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Title: By Searching
Author:  Isobel Kuhn (1901-1957)
Date of first publication: 1957
Place and date of edition used as base for this ebook:
   Chicago: Moody Press, 1959
Date first posted: 16 February 2008
Date last updated: 16 February 2008
Project Gutenberg Canada ebook #83

This ebook was produced by: freeelf, Beth Trapaga
& the Online Distributed Proofreading Team at http://www.pgdpcanada.net




BY SEARCHING


ISOBEL KUHN



A China Inland Mission Book


MOODY PRESS
CHICAGO




CONTENTS

 1. On to the Misty Flats

 2. Slippery Ways in Darkness

 3. What You Should Not Imitate

 4. My Year in Arabia

 5. A Pair of Shoes and the Firs Conference

 6. Extinguished Tapers

 7. J. O. Fraser of Lisuland

 8. The Moody Bible Institute

 9. Spiritual Prevision

10. At Sundry Times and in Divers Manners

11. Graduation and C.I.M. Candidature

12. The Vancouver Girls Corner Club

13. "Let Us Go On!"




THE QUESTION THAT PIERCED THE MIST

"Canst thou _by searching_ find out God?"--Job 11:7


THE ANSWER

Ye shall _seek_ me, and _find_ me, when ye shall search for me with
all your heart.--Jer. 29:13

Jesus said unto him, _I am the way_, the truth, and the life; no man
cometh unto the Father, but by me.--John 14:6

_Search the Scriptures_ ... they are they which testify of me.--John
5:39

If any man will do his will, he shall know of the doctrine, whether it
be of God.--John 7:17




CHAPTER ONE

_ON TO THE MISTY FLATS_

    To every man there openeth
    A way, and ways, and a way.
    And the high soul climbs the high way,
    And the low soul gropes the low.
    _And in between on the misty flats_
    _The rest drift to and fro._
    But to every man there openeth
    A high way and a low--
    And every man decideth the way his soul shall go.

                              --JOHN OXENHAM


"Of course no one in this enlightened age believes any more in the
myths of Genesis and--" But here Dr. Sedgewick paused in his lecture as
if a second thought had occurred. With a twinkle in his eye, he said,
"Well, maybe I had better test it out, before being so dogmatic."
Facing the large freshman class, who were hanging on his words, and
pulling his face into gravity, he asked: "Is there anyone here who
believes there is a Heaven and a Hell? Who believes that the story of
Genesis is true? Please raise your hand." He waited for a response.

Up went my hand as bravely as I could muster courage. I also looked
around to see if I had a comrade in my stand. Only one other hand was
up, in all that big group of perhaps a hundred students. Dr. Sedgewick
smiled, then, as if sympathetic with our embarrassment, he conceded:
"Oh, you just believe that because your papa and mama told you so." He
then proceeded with his lecture, assuming once and for all that no
thinking human being believed the Bible any more.

Brought up in an earnest Presbyterian home (my grandfather was a
Presbyterian minister and my father an ardent lay preacher) I had been
carefully coached in the refutations of modernism before my parents had
allowed me to enter the university. If it had been a case of arguing
the claims of modernism versus fundamentalism, I do not think I would
have been shattered in my faith. But there was no argument. There was
just the pitying sneer, "Oh, you just believe that because your papa
and your mama told you so," and then the confident assumption that no
persons nowadays who thought for themselves, who were scientific in
their approach to life, believed that old story any more.

On the way home from class I faced the charge honestly. _Why_ did I
believe the Bible? The Genesis explanation of life's origin? Why did I
believe in Heaven and Hell?

It was because I had been taught it by my parents and church from the
hour I could understand anything. Was that reason enough for accepting
it? No, I agreed with Dr. Sedgewick that it was not a sufficient basis
to build my life upon. We had experienced remarkable answers to prayer
in our family life--didn't that prove the existence of God? But my
psychology course taught that mind had a powerful effect over matter.
If I had not been so gullible, maybe I could have seen a natural
explanation. Our twentieth century believed only when there was a test
and a proof. We were scientific in our investigations; we did not
swallow the superstitions of our ancestors just because they were
handed to us.

Dr. Sedgewick, Professor of the English Department in our university,
was an ardent follower of Matthew Arnold's "sweetness and light"
philosophy, and of Thomas Hardy's materialism. Yet he was so apparently
patient and kind toward us whom he felt were still bound by our
parents' old-fashioned thinking that he won our affection and respect.

At the end of my walk home, I came to the conclusion that I would
henceforth accept no theories of life which I had not proved
personally. And, quite ignorant of where that attitude would lead me, I
had unconsciously stepped off the High Way where man walks with his
face lifted Godward and the pure, piney scents of the Heights call him
upward, on to The Misty Flats. The in-between level place of
easy-going--nothing very good attempted, yet nothing bad either--where
men walk in the mist, telling each other that no one can see these
things clearly. The Misty Flats where the in-betweeners drift to and
fro--life has no end but amusement and no purpose--where the herd drift
with the strongest pull and there is no reason for opposing anything.
Therefore they had a kind of peace and a mutual link which they call
tolerance.

I did not know that I had stepped down to The Misty Flats. I was just
conscious of a sudden pleasant freedom from old duties. If there was no
God, why bother to go to church on Sunday, for instance? Why not use
Sunday to catch up on sleep, so that one could dance half the night
away several times during the week?

Again, if the Bible was but a record of myths and old-fashioned ideas,
why read it every morning? That took time and it was much easier to
sleep until the very last moment, getting up just in time for the first
class at college. Prayer, too, became silly--talking to someone who
maybe did not exist.

I would not call myself an atheist because, well, there were those
childhood answers to prayer still to be accounted for. But I called
myself an agnostic--I frankly did not know if there was a God or not.
It was a popular thing to be on The Misty Flats: you had plenty of
company. And one was respected as being modern and intelligent to
question the old faiths. Life drifted along so pleasantly--_for a
while_.

