^ On Sunday afternoons the boys in his passage would often indulge in pillow fights or games of a somewhat rowdy order. In order to stop this, Hogg, now one of the eldest boys at Joynes', suggested that they should all club together and have tea in his room, and then read aloud. He collected a large quantity of old Chambers's Journals, in which he would look out any curious or interesting articles for these Sunday afternoons. After a time he proposed that before separating a chapter of Scripture should be read and a prayer offered. It must have cost any boy a great effort to make such a suggestion, though the fact that a strong
ST. JOHN I. 40-42 III
religious revival was then moving England, and that the movement had touched even the great public schools, may have made it a slightly less difficult innovation than one would imagine. Yet his contemporaries own they " would not have stood it from any one else " ; and he himself spoke of it as a " sore struggle." As a matter of fact, very little opposition or ridicule was met with. Most of the boys respected him for having the courage of his convictions ; the majority responded to the invitation ; those who held aloof were by no means antagonistic. Young Hogg used to read the chapter, and usually made some remarks as he did so ; occasionally other boys would take an active part, and thus gradually the Chambers's Journals were dropped, and the gathering became a regular Bible Class.^
(h) The second quality is wholly different. It is the sympathy which mediates; the temper and character which draws others together; the "conductivity" of the man. It is a remarkable fact that, after this first meeting with Christ, every subsequent notice of Andrew specially brings out this feature in his character. It is not that he does any great thing himself, but that he is the means of getting great things done for or by others. What was his first impulse, what was his first act, after his call ? Not the establishment of his own position with Christ, not the pro- clamation of his discovery on the housetops, nothing of self or self-seeking in any, even in its highest, form ; but " he first findeth his own brother Simon"; "and he brought him to Jesus" — brought him who was henceforward to be the leader of the Apostles, the foremost after the Ascension to proclaim his risen Lord to a hostile world, the earliest to gather the first-fruits of the Gentiles into the garner of Christ.
^ Dr. Trumbull was often spoken of as being a man of excep- tional " tact." He practised pretty constantly at individual soul- winning from the time when he first found his Saviour, at twenty-one, until his death more than fifty years later. People who knew him and his ways, and his lifelong habit, have said of him, " Oh, it was ' second nature ' to Dr. Trumbull to speak to a man about his soul. He simply couldn't help doing it, it was so easy for him. / never could get his ease in the work." And in so saying they showed how little they knew of him or of the demands of this work upon every man. The book on Individual Work was written after its author was seventy years of age.
^ Quintin Hogg, 36,
112 PERSONAL SERVICE
Hear what he had to say as to the "ease" which his long practice had brought him : " From nearly half a century of such practice, as I have had opportunity day by day, I can say that I have spoken with thousands upon thousands on the subject of their spiritual welfare. Yet, so far from my becoming accus- tomed to this matter, so that I can take hold of it as a matter of course, I find it as difficult to speak about it at the end of these years as at the beginning. Never to the present day can I speak to a single soul for Christ without being reminded by Satan that I am in danger of harming the cause by introducing it just now. If there is one thing that Satan is sensitive about, it is the danger of a Christian's harming the cause he loves by speaking of Christ to a needy soul. He [Satan] has more than once, or twice, or thrice, kept me from speaking on the subject by his sensitive pious caution, and he has tried a thousand times to do so. Therefore my experience leads me to suppose that he is urging other persons to try any method for souls except the best one." 1
(c) The third feature in his character is intimately connected with the second. To Andrew was given the humility which obliterates self. He, who brought others forward, was content himself to retire. Just as at a later date Barnabas, the primitive disciple, took Saul by the hand, introduced him to the elder Apostles, and started him on his career as an Evangelist, content that his own light should wane in the greater glory of this new and more able missionary of Christ, so was it now. Andrew was the first called Apostle. Andrew brought Simon Peter to Christ. Yet Andrew is known only as Simon Peter's brother. We know in what school he had learnt this lesson. Andrew was the Baptist's disciple, and was not this the lesson of the Baptist's life? "He must increase, but I must decrease" — obscuration, eclipse, obliteration of self. The personality of Andrew is lost in the personality of Simon. So it is truly said that the world knows nothing of its greatest benefactors. They are lost in their work, or are lost in others.