A Handful of Stars - Frank Boreham (inspiring books for teens .TXT) 📗

To gild refinèd gold, to paint the lily,
To throw a perfume on the violet,
To smooth the ice, or add another hue
Unto the rainbow, or with taper-light
To seek the beauteous eye of heaven to garnish,
Is wasteful and ridiculous excess.

And, similarly, when He looked upon His work in Redemption and cried triumphantly 'Tetelestai,' He placed it beyond the power of any man to add to it.

There are times when any addition is a subtraction. Some years ago, White House at Washington--the residence of the American Presidents--was in the hands of the painters and decorators. Two large entrance doors had been painted to represent black walnut. The contractor ordered his men to scrape and clean them in readiness for repainting, and they set to work. But when their knives penetrated to the solid timber, they discovered to their astonishment that it was heavy mahogany of a most exquisite natural grain! The work of that earlier decorator, so far from adding to the beauty of the timber, had only served to conceal its essential and inherent glory. It is easy enough to add to the wonders of Creation or of Redemption; but you can never add without subtracting. 'It is finished!'

VII

Many years ago, Ebenezer Wooton, an earnest but eccentric evangelist, was conducting a series of summer evening services on the village green at Lidford Brook. The last meeting had been held; the crowd was melting slowly away; and the evangelist was engaged in taking down the marquee. All at once a young fellow approached him and asked, casually rather than earnestly, 'Mr. Wooton, what must I do to be saved?' The preacher took the measure of his man.

'Too late!' he said, in a matter of fact kind of way, glancing up from a somewhat obstinate tent-peg with which he was struggling. 'Too late, my friend, too late!' The young fellow was startled.

'Oh, don't say that, Mr. Wooton!' he pleaded, a new note coming into his voice. 'Surely it isn't too late just because the meetings are over?'

'Yes, my friend,' exclaimed the evangelist, dropping the cord in his hand, straightening himself up, and looking right into the face of his questioner, 'it's too late! You want to know what you must do to be saved, and I tell you that you're hundreds of years too late! The work of salvation is done, completed, finished! It was finished on the Cross; Jesus said so with the last breath that He drew! What more do you want?'

And, then and there, it dawned upon the now earnest inquirer on the village green as, at about the same time, it dawned upon young Hudson Taylor in the hay-loft, that 'since the whole work was finished and the whole debt paid upon the Cross, there was nothing for him to do but to fall upon his knees and accept the Saviour.' And there, under the elms, the sentinel stars witnessing the great transaction, he kneeled in glad thanksgiving and rested his soul for time and for eternity on 'the Finished Work of Christ.'

VIII

'The Finished Work of Christ!'

'Tetelestai! Tetelestai!'

'It is finished!'

It is not a sigh of relief at having reached the end of things. It is the unutterable joy of the artist who, putting the last touches to the picture that has engrossed him for so long, sees in it the realization of all his dreams and can nowhere find room for improvement. Only once in the world's history did a finishing touch bring a work to absolute perfection; and on that day of days a single flaw would have shattered the hope of the ages.

X RODNEY STEELE'S TEXT I

'As soon,' Dr. Chalmers used to say, 'as soon as a man comes to understand that GOD IS LOVE, he is infallibly converted.' Mrs. Florence L. Barclay wrote a book to show how Rodney Steele made that momentous and transfiguring discovery. Rodney Steele--the hero of The Wall of Partition--was a great traveler and a brilliant author. He had wandered through India, Africa, Australia, Egypt, China and Japan, and had written a novel colored with the local tints of each of the countries he had visited. He was tall, strong, handsome, bronzed by many suns, and--largely as a result of his literary successes--immensely rich. But he was soured. Years ago he loved a beautiful girl. But an unscrupulous and designing woman had gained his sweetheart's confidence and had poisoned her heart by pouring into her ear the most abominable scandals concerning him. She had returned his letters; and he, in the vain hope of being able to forget, had abandoned himself to travel and to literature. But, on whatever seas he sailed, and on whatever shores he wandered, he nursed in his heart a dreadful hate--a hate of the woman who had so cruelly intervened. And, cherishing that hate, his heart became hard and bitter and sour. He lost faith in love, in womanhood, in God, in everything. And his books reflected the cynicism of his soul. This is Rodney Steele as the story opens. The boat-train moves into Charing Cross, and, after an absence of ten years, he finds himself once more in London.

II

Many years ago, when our grandmothers were girls, they devoted their spare moments to the making of bookmarkers; and on the marker, in colored silk, they embroidered the letters GOD IS LOVE. Dr. Handley Moule, Bishop of Durham, made effective use of such a bookmarker when he visited West Stanley immediately after the terrible colliery disaster there. He motored up to the scene of the catastrophe and addressed the crowd at the pit's mouth. Many of those present were the relatives of the entombed miners. 'It is very difficult,' he said, 'for us to understand why God should let such an awful disaster happen, but we know Him, and trust Him, and all will be right. I have at home,' the Bishop continued, 'an old bookmarker given me by my mother. It is worked in silk, and, when I examine the wrong side of it, I see nothing but a tangle of threads crossed and recrossed. It looks like a big mistake. One would think that someone had done it who did not know what she was doing. But, when I turn it over and look at the right side, I see there, beautifully embroidered, the letters GOD IS LOVE. We are looking at all this to-day,' he concluded, 'from the wrong side. Some day we shall see it from another standpoint, and shall understand.' This all happened many years ago; but quite recently some who were present declared that they never forgot the story of the bookmarker and the comfort that it brought.

It was a bookmarker of exactly the same kind, and bearing precisely the same inscription, that brought the fragrance of roses into the dusty heart of Rodney Steele. Sitting alone in his Harley Street flat, he found himself turning over the pages of a Bible that belonged to Mrs. Jake, his housekeeper. Among those pages he found Mrs. Jake's marriage 'lines,' a photograph of her husband in military uniform, some pressed flowers and--a perforated bookmarker! And on the bookmarker, in pink silk, were embroidered the words: GOD IS LOVE. It reminded him of those far-off days in which, as a little boy, he had delighted in the possession of his first box of paints. He had begged his mother to give him something to color, and she had pricked out those very words on a card and asked him to paint them for her.

God! Love!

Love! God!

God is Love!

So said the bookmarker; but, he reflected sadly, love had failed him long ago, and of God he had no knowledge at all.

III

When those three tremendous words next confronted Rodney Steele, they were worked, not in silk, but in stone! In a lower flat, in the same building in Harley Street, there dwelt a Bishop's widow. Rodney got to know her, to like her, and, at last, to confide in her. One afternoon they were discussing the novel that all London was reading, The Great Divide. It was from his own pen, but he did not tell her so. Mrs. Bellamy--the widow--confessed that, in spite of its brilliance, she did not like it. It betrayed bitterness, a loss of ideals, a disbelief in love; it was not uplifting.

'It is life,' Rodney replied. 'Life tends to make a man lose faith in love.'

But Mrs. Bellamy would not hear of it.

'May I tell you,' she asked, 'the Bishop's way of meeting all difficulties, sorrows and perplexities?'

'Do tell me,' said Rodney.

'He met them with three little words, each of one syllable. Yet that sentence holds the truth of greatest import to our poor world; and its right understanding readjusts our entire outlook upon life, and should affect all our dealings with our fellow men: GOD IS LOVE. In our first home--a country parish in Surrey--three precious children were born to us--Griselda, Irene and little Launcelot. Scarlet fever and diphtheria broke out in the village, a terrible epidemic, causing grief