My home training still had an effect upon me. Jesus Christ, now seen
blurred in the mists which denied His Godhead, is an acknowledged
historical character. And His name was still an ointment poured forth
to me. He was like a perfume which haunts and calls so that one stops,
lifts one's head and drinks it in wistfully. His name was the sweetest
melody I knew and it never failed to stir my heart, even though I had
ceased to seek Him. His purity and holiness made me hate besmirching
things.

And all this because my father and my mother had taught me so.

So when I broke with the old religious habits and frankly went into the
world, I was still choosey in what I did. I never smoked. The tainted
breath and stained fingers or teeth of the smoker revolted me. I told
myself I was too dainty for such doings.

Neither did I drink. My father, brokenhearted at my callous
turning-of-the-back on all my home training, still warned me as a
medical man what drink could do to a girl.

"Drink affects men and women biologically, and under its influence
girls can be led into sin that they could never consent to when in
possession of their senses. Dr. Hall and I have such come to us for
consultation all the time. They never meant to, but there they are.
Keep away from liquor and you can keep yourself pure, perhaps." So I
did not drink. Also I had _signed the pledge_ when twelve years old,
and a certain whimsical loyalty to my childhood self kept me from
breaking it.

So amidst the gay group at the university I was considered _a good
girl_, and even a Christian! But I myself knew that I wasn't.

In my studies I took the honors course in English Language and
Literature which brought me much under the influence of Dr. Sedgewick.
But in my extracurricular activities I was mostly interested in the
Players Club, the amateur theatrical club of the university. Apparently
I had a gift for acting comedy parts, and in my freshman year I won
life-membership in the Players Club, not usually attained by a
first-year student. The staff patron of our theatricals was Professor
H. G. C. Wood, also a member of the English Faculty. He was a believer
in God and Christ, and not an atheist like Dr. Sedgewick, and his
friendship helped to keep me from extremes. But the theater was his
hobby and soon became mine. Urgently my mother pleaded with me to
attend the Young Women's Christian Association. I went several times,
but was frankly bored, so dropped it. I loved the theater and I liked
to dance and these activities occupied my spare time. In fact, our
Varsity 1922 yearbook has, as comment opposite my picture: "And oh the
tilt of her heels when she dances!" No shadow of the missionary there.

In my second year I was elected to be Secretary of the Student Council,
at that time the highest position to which a woman student could be
elected. I met the leading young people of the university and became
secretly engaged to Ben, one of the star Rugby and basketball players.

Ben was a returned soldier from World War I, several years older than
I, not handsome, but six feet two or three in height. He came of a good
Baptist family and my mother encouraged our friendship. He even took me
to his church on Sunday nights! It made a nice inexpensive date, for
Ben did not have much money and when he asked me to marry him he said
that our engagement must be kept secret lest his "old man" be angry
with him for getting involved before he graduated. I insisted that my
parents be told, but his never were. We went together for nearly two
years, and my path was perceptibly downgrade.




CHAPTER TWO

_SLIPPERY WAYS IN DARKNESS_

    _Wherefore their way shall be unto them as slippery ways in
    the darkness: they shall be driven on, and fall therein: for
    I will bring evil upon them, even the year of their visitation,
    saith the Lord._

                                                         Jer. 23:12


After the stretched muscles of climbing, to find oneself on the level
is very relaxing and pleasant. Therefore The Misty Flats are attractive
to foot, eye, and palate _at the beginning_. There is no hint that the
pretty mist will gradually close in and bring darkness. There is no
suggestion amid the gay chatter of the populous throng that there are
slippery places, which are going to bring hurt. In the boasted freedom
of drifting whither you will, there is certainly no sign that one is
being _driven on_, as Jeremiah so shrewdly perceived was the reality.
And above all, there is never a hint that the end of The Flats is the
visitation of the Lord and the judgment of sin. Yet all that is the
real truth.

In my senior year there came a day when my college chum, Cora, shook me
to the foundations with a sentence or so. "Isobel," she said, "I think
I should tell you something, even though it may hurt. Everybody but you
knows that Ben is not loyal to you. He is taking Reba out behind your
back."

I turned a stunned face upon her, and her eyes filled with tears of
sympathy, but with true friendship she went on: "You remember when you
were ill and could not go to his fraternity dance?"

"Yes," I replied, "he took Reba in my place that night. He asked me if
I would mind, and I said no."

"Well, that was the beginning of it, I guess. They've been seen
together a lot. People are talking and I can't bear that you should not
know. I don't think he's worth breaking your heart over, Isobel," she
said earnestly.

But it did break my heart. It was difficult to believe and yet I knew
he had not been so attentive of late. My father had spoken to me about
it. "You have let Ben get too sure of you, Baby," he had said, using
his tender pet name for me, the youngest in the family. "Show a man all
the love you have _after you are married_, but keep it in reserve while
you are just engaged. The elemental male _likes_ to fight for a mate.
What is the use of chasing a streetcar after you've caught it?"

So it was not all Ben's fault. I had been inexperienced--I was still
only in my teens. With the promise to be his wife I had truly given my
heart to Ben and love struggled hard with "maybe if I ..." and
"perhaps I could still win him back." But it was Ben himself who made
it hopeless.

I met him one morning at the entrance of the university. No one else
was around, so I charged him with taking Reba out behind my back. I
wanted to hear from his own lips that it was true, for love rebelled at
believing it. He drew himself up to the full stature of his six feet
two inches, and I never forgot the curl of his lip as he said, "Isobel,
you're a softy. You don't suppose, do you, that after we are married,
I'm not going to take other women out sometimes?"

"Then we part," I had whispered hoarsely, dazed as if stricken. I was
on my way home from a class and have never forgotten the dull agony of
that walk. I knew I could never marry a man with such standards. That
was the trouble. They were just the standards of The Misty Flats. But I
had known the Christ and I could not be satisfied with less than the
ideals He had set before me.

So I found myself in the slippery places of darkness. Pride wounded me,
love wounded me, and sleep departed from me. The English course I was
taking entailed more work than a mere passing degree, and I needed rest
during sleep hours, but could not sleep.

