’ s
B u s i n e s s
“I am the light of the world” '(John 8:12). “Ye are the light of the world” (Matt. 5:14). , “There was a man sent from God . . . the same came . . . to bear witness of the light”. John 1:6, 7). * * * IGHT ! One little taper shining in Russia ! And that in a dungeon! Nikolai watched it—damp dripping on the walls; damp, and worse than damp underfoot. Light for Russia ! This was the last candle in his possession. And to add sorrow unto sorrow, today for the first time since its beginning, he had not heard the m u sic - music that he told himself ravished his soul; music that came from he knew not where. Only it drifted and sifted somehow into the gloom and the filth that surrounded him. At first he had heard it carelessly, too sunk in his physical misery to try to account for such a phenomenon, or to care. But gradually the reiteration of certain famil iar harmonies began to have its effect. Like a genuine Slav, Nikolai loved his music. The first strain that struck into his consciousness was Rimsky-Korsakov’s “Song of India.” There was a mem ory! Douglas and he were lunching again in the great New York hotel. The orchestra had begun this piece, and good old Douglas had exclaimed delightedly, “Oh ! They’re playing ‘Trees’ !” With heavy Russian patience Nikolai had made it clear that this was not “Trees.” He had further pro tested when his young friend beat time to Tschaikowsky’s “Marche Slave.” , What a Thanksgiving he had had in America—dearly beloved land of the open! When should he enjoy its sunny freedom again? All this flashed through his mind as he sat alone in prison. Then he realized how strange it was that he should be listening to Rimsky-Korsakov’s music in a dun geon. It did not sound especially near ; and yet it was not very far away. It was just there—flooding his cell with beauty. Followed “The Hills of Manchuria.” And then came the oft-played “Kamenoi-Ostrow.” Hold ! Another memory! He was back in the old Russia, little Djemiieh, a child, upon his knee ! The General’s samovar was brewing tea for them all. Thé General’s wife and her sisters' were at piano, harp, and cello. Little Djemi ieh was ordering the program to the amusement of all concerned. She had a certain fixed order that always ob tained for some small reason of her own. “Now ! ‘Song of India’ !” she would say, in her trill of a voice. Then, “ ‘Hills of Manchuria,’ please!” And
then, “The one where the river flows past the Czar’s palace!” “Oh!” the General’s wife would cry, “Kamenoi-Os trow,’ the darling means! She always asks for them in this orderr” Djemiieh invariably evinced much pleasure at this bit of publicity. These were the three compositions he was ‘now hear ing daily—-until today, the day of the last light. And Djemileh’s order was1the order in which they were in variably played. Nikolai had been bowed in prayer many of the hours in that quiet cell. He had just put down the pamphlet he had managed somehow to keep with him containing some of Paul’s epistles. How much the imprisonment of the great apostle to the Gentiles meant now to Nikolai! How deeply he entered into the words: “In imprisonments, in tumults, in labors, in watchings, in fastings” ! It was marvelously true that this had been his own experience in Russia. And could he not truly exclaim: “I, Nikolai, the prisoner of Christ for you Russians” ? For to be a Christian in Russia was simply to pro claim oneself a counter-revolutionist. And that meant no work, no bread card, no right to live. Nikolai had read his New Testament with this great foreshadowing of the tribulation in mind. One almost had to have the mark of the Beast, already* in this country, in order to live! What made it harder to endure was the fact that the heart of the people was not with the Soviet rule. Not yet! Not yet had the new generation, trained to hate God and His Christ, arisen to its full might. But a time was coming soon, if this age of grace should continue, when—Nikolai turned from the thought, shuddering. Coming through the great snows info Russia, he had seen a desolate world indeed. But 'of late, he had been haunted perpetually by a fearsome forecasting of a world that was doomed—-a world stripped and bared of all that man has accomplished and constructed, by the ferrible engines of war that he knew, even now, to be in existence. He had heard of the huge broadcasting stations that were to be in remote parts of Siberia, for the spreading of Red propaganda over the defenseless earth, and'he knew that this was but the first step in a definitely out lined program to turn all men from the Saviour of the world unfo lawlessness. The longing arose in him to the point of nostalgia, for that hour when a trumpet voice would announce from David’s city to a breathless world: “The Lord is in his holy temple: let all the earth keep silence before him.” ' The great, gaunt giant structures going up in the dreary land of Siberia were only a foretaste of something more great and gaunt and horrible that was to menace careless humanity before the Lord’s kingdom came. Care-
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