The Book of Courage, John Thomson Faris [interesting books to read for teens txt] 📗
- Author: John Thomson Faris
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There is a Jewish tradition that a Gentile came to Hillel asking to be taught the law, in a few words, while he stood on one foot. The answer was given, "Whatsoever thou wouldst that men should not do to thee, that do not thou to them." This was good, as far as it went, but there was nothing positive about it. Christ's teaching supplies the lack, showing what we are to do as well as what we are to leave undone. Christ always gives the touch required to make old teachings glow with life.
II
SUCCEEDING BY COURAGEOUS SERVICE
When John E. Clough was a student working his way through college, he was employed in a menial capacity at a hotel in a western town. His employer was absent for a season and the student was compelled to take charge of the hotel. He was successful, for he learned how to handle men of many sorts, how to provide for their comfort, how to make them feel that he was doing his best for them.
Years later, when he was a missionary in India, it became necessary for him to plan for the temporary entertainment of the men and women who came to the mission station by hundreds, and even by thousands, seeking Christian baptism. For days it was necessary to provide for their comfort. Many men would have been dismayed by the task, but to Dr. Clough the problem presented was simple; he had only to do on a large scale the very things which made his boyhood efforts at hotel-keeping such a pronounced success.
Experience in a hotel is a good course of preparation for any young man, whether he plans to be a missionary or to serve in any of the home callings that demand the Christian's time and thought. However, it is not possible for more than a very small proportion of young people to serve a period in a hotel; so it will be helpful to them to read some of the suggestions that have been made by a successful hotel proprietor. Those who heed these suggestions are apt to be successful in dealing with men and women anywhere.
It is worth while to note some of these rules:
"The hotel is operated primarily for the benefit and convenience of its guests.
"Any member of our force who lacks the intelligence to interpret the feeling of good will that this hotel holds toward its guests, cannot stay here very long.
"Snap judgments of men often are faulty. The unpretentious man with the soft voice may possess the wealth of Croesus.
"You cannot afford to be superior or sullen with any patron of the hotel.
"At rare intervals some perverse member of our force disagrees with a guest as to the rightness of this or that. . . . Either may be right. . . . In all discussions between hotel employees and guests, the employee is dead wrong from the guest's standpoint, and from ours. . . .
"Each member of our force is valuable only in proportion to his ability to serve our guests.
"Every item of extra courtesy contributes towards a better pleased guest, and every pleased guest contributes toward a better, bigger hotel. . . ."
Yet a young man should not have to go to a hotel to learn these lessons. They were taught in the Book that every one of us should know better than any other book in our library. Listen to these messages of the Book, and compare them with the rules of the hotel:
"Not looking each of you to his own things, but each of you also to the things of others. . . .
"Be tenderly affectioned one to another, in honor preferring one another. . . .
"Judge not that ye be not judged. . . . The rich and the poor meet together: Jehovah is the maker of them all. . . .
"Better it is to be of a lowly spirit. . . .
"He that is slow in anger appeaseth strife. . . .
"I am among you as he that serveth. . . .
"Ye are the light of the world. . . ."
The best book for anyone who is trying to be a success in the world is the Bible, for the Bible teaches how to serve, and he who has the courage best to serve his fellows in the name of the great Servant is the most successful man.
III
SERVICE BY SYMPATHY
It has been said that, while the word "sympathy" does not occur in the Bible, the idea is there; it is in bud in the Old Testament, but it is in full blossom in the New Testament. Christ was always sympathetic. He felt for the disturbed host at the wedding; His heart went out to Zaccheus; He wept with Mary and Martha; He listened to the plea of the blind and the lepers; He was deeply stirred as He saw the funeral procession of him who was the only son of his mother, a widow.
An eloquent preacher was talking to his people of this glorious flower of the Christian life. "Beholding the lily," he said, "sympathy breathes a prayer that no untimely frost may blight the blossom; beholding the sparrow, sympathy fills a box with seeds for the birds whose fall 'the Heavenly Father knoweth'; beholding some youth going forth to make his fortune, sympathy prays that favorable winds may fill these sails and waft the boy to fame and fortune. Do the happy youth and maiden stand before the marriage altar, the Christian breathes a prayer that love's flowers may never fall, and that 'those who are now young may grow old together.'"
One of the pleasing stories told of Richard Harding Davis, the writer and war correspondent, was of an incident when real sympathy transformed him.