My mother was distressed that I should break with Ben and kept saying,
"If you would only take my advice." But I could not bear to discuss it
with anyone. I discussed it with myself night and day. My father was my
greatest comfort. He knew enough to be silent and just love me. He even
sensed that I was not sleeping. One night when all the house had been
asleep for hours and I was still tossing, I heard him come softly into
my room. He knelt down beside my bed and prayed God to help me, but it
only irritated me. "Thanks, Dad," I said wearily. "I know you mean it
well, but praying doesn't go beyond the ceiling, you know." I never
forgot the groan with which he turned away from my agnosticism, and
left the room.

The climax came just before Christmas. My birthday is December 17 and I
was to be twenty years old, but I do not remember if it was before or
after that date. The post office clock on Main Street had just struck
two, and I was still tense and tossing. I was desperate. I knew I'd be
ill in the morning if I did not get to sleep. Then came the Tempter.

"Of what use is life?" he whispered. "Ben is only an average fellow.
Probably all men are just like him. You'll never find anyone to love
you like you want to be loved--your ideal is too high. And you'd never
be happy with a lower ideal of marriage. Why go on with life? It has no
purpose, only suffering. This would be a good time to slip out. There
is that bottle in the bathroom marked _Poison_. A good long drink and
your troubles are over." A good idea. The only sensible solution. I
jumped out of bed and started for the bathroom. _Slippery ways in the
darkness: they shall be driven on and fall therein._

My hand was on the door knob when a deep groan, twice repeated, broke
the silence of the dark. It was my father, moaning in his sleep in the
next room. I was not afraid, for I recognized Father's tones, but I was
startled into remembrance of him. I stood with my hand on the knob
debating. If I committed suicide, Daddy would think I had gone to Hell.
Of course, that would not make a place called Hell, but how terrible
for Daddy to think so. He had been such a dear, kind father to me all
my life. Dare I make him such a dastardly return? No, I couldn't be so
mean and selfish. In agony I turned and sat down on the edge of my bed
and faced the darkest moment of my life. I didn't want to live and I
couldn't die! Oh the black despair of The Misty Flats! How little did I
know of the golden sunshine pouring on the High Way above them! What a
lot of heartache I might have been saved if I had only been told that
God had already laid His hand on one who was to be a dear husband to me
with the same ideals and the same passion for God's highest purposes!
But it was necessary that first I drink to the dregs the emptiness of
the promises held out by The Misty Flats: only then could I be freed
from their lure and subtle call.

And now a strange thing happened. That day I had been studying Matthew
Arnold's essay on _The Study of Poetry_. (You remember, it was
Sedgewick, a disciple of Arnold, who had first pushed me off the High
Way?) In that essay he gives various quotations from the classics as
touchstones of perfect poetry. One such was from Dante and ran: _In
la sua volontade [=e] nostra pace_. From my knowledge of Latin I had
guessed the meaning: _In His will is our peace_. Now that sentence
wrote itself across the dark of my bedroom. Dante believed in God. What
if there were a God, after all? If so, I certainly had not been in His
will. Maybe that was why I had no peace? An idea struck me. No one was
watching to see if I were a fool or not. Sitting there on my bed's
edge, I raised both hands heavenward. "God, if there be a God," I
whispered, for I was not going to believe in what did not exist just to
get a mental opiate, "if You will prove to me that You are, and if You
will give me peace, I will give You my whole life. I'll do anything You
ask me to do, go where You send me, obey You all my days." Then I
climbed into bed and pulled the blankets over me.




CHAPTER THREE

_WHAT YOU SHOULD NOT IMITATE_


The next thing I knew, it was morning and the golden sunshine of a
December day in Vancouver was pouring into my bedroom. I lay there
drowsily enjoying it when suddenly a thought startled me into full
consciousness. I had been sleeping like a baby--how did it happen? Such
deep relaxed slumber had not touched my pillow for many a long day.
What had brought it? Thought traced itself back to the experience of
the night before. I had made a bargain with God. I had asked Him for
peace and--_peace had come_. Oh yes, answered Reason; but that was
easily explainable apart from God. That was no proof that God existed.
It was just the effect of mind over matter. I had committed my troubles
to an imaginary being and that was why body and mind quietened down.

Restlessly I threw off the bedclothes and sat on the edge of my bed. I
was not going to use religion as an opiate. I was going to be realistic
or nothing--as a matter of fact, I believe I was born with "a flair for
reality." But as I pondered, the thought persisted: "You made a bargain
last night. The Other Side kept His part. There was no stipulation as
to how peace should come, _and it came_. Nobody knows about it and
nobody will know, if this should prove to be foolishness. Why not
continue your part of the agreement and see?"

But what was _my part_? To yield my whole life _if_ He proved Himself.
And in the meantime, why not try to seek Him?

Seek God? Where?

_Can a man by searching find out God?_ Zophar had questioned Job,
obviously not believing it possible. Job had tried to answer by
pointing to God in His creative works. But the twentieth century had
another theory for the origin of the earth.

Where does one go to search for God? Even as I asked myself that
question, a picture from memory floated before me. It was at the Guelph
conference of 1921 when the Student Christian Movement was formed. A
young man was on his feet giving his testimony. "While I was interned
in Germany as a prisoner of war," he said, "I got hold of a Bible and
started to read it. _I found God through reading His Word._"

I had been a university delegate for the Y.W.C.A. to that convention,
but had apparently been unaffected by it. I knew there was a conflict
between the modernist students and the fundamentalists--this young
ex-soldier was earnest for the old beliefs. I was still an agnostic and
weary of religious arguments. I let them talk and did not let it enter
my heart. But this young fellow was aglow with something real: he was
the outstanding memory of that conference to me, yet I did not even
know his name. Now in my own hour of need I could see him standing
there, radiant, affirming he had _found God_. And he had found Him
through the Christ of the New Testament.

Well, I had a Bible. There it was on my bookshelf, unused, a bit dusty,
but beautiful and new--a gift from my father when I graduated from high
school. I pulled it down and looked at it. Modernists said the
Pentateuch was not written by Moses; this was questioned, that was
questioned. Was there anything that wasn't questioned? Yes--the
historicity of Jesus Christ is beyond doubt. And the four Gospels are
accepted as a more or less authentic record of His teachings, as
authoritative as Plato's were of Socrates, at least.

