If Brownlow North has told us that it was about eleven months after his awakening at Dallas, when he strongly felt it to be his duty to do some service for the Lord. For two months before this he had shut himself up in his own room, reading the Bible and praying. He then said to himself that he must do something for God, but felt that he could not. The thought suggested itself to his mind that he might at least distribute tracts, but he felt that to do so would make himself ridiculous, and that people would laugh at him and call him mad. At last he resolved to try, and putting a number of tracts into his pocket, he went into the most secluded part of Elgin, in which he was living. The first person he met with was an old woman, who amazed him by accepting his tract without laughing at him. To another old woman whom he saw coming down the road he presented another tract, and she received it with thanks. The third he gave to a policeman, who said, "Thank you, Mr. North." He recorded it as his experience after fourteen years' trial, that only on one occasion was a tract refused, and that was by a professed infidel,
1 R. L. Stevenson, A Christmas Sermw\.
i CORINTHIANS x. 31 315
and yet he had systematically given away tracts to persons of all ranks, in all sorts of places. Very few Christians can be preachers like Brownlow North, but there are none who cannot be tract distributors.1
TJ This is what Brother Lawrence once told me, writes his friend and biographer : " For me, the time of action does not differ from the time of prayer, and in the noise and clatter of my kitchen, while several persons are together calling for as many different things, I possess God in as great tranquillity as when upon my knees at the Blessed Sacrament.
"Nor is it needful," says Brother Lawrence himself in his Conversations, " that we should have great things to do." I am giving you the picture of a lay-brother serving in a kitchen ; let me then use his own words : " We can do little things for God ; I turn the cake that is frying on the pan for love of Him, and that done, if there is nothing else to call me, I prostrate myself in worship before Him, who has given me grace to work ; after- wards I rise happier than a king. It is enough for me to pick up but a straw from the ground for the love of God.
" We search for stated ways and methods of learning how to love God, and, to come at that love, we disquiet our minds by I know not how many devices ; we give ourselves a world of trouble and pursue a multitude of practices to attain to a sense of the Presence of God. And yet it is so simple. How very much shorter it is, and easier to do our common business purely for the love of God, to set His consecrating mark on all we lay our hands to, and thereby to foster the sense of His abiding Presence by communion of our heart with His ! There is no need either of art or science; just as we are, we can go to Him, simply and with single heart."
Only a little shrivelled seed, It might be flower, or grass, or weed; Only a box of earth on the edge Of a narrow, dusty, window-ledge; Only a few scant summer showers; Only a few clear shining hours; That was all. Yet God could make Out of these, for a sick child's sake, A blossom-wonder, as fair and sweet As ever broke at an angel's feet.
Only a life of barren pain,
Wet with sorrowful tears for rain,
1 K. Moody-Stuart, Brownlow North, 50.
316 MAN'S CHIEF END
Warmed sometimes by a wandering gleam Of joy, that seemed but a happy dream; A life as common and brown and bare As the box of earth in the window there; Yet it bore, at last, the precious bloom Of a perfect soul in that narrow room; Pure as the snowy leaves that fold Over the flower's heart of gold.1
2. All that God wants of any one is faithfulness. Not brilliance, not success, not notoriety which attracts newspaper notice, but the quiet, regular, and careful performance of trivial and common duties, as beneath " the great Taskmaster's eye." To be faithful in that which is least will win as rich a reward as faithfulness in the greatest. Indeed, it is harder to be faithful over a very little than over much. The opportunity, therefore, of winning the highest reward in the future world is given not only to those who are called to occupy the high places of the field, where every brilliant act is chronicled by admiring pens, but to those who dig out the foundations, who do duty in the trenches, and who are buried in common graves, without magni- ficent obsequies or glowing epitaphs. Of many it will be said at last: "They had their reward" in the blowing of the trumpet of earthly fame and the murmured applause of many voices ; the turn of those to whom no one said "Thank you" will then have arrived.