Charles M. Sheldon

“ That evening at the supper table George Randall simply fascinated the whole company with his stories of Chinese life and the victories of the gospel. Esther invited in her brothers, Walter and Louis. Felix Bauer had never seen anyone like Randall, and he sat the whole evening absorbed, listening to the recital of as marvellous a story of conquest as any to be found in the chapters of Caesar, Frederick the Great or Napoleon. And what a conquest! Not war and pillage and pitiful man's ambition for power, but conquest of that great territory called the human heart. ”

“ Then he laughed hysterically and turned again to his machine. His whole attention was now fastened upon it, and with the true inventor's ecstasy he forgot Bauer, forgot his mother, forgot that he was at the center of a great moral tragedy for his own soul, forgot there was a God, and a judgment day and any such things as conscience or remorse, or injustice.
His whole soul flung itself on that point of dazzling light and the soft metal teeth which he had coupled in a strip to the electrodes. He watched it, fascinated and fearful. ”

“ Helen again had that curious blending of anger and exultation, of shame and gratified vanity as if there were forces at work in her at war with one another tempting and antagonistic, attractive and repellant. But after one look had been exchanged between her and Van Shaw she changed her position on the cot so that she was partly hidden from him by a lamp which stood on one corner of the little parlour organ of the platform.
Do you know of any greater heroes than the heroes of the cross? These are the undaunted, unterrified, passion-filled souls of the earth. ”

“ Bauer turned his head and looked full at her. His eyes were, as Helen had once said, the most splendid she had ever seen. This time they looked at her with a calm sadness that compelled her own to waver and finally to drop.
"Loben ist nicht lieben," said Bauer firmly. It was the nearest he had ever come to declaring himself, in words. And Helen was the most deficient girl, Walter always said, when it came to languages. She did not know German and did not care to learn. Miss Gray had laughed at her more than once on account of her obtuseness. ”

“ CHAPTER XIII IT was an hour before sunrise at Tolchaco and Bauer had awakened from a restful sleep and from the place where he lay in the Council Hogan he noted with pure enjoyment the splendid colour of the sky framed in the opening, the exquisite blending from the pearly grey into the unpaintable, soft moving colours that he had looked at with growing awe during many wonderful mornings in July. He could not remove the impression that it was God's hand that moved over the sky, painting with an art that man's cheap imitation could never approach even in the faintest degree. ”

“ And yet President Davis of Burrton was a church member, a highly educated gentleman, a great money getter from rich men, and had the reputation in the educational world of being a success as such school presidents go. He could extract half a million for Burrton from some great pirate of industry, but he did not know how to extract a poisonous doubt from a tortured mind like Walter's, or, better yet, instill the balm of healing faith into a spirit that had for the time being lost its God and its heaven. Great thing, our boasted education is, isn't it! ”

“ He had noted Walter's condition, but if truth be told his own state of hopeless feeling towards Helen had absorbed him to such an extent that he had not paid the attention to Walter's feelings that he otherwise might. No one quite so egotistic as your hopeless lover. The world of Bauer revolved around the star of Helen, and the rest of the universe, including Walter, was for the time being not counted as there. With Walter's trouble now made more apparent to him, Bauer's mind at once waked up and stood ready alert to listen to him. ”

“ She said to herself she did not want men to be cowards, but surely Felix Bauer was not a coward. A man who would go over a cliff like that did not deserve to have a timid girl like her call him a coward. Only———
And in the midst of all her other feelings she could not altogether shut out the sight of Van Shaw, broken and bruised as he had lain in agony there on the seat in the little chapel and she could not, even after all her mother had said, quite dismiss him from her thought. Her cheek glowed, as she raised the question in her imagination, of money and its fascinating power. ”

“ Douglas looked amused.
"And I could never marry an inferior man. I would just despise myself and him, too. But why should I get married at all, mother? Why can't I just be a physical training teacher all my life?"
"I don't want you to marry an inferior man, You would just despise yourself and if you do not love in a natural way someone who is altogether worthy of you, you ought never to marry at all. What has made you think of it?"
Helen did not look up, and after a long pause Esther said gently, "Hide nothing?" ”

“ If Paul and Esther had done nothing else for their children they had certainly done this; they had implanted in their minds a deep and strong feeling that one of the things to be most desired in life is honesty; clean, frank, wholesome honesty, free from cant and hypocrisy and double dealing. And Walter knew in his heart that what he was going to do was not honest to Bauer, even after he had juggled with his conscience and proved to himself that Bauer had no real rights in the matter. He knew perfectly well that the German student did have rights of prior discovery. ”