So I decided to search for God _through Jesus Christ_, to read the
Gospels only, to underline everything and anything that Jesus said _to
do_ and try honestly to do them. Jesus prayed, so I would begin to try
praying again--cautiously, of course, and not really assuming that it
went any higher than the ceiling. With that decided, I arose and
dressed for another day's study at the University of British Columbia.

And now began a life at two levels: an outer level of study, worldly
gaiety and pride, and an inner level of watching, seeking after God--if
there was a God (always I added that).

God is not a puppet. Man may not pull strings and expect Him to
perform--not even doctrinally correct strings, such as Balaam tried to
pull. God is not man's servant, that a puny atheist may shout a
challenge and He is bound to respond. Neither is God a genie, that if
man is lucky enough to find the right combination of words, He will
suddenly pop out and reveal Himself. God is our Creator, all powerful
and dwelling in light unapproachable. He demands reverence. But He is
also willing to be _Father_ to such as come to Him by His ordained
road, Jesus Christ, and as a Father He tenderly stoops to the
immaturity of the babe in Christ. This is the only explanation I have
to offer for the following facts. God answered prayers which were
unworthy even to have been brought before His presence. If I prayed
those same prayers today He would _not_ answer them. He responded then,
ignoring the selfish vanity of the request, simply because of the
honest seeking at the base. He knew I meant it when I said I would give
Him my whole life. _The Father seeketh such to worship Him--in spirit
and in truth._

For some three months after my "bargain" I experienced nothing
convincing. I read the Gospels and prayed in private, but did not go to
church or show any outward interest in religion. Then one day I was
invited to a private dance at the home of a girl friend, Jill. Jill had
moved away to a different part of town and probably did not know that I
had broken with Ben, but as she did not inquire as to whether or not I
wanted him to be my partner, I had no opportunity to tell her. She
usually gave a dance once a season and invited Ben only because he went
with me, her friend. She usually just invited him and left it to him to
arrange for my escort to and from her house. So as I prepared to go, I
wondered if he would be there.

But on my arrival he wasn't there, and I prepared to enjoy the evening
thoroughly, for it was a small home dance with just our crowd, and I
loved my friends dearly. Jill's new house was center-halled, so that
for dancing we had three spaces--parlor, hall, and dining room. I was
dancing with Les (Cora's friend and long since her dear husband) when
it happened. We had circled out into the hall when the door-bell rang.
Jill opened the door and I beheld Ben, Reba with him, and he was
ushering her into the house! I could hardly believe my eyes that he
would have dared to do such a thing--it was like slapping my face
publicly. And the dance was so small that there was no avoiding
constant contact. I became completely unnerved. Trembling from head to
foot, I began to walk all over Les's feet. Long hours of study, late
hours of dancing, unhappy broken sleep had wrecked my nerves. I was
undone--there was simply no escape from the humiliating fact. Les's
look of respectful compassion did not help my chagrin. I could not fool
Les about the cause of my agony and the knowledge was too much for my
pride.

"Les, I don't feel well--will you please excuse me?" I said, and,
stopping at the foot of the hall staircase, I fled up to the bedroom
assigned as our dressing room. Up and down the floor I paced in a rage
at myself, trying to use pride to whip my trembling body into control.
It was perfectly useless--I shook like an aspen leaf.

Suddenly I remembered I was trying to prove if there was a God. With
almost a sneer at such a ridiculous thing, I nevertheless prayed,
"O God, if You are, please give me p----" but I did not have time to
finish the sentence. Something like an electric current struck me,
shot me through and I tingled all over. _It had come from above, and
from outside myself._ But it left me completely poised and quiet.
Incredulous, I stretched out my hand--it was steady and firm. Without
stopping to say "Thank You," and marveling inwardly, I turned and ran
down the stairs. That same dance number was still on and Les was still
standing at the foot of the staircase where I had left him.

"I'm all right now, Les," I said gaily. "Let's finish." Which we did. A
wonderful exultation, a feeling as if I had new life pulsed through me
and continued all evening. Ben asked for a dance and made no effort to
conceal his admiration. "You are beautiful tonight," he whispered, but
I gave an evasive answer. Our ideals were too different: I must not let
my affections get involved again.

The evening was a triumph of gratified pride and vanity for me. But
when I was alone in my bedroom, emotional reaction set in. Ben was a
superb dancer, and my longing to float through life in perfect rhythm
together with him would not be challenged by common sense. Sleep again
departed from me and I tossed in agony until morning.

But the one fact stood out. I had cried to God for help, my lips
twisted in sardonic unbelief that He even existed, but He had answered
swiftly. This was no instance of mind acting upon matter, for the mind
had held no faith at all. But help had come _from the outside
entirely_. I was now convinced that some Force outside me, intelligent,
loving, and powerful, was Up There trying to get in touch with me.
Never again did I pray _if Thou art_. And now I wanted to know--how
much could I ask of Him? Did He always answer prayer in Jesus' name?
Morning and night I now prayed in faith. Those prayers were still all
selfish and this is the part of my story where I do not want any young
readers to try to imitate me.

Follow me in my pursuit of God--yes.

Like me, come to Him by way of the Christ of Calvary--yes.

Seek for the revelation of that Christ in the Bible--yes. But don't
imitate my flounderings. I was pig-headed now in the matter of refusing
all human advice, and my own level of living was so low that God could
not meet me on a higher one.

I wondered if God could answer seemingly impossible requests: for
instance--would He get me invitations to certain balls and dances? It
was our senior year and almost all our "gang" were paired off now,
either engaged or going steady. There was no one within the circle of
my close acquaintances who would be free to invite me unless I
hinted--which I did not intend to do, ever. God had answered prayer
wonderfully, causing my incredulity to marvel at _His power_ to do it.
I will tell of one instance.

