591
T h e
K i n g ’ s - B u s i n e s s
December 1929
As the song ceased, Elise rose to her feet. She looked very girlish in her white crepe frock, and yet there was something commanding in her presence. “A long time ago,” she said in her clear young voice, “Uncle Alan was out on a hike one day. All of a sudden he came on a little group of two girls and a child. They were his own nieces. One of them is standing before you. The talk was about stars and stones and what the archeol ogist’s spade has unearthed that relates to our Bible, and how all of creation helps to prove it to be God’s own Word. He stopped to listen and stayed to help us, and from that little beginning great things have come to pass in many lives. We came to him with our problems. We were concerned about Lawrence here, and one day down at the beach in a long talk with him he pointed out the way —the only way in which he could be won. Just to pray for him, and love him, and live the life before him! And so we pressed the Thin Red Line—many of you are here tonight—into service, and the Thin Red Line prayed through. And so we owe the joy of having Lawrence with us in the work we love, to Uncle Alan—under God. “It was down at the beach last summer, too, that our littlest one—Uncle Alan’s particular product—so directed the shafts of her Bible verses, and simple child’s knowl edge of God’s ways, that our strongest human helper in this work, our leader and our preacher who wins men to Christ, was caught and turned and won. I mean John Dowling. We all know why he is not in a great church now. And we want him to know we are all praying for him, as he goes up and down the land trying to lead the college people to see that God’s Word and real science do not clash, and that they need-—oh, how they need a sav iour !” Elise turned directly to her uncle now, and said a little tremulously, “Uncle Alan, we—we all love you, and though there’s nothing good enough for you we wish to (Continued on page 618) He Keeps the Key Is there some problem in your life to solve, Some passage seeming full of mystery? God knows, who brings the hidden things to light. He keeps the key. Is there some door closed by the Father’s hand Which widely opened you had hoped to see? Trust God and wait—for when He shuts the door He keeps the key. Is there some earnest prayer unanswered yet, Or answered NO T as you had thought ’twould be? God will make clear His purpose by and by. He keeps the key. Have patience with your God, your patient God, All wise, all knowing, no long tarrier He, And of the door of all thy future life He keeps the key. Unfailing comfort, sweet and blessed rest, To know o f E V E R Y door He keeps the key. That He at last when just HE sees ’tis best, Will give it THEE. — Anonymous.
out the secret she should not be allowed to sit next to John Dowling, who was her own special squire, had been effective. And as it was, it had been bad enough, for this little person had taken particular delight in coming as near to the forbidden subject as possible, and then in veering off with extreme suddenness, thus giving them the sensation of walking on the edge of a fearful precipice! They were all seated now—and the blessing of the One they so loved had been asked. As he looked around this outer circle of young countenances, Uncle Alan had time to reflect and to give thanks in the midst of much Christ mas mirth. He saw what every spiritually discerning eye would have seen, the wondrous mark that only the Lord Jesus Christ can place upon the faces of the young! Was it most in the bright •clearness of the eye, or the special shine of the smile, or the notable light that seemed to him to play upon brow and feature? He could not decide, but the problem was a pleasant one—he loved to dwell upon it, for they seemed somehow his, these young people, bachelor uncle though he was, to but a part of them! The verse came to him, “Go>d setteth the solitary in families.” Of one thing he felt sure as he watched the bright interplay of word and feature about the table—of one thing he was certain; they, like Moses, “wist not that their faces shone.” With the thought of Moses came the remembrance of Harold’s turning point, when he had gone to the boy they nicknamed “Bill the Brilliant,” in a quandary over the •Lord’s treatment of this Moses. Harold had told him all about this just after it happened, and he had observed the change in his nephew’s life since that doubt of God’s per fect justice had been removed. Where was Bill the Bril liant? he wondered. And with the noting of this absent one the thought came of one whom he feared was to be always absent from this circle. The granddaughter of an honored Christian layman, who was selling her birthright for a mess of pottage, Althea Sumner! Where was she tonight? he questioned within himself wistfully. “And I don’t see,” Elise was saying, “why we should waste time singing Christmas carols early on Christmas morning before the windows of that house. We have, so many places where we feel we must go because of the joy we shall give, or the good we shall do—but Althea Sumner—” Her words were drowned by a sudden influx of conversation from the opposite edge of the ring, ending in a laugh. Althea, it seemed, had locked horns with the fiery little Tartar girl, Djemileh, of whom they had all become so fond, and from the comments of Lawrence and Douglas Snowdon it would seem that Althea had had somewhat the worst of it—as Djemileh’s opponents were apt to do. “Start a song, Elise,” murmured Donald; “we’ll not discuss the absent at this Christmas-time, I hope!” Donald said “hawp” for “hope,” and rolled his r ’s so that “start” sounded like “star-r-r-t” ; but Elise obediently struck into the second verse of the Christmas hymn they all loved best, and everyone took it u p : “For Christ is born of Mary; And gathered all above, While mortals sleep, the angels keep Their watch of wondering love.
O morning stars, together Proclaim the holy birth ; And praises sing to God our King, And peace to men on earth.”
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