“ And the two girls, one born in Christian civilisation, nurtured in soft and comfortable ways, and the other who first drew breath in a dark and filthy corner of a stone hut on this treeless rock, drew near together and the Christian faith of each swiftly bridged over all the centuries of difference in matters of language, customs and ceremonies. For is it not beautifully true that when Jesus enters a life it becomes a part of all life everywhere, and there is no longer any Greek nor Jew, neither Barbarian, Scythian, bondman or freeman, but all are one. ”

“ I have wondered often if it wasn't awfully dangerous to be experimenting with electricity, and how do you try new things with wires and batteries and dynamos and—and—things without getting killed several times while you are trying?"
"It's not as dangerous as some other things," thought Bauer, as Helen, in her real earnestness, put her work down and came across the room and took a chair by the table opposite him. If she had been a real coquette intent on making an onslaught on poor Bauer she could not have chosen a more perfect way to do it. ”

“ Over all the jumble of old and new, modern and ancient, the setting sun floods the medley of colour and language and dress and Christian and pagan. And in the stillness that waits the coming of the twenty-four priests out of the kivas, the town crier walks out on the corner of a house top and cries aloud an announcement of a service to be held that night in the little mission chapel out there on the edge of the rock.
"What's that?" asked one of the tourists near Clifford. ”

“ Bauer was still. In the first place he had never faced such a situation and in the darkness there he swiftly recurred to his talk with Mrs. Douglas. He had found her already prepared for a part of what he had to say. Esther, sensitively intelligent in anything relating to Helen's welfare, had not seen Van Shaw a moment before she felt a repulsion for him amounting to horror. What Bauer told her from his own knowledge of Van Shaw's immoral life in Burrton roused all her mother instincts to protect her child from a fate worse than death if she should marry a man who had already fallen. ”

“ God is a machine?"
"But if God is a machine, who made the machine?"
Walter stared. Bauer went on.
"And if God is only high power electricity or force, who made the high power or force? One machine can't make another. And a machine that really thinks and plans, is not a machine but a Being."
Walter did not answer. He was brooding. Finally he said: "Do you really believe in miracles and the superhuman and the resurrection and future and—and a Personal Redeemer and all that?" ”

“ Bauer did not venture to say anything. When Walter could control himself he reached out his hand. Bauer took it, and in that grasp the two young men understood each other for life. I think each gave as much as he took. The sacred compact they sealed in the big empty shop that night was made with few words, but it was never disturbed nor broken in after years. And each one of them realised something of the depth and joy of real friendship. Do you? Does anybody? Our human friendships, when they are real and permanent, are the finest and richest possessions of our lives. ”

“ She managed to get through the evening without betraying her feeling, but when her brothers had gone home, and Helen and Louis had retired, she showed the letter to Paul.
He read it and then looked up at Esther.
"You are the one to help him through this," he said. "You are the only person who can do it right now. But you are tired with all the events of the day. Hadn't you better wait until to-morrow?"
"No," Esther said positively. "He is waiting. When a soul is drifting down like his, it is a case of rescue." ”

“ For if you want to engage the hearty good will of anyone, ask him rapid fire questions about the one thing he is most interested in and would like to talk about, if his modesty did not forbid.
So Felix Bauer was never in so electrically dangerous a situation in all his life as at this moment when Helen Douglas came over and sat down there with a real eagerness to know about his ambitions as an inventor. For Helen was honestly interested in many things that naturally belong to mere man's domain, especially in the realm of mechanical invention. ”

“ It seems to me religious people are always sober, dull people, always talking reform and disagreeable things and never having much fun. But I want you to help me, mother, no one else can, if you can't. I don't seem to be able to pray any. Why should I pray, if there isn't any super-human, nothing but a force somewhere? I am just groping in the dark and it's awful dark. And I don't know a soul here to help me any. Bauer—well—I never said a word to him on religious matters. I don't know whether he is a Catholic or what he is. And I don't know any minister in Burrton well enough to go to him. ”

“ I don't want to invent something that is going to deprive thousands of people of a living."
"You could marry one of them and I would marry another. That would take care of two of 'em," said Bauer solemnly.
Walter looked up at him a moment, and then he roared. It was what Bauer wanted him to do. And when they finally went to their rooms Walter was feeling somewhat better, although he did not get a good night's sleep. His dreams had in them fitful glimpses of Van Shaw and Anderson and a red hot arc lamp that glared and flamed at him with a diabolical grin that rejoiced in his defeat. ”

“ The main facts of life always remain the same. We may learn more about the facts, but we can't change the real nature and needs of mankind by any belief or absence of belief. Even if there were no God and no future and no miracles and no Jesus of history, sin would be sin and its harvest the same; goodness and right and virtue would always be the same and their harvest the same. But men can not live without God without living in hopeless despair. Walter, what did Christ come into the world for, if not to do for us the very things we really needed and were dying to get? ”