A neighboring university had sent their football team to play ours and
a _th dansant_ was to be given to the two teams after the match. It
was purposely a small affair in honor of the teams, just the players
and their girl friends and such team officers as the coach and manager.
Now Ben was one of the star players and I wanted to go. He had barged
in on my party, and now I wanted to go to this affair held in his honor
to show that I was not dependent on him for a good time. Not only was I
moved by a thoroughly low and fleshly reason, but also it was hopeless
to expect an invitation to such an exclusive party. Could God do it? I
challenged Him.

At last the day before the match arrived. No one would ask me now--it
would be an insult for any man to ask a girl at such a late hour, sure
proof that she was only second or third choice.

That last afternoon a fellow student and I had arranged a rehearsal of
a theatrical scene in which he and I were to act alone. George was a
good friend of mine and engaged to a girl called Martha. He also
happened to be on the manager's staff of the football team, but this I
did not know then. He had come to my house for the rehearsal and after
it was over and he reached for his hat to leave, he said, "Well,
Isobel, see you at the _th dansant_ tomorrow afternoon after the
match." Then I saw he did not know I had broken with Ben.

"No, I don't think you will, George," I said slowly.

He whirled around and shot me a keen look. Then, gentleman that he was,
he drew himself up and said with fine courtesy, "Isobel, last night
Martha was called out of town unexpectedly. I thought I was going to
have to 'go stag' to _th dansant_. May I have the pleasure of your
company? I'll explain to Martha--I'm sure she won't mind."

It was just as simple as that. I was almost intoxicated with the wonder
of it, and again the afternoon was a great triumph for me. I had more
partners seeking me than there were dances, while Reba was more than
once a wallflower. In fact, while dancing with me, Ben had to excuse
himself to go and find her a partner!

Now, do I really believe that God was responsible for that? I am sure
God gave it to me. Moreover, by piling on the triumphs He taught me a
lesson I never forgot. I learned that pride and gratified vanity could
never bring me peace or happiness. Underneath the gay triumphant
surface I was miserable. My heart was often like lead even while my
lips were chattering merry nonsense. This kind of life would never
satisfy me. I grew more and more unhappy and disillusioned. And that
was what God wanted. It was as if He said, "If this is what you think
you want, dear, have some more!" And He stuffed the froth of life down
me. Yet every time He got me an invitation when humanly speaking it
seemed impossible, He proved to me again that there was nothing He
could not do for me.

                     *      *      *      *      *

All during this time, my parents knew nothing of my inward seekings.
They sensed a change was going on, but I still refused to go to church
with them and usually spent Sunday trying to catch up on the sleep I
had lost at dances during the week! But there may have been a softening
visible, for Mother began again to try to help me.

"Isobel, I want you to come with me to hear Professor Ellis. The
meeting is just a Bible class, not held in a church, but in a classroom
of the Vancouver Bible School. Just to please your mother. Won't you do
a little thing like this to please me? I don't want to go alone."

And so I went.

I did not know that anyone else in that room knew me. In fact, I did
not look at the audience, for I had ceased to be interested in human
beings. But the speaker held my attention. Professor Ellis was a
cultured, educated Christian gentleman. I liked his quiet, refined
manner of speech. He was speaking that day on the Temptation of Christ,
and as he went on to give his message, he also very frankly pointed out
the liberal interpretation of that passage. Without any belligerent
dogmatism, he courteously but deftly refuted their arguments. I saw
clearly that here was a scholar who knew both sides of the argument.
Here was a real gentleman who would never stoop to nasty remarks about
an opponent. And, watching the quiet radiance of his face, I
instinctively knew that here was a man who had _personal experience
with God_. I decided that this was the preacher for me--I would come
again.

Seated behind me was another Christian gentleman. White-headed, shy and
reserved, he was known to me only as Mr. Wright, a friend of my
father's. I forget if it was that first time I went to Professor Ellis'
Bible class, or on a succeeding occasion, but at the close of the
meeting he leaned forward and spoke to me.

"Isobel, I'm glad to see you here," he said, his eyes flooded with
tears. "I've been praying for you for some seven years."

I was stunned. It was about seven years since I had decided to dance
and go in for worldly things against my father's pleadings. The
yearning in Christ which lit up Mr. Wright's face stirred me to the
depths, for my soul still knew periods of agony. With eyes as flooded
as his own, I tried to murmur "Thank you," then escaped quickly from
the building.

But every Sunday saw me back in that afternoon service, and weekly I
was fed and nourished in the truth of God's Word. Professor Ellis'
scholarship and his expository preaching combined with his gentle
culture had won my full confidence and I was willing to learn from him.

And so, though my head was still befogged by the Mists of The Flats, my
feet were once more planted on the High Way, prepared to climb, and my
face steadfastly turned Godward.




CHAPTER FOUR

_MY YEAR IN ARABIA_


On graduating in May, 1922, at twenty years of age, I needed only five
months of Normal School to qualify for a teacher's certificate. My
ambition was to be a dean of women and teach English in some
university, but I was so young and inexperienced in teaching that I
first had to accept an elementary grade school assignment. I could have
taken an up-country high school appointment, but Mother would not hear
of it. She insisted that I teach in a city school, so because of my
inexperience I had to accept a position as teacher of the third grade
at the Cecil Rhodes School, Vancouver.

In the meantime my family had moved. My father was roentgenologist to
Dr. Ernest Hall of Victoria, B.C., and Mother sold our Vancouver home
and purchased a chicken ranch just outside Victoria. This ranch was to
be for my brother who had been a soldier in World War I and for whom
employment must be found. He thought he would like ranch life.

So in February 1923 I found myself a "school-marm" in Vancouver and
needing to find a boardinghouse. For the first time in my life I would
not live at home, but would be on my own, receiving a monthly salary
for which I need account to no one. The idea was distinctly pleasing.
But where would I board?