In May, 1898, when the Massachusetts troops were about to go from Florida to Cuba, Mr. Davis entered the encampment as the men were saddened by the first death in the company. At once his cheerful face took on a subdued look. The next day proved to be "a broiling dry hot day which set the blood sizzling inside of one," but Davis tramped for two hours in the search of flowers. Then he learned that eight miles away he might secure some. Though no one was abroad who did not have to be, Mr. Davis started on a sixteen-mile horseback trip. Securing the flowers, he brought them back and made a cross of laths on which he tied them. Then came the search for colors to make the flag. Again he tramped a weary distance, but at last he found red, white and blue ribbon. That night he laid his tribute on the casket.
An American author who lived several generations before Davis was noted for his sympathetic attitude to the suffering. Richard Henry Dana was compelled when a young man to take a voyage around Cape Horn on a sailing ship. That classic of the sea, "Two Years Before the Mast," was one of the results of that experience. Another result was that when the author became a lawyer in Boston, his knowledge of ships made him a favorite advocate in nautical cases. His knowledge of the sufferings of the men before the mast, who were so often abused, was responsible for his taking their part in many an unprofitable case. He had learned by bitter experience what the sailors under a brutal captain had to suffer, and any mistreated seaman had in him a firm friend and a fearless pleader.
The truest sympathy comes from those who, like Dana, know what suffering means. An author in Scotland, who lived in Dana's generation, never heard of the American friend of seamen, but he had the same spirit, born of his own suffering. He was not accustomed to complain, and was always reticent in speaking of himself. Once, however, for the sake of a friend, he allowed himself to tell of his own life:
"With all your sorrows I sympathize from my heart," he wrote. "I have learned to do so through my own sufferings. The same feeling which made you put your hand into your pocket to search among the crumbs for the wanting coin for the beggar, leads me to search in my heart for some consolation for you. The last two years have been fraught to me with such sorrowful experiences that I would gladly exchange my condition for a peaceful grave. A bankrupt in health, hope and fortune, my constitution shattered frightfully, and the almost certain prospect of being a cripple for life before me, I can offer you as fervent and unselfish a sympathy as ever one heart offered another. I have lain awake, alone, and in darkness, suffering severe agony for hours, often thinking that the slightest aggravation must make my condition unbearable and finding my only consolation in murmuring to myself the words patience, courage and submission."
That, surely, is a part of what Robert Louis Stevenson meant when, as one element in his statement of the ideal for the perfect life, he named "to be kind." True kindness is impossible without sympathy.
So long as there is so much real sympathy in the world there can be no place for the maunderings of a pessimist. Every sight of a man, a woman or a child whose life is beautified by the outgoing of sympathy is an effective message of courage, of cheer, of hope.
IV
DOING BUSINESS FOR OTHERS
A Boston boy, Samuel Billings Capen, wanted to become a minister. Yet it did not seem possible to secure the special training which was essential. Instead of being discouraged, he determined to go into business.
But he resolved that he would be a business man of God. From the first he carried his Christian principles with him into the carpet business. His faithful work as office boy was a part of his testimony for Christ, and when—within five years—he became a member of the firm, he was known as one of the solid Christian men of the city. Always his duty to Christ came first. In the words of his biographer, "There was not a moment when he would not have left the firm with which he was associated had the business demanded any compromise with the best things of character."
Once he spoke to young men of these few things essential to vital living:
"The first is fidelity—that kind of conscientiousness which performs the smallest details well.
"The second condition is earnestness. There is no chance for the idle or indifferent.
"The third condition is integrity—not that lower form which refuses to tell a downright falsehood, but that higher form of conscientiousness which will not swerve a hair's breadth from the strictest truth, no matter what the temptation; the courage to lose a sale rather than to do that which is mean or questionable.
"The fourth condition I would name is purity of heart and life. I do not believe it is possible for any man to be true and pure and faithful in every respect without help from above. We need the personal help of a personal God."
Thirteen years after beginning his service as apprentice, Mr. Capen's health failed. For many months his life was in danger. God used the sickness to draw the young man nearer to Himself. "Compelled to remain for months in absolute idleness, unable to talk to his friends except to a limited extent, he made the solemn resolve with his God that if his health was restored he would never shirk any work nor complain of any task that might be presented to him."
For a generation he was not only a leader in business, but he was as conspicuous in his service of the State as in his services in the Church.
Why did he succeed? He was not a genius. His health was poor. He was not mentally brilliant. In these respects he was just an average man. But in other respects he was above the average. He had the courage to
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