February 1943
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eyes. “You sang it beautifully, with feeling and expression—did you really mean it? God grant that you did. What does it mean to me?” he went on quickly, as though he were speak ing to himself. “Can I sing that and mean it? What does it mean to each one of you?” Now he was leaning over his pulpit to put the question to the audience, probing with his pene trating glance. Here and there some stirred uncomfortably u n d e r that searching question. “Oh, God,” the minister prayed, slip ping into the presence of God immedi ately because he lived continually in the atmosphere of His presence. “May none of us leave this building this morning until, he has surrendered, un equivocally, to Thee and has been filled with Thy Spirit..Thou hast given us the command, ‘Be filled with the Spirit,’ and we believe this daily fill ing is a promise and a necessity for each one of Thy children. ‘Fill me with Thy hallowed presence, Come, O come and fill me now.” ’ Vera had been pleased at Mr. Pax ton’s first words of commendation and then startled, when she heard her name spoken like that. But as the meaning of his question reached her, a slow, angry flush stained her face and her eyes grew dangerously stormy. She sat with bowed» head, through the prayer, but anger, surprise, and hurt all struggled for supremacy in her heart. “H-how dare he?” she whis pered to herself. “I thought he was my friend. How dare he criticize me pub licly?. He might just as well have called me a hypocrite. He as much as said that I didn’t mean what I sang. Maybe he does think I’m a hypocrite,” her rebellious t h o u g h t s raced on. “Maybe there are others in this church that think that. Just because I didn’t go back to Bible School -this year and because I’m not going with David to South America,” her thoughts faltered. It still hurt too much to think of the break with David. But he could be so stubborn. Maybe he did feel that the Lord wanted him to go to South America, but he didn’t have a monopoly on the Lord’s lead ing, did he? “There is more than one way to serve the Lord,” she had told David that evening, two weeks ago, when he had told her of his decision for South America, after the time of graduation from Bible Institute should arrive. “How can you be sure He wants you there, David? Have you forgotten the opportunities for service here? There is that tentative offer as assistant in First Church, in the city. I know you don’t like that church very well, but
man, having put his hand to the plow, and looking back,’ and then I remem ber the last command of the Lord Jesus Christ, ‘Go ye therefore, and teach all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Ghost.’ For some months I have known that ‘all na tions’ for me was the Zingu Indians in South America. “Oh, if I could only make you see the need as I have,” he exclaimed pas sionately. “You’ve read Bill’s.letters— you know how he has gone 111 there, built his own house, fought malaria, won the love of the Indians, and has had the joy of leading some of the wildest of them to know the Lord when they had even lost their conception of God. It is a lonely life, a dangerous one, but other women have gone in. And think of the joy of being *the first to bring- the gospel to some one who has never heard the name of the Lord Jesus Christ. The Indians love music, too. Who knows but that you. •’ould win more of them with your voice than I with my preaching?” he asked, smiling a little. But Vera was not blind to the pain behind the smile. Her heart felt dead within her. Why did life hold such hard decisions? “I’m sorry, David, but I can’t see it.” David had straightened, and his face had taken on new determined lines. “Forgive me for trying to in fluence you. After all, that must be between you and God. It was my own selfish interest speaking, I guess.” He smiled a little crookedly and left her. And he had not once spoken to her since that, or met her gaze if they passed each other. “All right, if he wants to be stub born,” Vera thought. The sermon was almost over and she had heard no word of it. The pastor Intercepted her quick flight toward an exit, after the service, saying, “Thank you for that song, Vera. It is a favorite of mine—” All the heartbreak, anger, and re bellion that had been struggling in her heart longer than she, Would ad mit and had been fanried to a flame by the pastor’s question, now broke through her control. “I tried to sing the song well,” she said in a tight voice. .“ I worked hard on it. But if there was anything wrong with the way I sang it, I would have appre ciated your telling me privately- and not before the congregation. I-I guess there are a lot of people here who think I’m a hypocrite, but it is humili ating to have it hinted publicly. . . .” The pastor’s fine eyes ^widened a little in surprise as he looked quickly at her stormy face. “Why, Vera, what
think of the opportunity you would have there, and for further study at the University. If the minister does have modernistic tendencies, there is all the more reason for some one in there who can preach all of the truth —it might be a real mission field. You are so talented, David,” she went on hurriedly, her voice pleading more than she realized. “You are fitted to be the pastor of a big church here at home, and not every one is. Why waste that on some uneducated South American Indians?” “V e r a ! ” D a v i d e x c l a i m e d incredulously. “Don’t look so shocked,”, she inter rupted impatiently. “I know there is a need there—I am a Christian, David,” she said, a little dryly, “ and I do want to serve the Lord. But He expects us to use our talents—not to bury them as the man in the Bible did. There are others who may not be so well fitted for a pastorate here at home, who could carry the gospel just as effec tively to those in South America. And then,” her voice faltered, “we need not be separated.” “Then ypu have decided, Vera,” David had asked hoarsely. “You are not going.” It was a statement, made as though he had known from the first what her decision would be. Vera had stiffened suddenly, realiz ing the time she had dreaded had come. Her face Whitened and her voice soqnded cold and suppressed when she answered. “No, David, I am not going. If you persist in this belief that you must go, then you will have to go alone.” Then, her emotion seeking re lease in sudden anger against him, she exclaimed, “How can you ask it of me? You know something of what my music means, to me. You know that Aunt Myra has just offered me the chance of a lifetime—to study in New York, a chance I had prayed and hoped for since I was twelve. And I’m not turning my back on God when I take it, for I can serve Him better with the talent He has given, me, than in doing something I’m not fitted for. Oh, David, must you go?” she ended brokenly. “Yes, Vera, I must go,” David spoke quietly, but his face was stony in its control. “Do you think I would go otherwise? It is not for adventure or for romance that I would leave my home. I love my home. The thought of further school work fascinates me; the idea of contacting students in the universities for the Lord grips me. There are many things that would hold me here. But when I am tempted, I see the words, as though they were written in big letters before me, ‘No
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