Somehow I ran into the mother of a girl with whom I had gone to
elementary school eight years before. They were a Scottish family, and
the mother especially was a very superior person. Mrs. McMillan was a
thinker, but, inbred with theosophy, had fallen in with the idea that
it was wrong to spank a child. I have wondered if this was not the
reason her children did more as they liked than as she liked. The two
youngest would not continue school, so had to take employment below
their family cultural level. By the time I had graduated, Mrs. McMillan
was so reduced in circumstances that she was trying to run a
boardinghouse and asked if I would come to her. She was apologetic, for
she had lost her best furniture and could not provide anything as
comfortable as I had been accustomed to, but she was very clean, an
excellent cook, and her house was within walking distance of my school.
Mother knew her and felt at ease that I should be with Mrs. McMillan,
who was as loving and kind to me as if I were her own child.

So I found myself in this house--the only Christian. The two daughters
were both engaged to sailors. The youngest child, a son, was a
policeman with a wife and small baby. The policeman's brother-in-law,
whom we called Laurie, was attending Normal School, hoping to become a
schoolteacher. As he was not yet earning, he paid but a minimum rate of
board, if anything. This was the household among whom I became the
ninth.

After graduation my particular clique scattered. Many went to other
universities for further degrees. Some taught school, but went
up-country where they could get high school positions. In no time at all
I seemed to be alone and living in a different world. The young people
of my boardinghouse were very nice to me, but were all for the gay
life. I did not care to join them. We had little in common but our
boardinghouse. Surrounded with young laughter and noise, I was as alone
as if I had been in the deserts of Arabia. For a year and a half, God
shut me up to that aloneness, so that I have always called it _my year
in Arabia_.

A young fellow we will call Mac had begun to ask me out. He was still
studying and invited me to the various big dances of the university
from time to time, but as he did not live in Vancouver our dates were
not frequent.

I had begun to attend evening lectures at the Vancouver Bible School,
but it was just beginning and I do not remember meeting other Christian
young people. I was lonely.

F. B. Meyer points out that this is one of the planned training schools
of God. "One symptom of being on that path is loneliness." He continues:

    Nothing strengthens us so much as isolation and transplantation ...
    under the wholesome demand his soul will put forth all her native
    vigor ... it may not be necessary for us to withdraw from home
    and friends; but we shall have to withdraw our heart's deepest
    dependence from all earthly props and supports, if ever we are
    to learn what it is to trust simply and absolutely on the eternal
    God.[1]

      [1] _Abraham_, by F. B. Meyer.

For one thing I found it hard to keep my prayer times. The others in
the house played cards and danced or had what they called a good time
until long past midnight. I could not pray with those noises in my
ears. To get up early to pray was not the answer, for once I was up, my
mind went rushing on to my schoolteaching, which, by the way, I was
finding difficult. At last I hit on the plan of asking the Lord to wake
me up at two o'clock in the morning, after the house had settled to
quiet, when I would arise for an hour's prayer and Bible study. This
worked wonders. Always a sleepyhead, it was wonderful to me to be
awakened each morning, as I was, and in the quiet of that still hour
Christ became so real to me that often I felt I could have touched Him,
if I but put out my hand. I was learning what Dr. A. W. Tozer calls
"the awareness of His presence."[2] It satisfied me as nothing on
earth had ever done, and filled me with a joy of communion that is
inexpressible. It was in this _Arabia_ that I learned fellowship with
Christ, a living Person-to-person fellowship which henceforth became
dearer than anything else in life to me.

      [2] _The Pursuit of God_, by A. W. Tozer.

The acute sense of His presence was not given during the first few
months I was at the McMillan boardinghouse. My head was still in The
Misty Flats and my feet were too entangled with the world. How I got
lifted out into a clear spiritual atmosphere is a story in itself, so I
give it here.

It began with an angry disappointment.

But I must first explain that I was not happy teaching third grade
eight-year-olds. The children in my class fascinated me. It was my
first real connection with children, for I was the baby of our family
and we had early moved away from where small cousins lived. I was
totally inexperienced with children and thought them "the cutest
things." Even their little buttons of noses fascinated me. Needless to
say, I had discipline problems! The little cherubs soon found out that
their teacher was a softy and she was given daily samples of what
unexpectedly naughty things a cherub can think up--even without ever
losing his angelic smile!

Then the subjects I taught were so elementary--spelling, arithmetic
tables, simple nature studies and physical drill. Eight hours each day
one's delightful mental life must be tied down to such boredom. I have
often thought that if I had been allowed to teach high school English I
might never have become a missionary--I would have loved it.

But now I hated teaching. I found the discipline so perplexing that I
was afraid I was going to be a failure and became thoroughly alarmed.
This was to be my life-work! I decided I must study teaching and so
signed up for a Teachers' Convention in Seattle during--was it Easter
holidays? I've forgotten.

Now, in Seattle there was a boy-friend who had corresponded with me
since grade school, which we had attended together--the General Wolfe
School in South Vancouver. I had not seen Donald for years, but when I
wrote that I was coming to the Convention I got a letter right back
saying I must stay at his house and he would be at the boat to meet me.
So it was arranged.

I was just about to leave for the Seattle boat when a telegram was
handed me. It read: HAVE ARRANGED FOR YOU TO STAY AT WHIPPLES SEATTLE
LOVE DADDY.

Was I annoyed! "Daddy, how perfectly mean of you," I muttered to
myself. "Oh, when will you and Mother stop interfering with my plans
and realize that I am grown up?" The Whipples--who are they? Dim memory
finally produced vague outlines. "Oh, religious friends of Dad's. Yes,
I remember now. So _that's_ Dad's idea. Wants to have them talk to me
about my soul, eh? Well, they won't find a porcupine more receptive.
I'm just _not_ going to be bossed like this. I'll wire them that I've
made other plans." But a glance at the clock showed me I had no time to
send a telegram if I were to catch the ship. Thoroughly provoked I went
aboard to my cabin. By morning we would be in Seattle.

Don was there all right and I explained my predicament. He was not put
out. "Well, just sleep there," he suggested. "I can take you around
from there." And so it was decided.

I don't remember anything of the Convention. I remember a nice supper
with Don afterward, and an evening of fun--a dance perhaps. Anyway, I
did not realize how late the hour was until we approached the Whipple
house and found it in darkness. No--there was a dim light at the back.
The door-bell ring produced other lights, then the door was opened by
Mrs. Otis Whipple herself. Don was introduced and invited in, but he
declined and said good-by--and I found myself in the sitting room alone
with my hostess.

I do not know the kind of person I was looking for, but it certainly
was not the kind I met. Motherly plumpness, a cheery voice, Southern
warmth of hospitality, geniality and culture were what greeted me.
Culture is a form of beauty, the beauty of a trained mind and heart
trained to think of the other person's feelings. Beauty of any kind has
always had power over me and I was drawn to her immediately.
Instinctively I knew she was not one to barge into my inner sanctum
without an invitation. As yet I did not know that there are other ways
of soul-winning!

God and my soul were never mentioned--just a charming talk about my
home, their old friendship with my father, of a girl, Tony Black, to
whom I was supposed to bear striking likeness. She spoke of a summer
conference at a place called The Firs, and of her husband's sister, a
missionary in China recently widowed who was to be at The Firs this
summer of 1923. More and more I relaxed; better and better I liked her.
So finally when I was shown to my room my porcupine quills were all
safely laid flat.

The next day was Sunday. I had resolved to bend to decorum enough to go
to church in the morning, then I meant to claim the rest of the day to
do what I liked. I had a friend named Mamie in the city, and had an
appointment to spend the afternoon with her. Idly I wondered that Mrs.
Whipple had not as yet made any effort to get me alone and talk
religiously. Little did I dream the truth, which she told me only years
later. That first night, after we had all gone to bed, she could not
sleep for the burden of _me_. At last she got up and fell to her knees,
asking God the cause. For more than an hour she battled in prayer that
whatever was the reason He had sent me to them, it might be fulfilled
before I left. Not before she felt she had prayed _through_ did she go
back to bed. Having committed the matter to the Lord, she did not get
anxious as to how He would accomplish it. _She did not try to rush
matters_, which in my case would have been the end of her possibly
influencing me. One of her favorite sayings was, "Flexible in the hands
of the Spirit," and she truly lived it.

The afternoon visit to Mamie was very pleasant (I had always loved her)
until she asked me an unsettling question: "Isobel, do you like
schoolteaching? Are you enjoying your work?"

"Oh, Mamie," I groaned in reply, "I'm not happy at all. All my life
I've planned to teach, and now that I've graduated and am at it, I feel
like a misfit. And yes, I just hate it. If only I had a high school
position, I'm sure it would be different. I'm still sure I would enjoy
teaching literature. But I'm only twenty-one, you know, and so could
not expect to get right into a city high school without any teaching
experience. It's so inane teaching spelling and arithmetic. I just
don't----"

"Isobel, I know what you need," struck in Mamie earnestly. "You need to
see a phrenologist, and have your head read! He'd tell you what you are
fitted for. And it just so happens that a very excellent phrenologist
is in town, Dr. X----. He is a friend of ours and coming to supper with
us tonight. His charges are very high, but as a friend of ours I'm sure
he would do you for nothing. But you would have to come tonight,
because he is leaving tomorrow."

"Oh, Mamie," I cried, "how perfectly wonderful! There is only one snag.
I'm staying with religious people, and they might be offended at a
guest in their house going to see a phrenologist on _Sunday_. You know
how particular some people are about keeping the Sabbath. Oh, if they
will only consent! My hostess is really a dear and I just couldn't
offend her. But I tell you--I'll go right back and ask her. If she says
yes, I'll phone you and you make the appointment for me. Oh, it would
be grand to be happy in one's work! It would be wonderful to know what
one was fitted for in life."

"Well, Dr. X---- will know, I'm sure of that. All right. Good-by. I'll
be looking for that phone call!" And we parted, I to return to the
Whipples' home with beating heart. Was I about to lose the opportunity
of my life because of old-fashioned religious scruples?

Arriving back earlier than expected, I met Mrs. Whipple in the hall,
and went straight to the point: "Mrs. Whipple, I would like to ask you
a question. Would you object to my going to a phrenologist tonight to
have my head read? I've not been very happy in my work and----"

"Well now, dear," she said in her cheery, comfortable way, "let us go
upstairs and discuss it. I'm not quite sure I understand all that is
involved. Here is Miss McCausland"--waylaying another guest who was
crossing the hall at that moment. "Miss McCausland is a schoolteacher
herself, and maybe she can help us. Take her to the little front
bedroom, Margaret. I'll be there in a moment."

I did not learn until many years later why she delayed in coming. But
she ran for prayer help. Her young high school daughter, Lois, was in
the back of the house with two friends, all of them in their teens.
It is interesting now to look back at those three little maidens who
were urged on to their knees downstairs to intercede for the right
direction of phrenologist-seeker me upstairs. Lois later became Mrs.
Nathan Walton of the China Inland Mission. Evelyn Watson became her
sister-in-law, Mrs. Elden Whipple, while the third young girl, Doris
Coffin, became Mrs. Willard Aldrich, author of the well-known column in
_Moody Monthly_, "Out of the Mixing Bowl." But at this moment the three
teenagers were only told, "Isobel has come to a crisis in her life!
Pray her through while I go upstairs and deal with her." So down on
their knees they went in prayer.

Upstairs Mrs. Whipple was saying to me, "Now, dear, tell us everything
from the beginning so we will understand."

So the flood-gates were unlocked and out poured the story of my
schoolteaching troubles and disappointments. I spoke freely because I
felt an atmosphere of loving sympathy, and sensed a poise about those
two women which seemed to say that _their_ lives were satisfying. So I
unfolded this wonderful opportunity of having my head read by a skilled
phrenologist, and the supposed snag--it was Sunday. With beating heart,
I looked up into that kind, wise, and lovely face and said, "Would you
object to my going on Sunday?" No tremor of horror or shock crossed her
face at all, but she had a look of deep thoughtfulness as if she were
weighing the matter carefully.

Then came her answer: "Isobel dear, I don't think the matter of its
being Sunday is the important thing. It's like this: _God has a plan
for your life_. The Bible says that He has created us unto good
works and _foreordained_ that we should walk in them (Eph. 2:10).
That means He has foreordained a useful life for you, and He does so
for each of His creatures. The point as I see it, is to find out God's
plan for your life and then follow it. If it is His will to reveal that
plan through a phrenologist, going on Sunday would do no harm. But if
it were not His will to reveal His plan through a phrenologist,
_going any day of the week would be wrong_."

I was struck with the common sense and logic of her words and thrilled
through and through to hear that God had a plan for my life. Daughter
of an elder in the church and granddaughter of a Presbyterian minister,
I do not remember anyone ever telling me that before. I had always
thought that God was a kindly, fatherly Being. Away off in the heavens
somewhere we could call upon Him in trouble, but for the rest of the
time it was up to us to map out our own lives in good, honest work.
Then we could ask His blessing and help from time to time. But that God
was so minutely interested in _me_, that He would take the trouble to
plan a career for me--plan it without my asking--the tender intimacy of
a Love which could do that touched me to the breaking point. Hardly
able to control my voice, I asked, "Well, how are we to find out His
plan for us?"

By this time I was kneeling at the bed on which Miss McCausland sat,
Mrs. Whipple in a chair beside me. She reached for her Bible and opened
it in front of me saying, "Isobel, I've always found His will _through
His Word_, this Book. His plan for us will always be in accordance with
the Scriptures. And with me, it is usually from the Bible itself that I
get my leading." At that moment the telephone rang and Mrs. Whipple was
called.

"Excuse me a moment, I'll be right back," she said. "Miss McCausland,
will you tell Isobel what you think?" I do not remember what dear Miss
McCausland said for I was thinking, _God's plan for my life is in that
Book._ Impulsively, I pulled it toward me. It fell shut and I reopened
it at random with my eyes on Miss McCausland. Inwardly I was wondering
what the Bible had to say about phrenology, when my eye happened to
fall on the open page and there, unconsciously, my left hand lay with
the forefinger pointing at a verse. I read: "KEEP THEE FAR FROM A FALSE
MATTER" (Ex. 23:7).

It was as if a Voice had spoken to me and I was so startled at the
directness of the answer to my inward question which no one had heard
that my distressed heart collapsed with relief. I was weeping when Mrs.
Whipple reentered the room--weeping terribly, simply rent with sobs.

"It is all right, Isobel," she tried to say. "He'll lead you."

"Oh, He has," I cried. "Look at this verse!" and I pointed to _Keep
thee far from a false matter_. She too marveled at such a quick,
thoroughly complete answer. But the piled-up heartaches of a whole year
and a half of SEARCHING after God had reached a climax, and I could
only sob until exhausted. Very tenderly and lovingly the two ladies
ministered to me. Dear Mrs. Whipple never tried to pry: the privacy of
the human soul was respected by her, and that was another reason we all
loved and trusted her so.

I do not remember anything more of that visit, except that Mrs. Whipple
told me again of The Firs Bible Conference and urged me to attend that
July as her guest. I was not interested. I still shrank from
evangelistic meetings with their worked-up emotion and high pressure
methods. I did not intend to be high pressured into anything.

"Thank you, Mrs. Whipple," I said, "but I have already signed up to
attend Teachers' Summer School in Victoria. Until God leads
differently, I must earn my living and can only do it by teaching." And
so we parted.

The Lord now wished to direct my thoughts into a channel where they
would never have run of themselves. My life was about to turn a new
corner, and strange to say, it all hinged, at first, upon a pair of
shoes. But that is the subject of the next chapter.




CHAPTER FIVE

_A PAIR OF SHOES AND THE FIRS CONFERENCE_


"Here, Julia," said Mrs. Tom Cole to her sister-in-law, Mrs. Otis
Whipple. "The Firs Conference will soon open and you need a pair of
shoes"--with a significant look at her--and she held out a five-dollar
bill. I do not know if those were her exact words, but the gift was
given for shoes and a significant look along with it, as Mrs. Cole told
me herself years later.

Julia Whipple was not one to neglect her personal appearance. To be
well groomed had been her lifelong habit, but of late funds had not
been too plentiful. The story of how Julia and Otis Whipple gave their
last earthly possession to the Lord--this honeymoon cabin at The Firs,
Bellingham, Washington--and of how God used it to establish the annual
Lake Whatcom Bible and Missionary Conference which has been so blessed
to themselves, has been told by Doris Coffin Aldrich in a book called
_The Firs of the Lord_. Suffice it to say that 1923 was to be only
their third attempt at a conference, and Julia Whipple was to be
hostess. What would people think of her shabby shoes?

But she had something else on her mind.

She had been praying that Isobel Miller would come to The Firs
Conference. She saw, as I had not, that here was one groping blindly
toward God, and open to dangerous misleadings if she were not carefully
grounded in the Word. As is a young person's weakness, I might be
carried off my feet by some magnetic personality of one of the many
"isms," if I chanced to meet such, at this stage. I needed grounding in
the Scriptures and I needed Christian fellowship. I had a small college
debt to pay and had been earning a salary for only six months--maybe
money would be a factor in bringing me. At any rate, she waved the
matter of new shoes aside, sat down, and wrote a letter urging me to
come, saying that the enclosed five dollars, she felt, was the Lord's
provision for my boat tickets. Once I reached The Firs I was to be her
guest--room and board would cost me nothing. Wouldn't I come?

I received her gift and invitation quite casually, not at all moved
with any desire to go. It was Mrs. Whipple's kind heart, I told myself,
and now I was forced to do something about it. But I felt my excuse
would be an easy one to make. The conference came right in the middle
of the summer school I had signed up for. I must get credit for this
summer's study, and they would hardly give me full credit for six
weeks' work if I ran off in the middle for ten or eleven days! So I
made this my test, _and I prayed about it_: "Lord, if it be Thy will
for me to go, please move the authorities to grant consent without
reducing my credits, and I'll take it as Thy will I am to go."

The next morning found me before the registrar of the Teachers' Summer
Institute.

"I have been called to Bellingham on a matter important to me and would
like to apply for ten days' absence without reducing my credits. Could
that be done, sir?" I asked.

He inquired my name, turned over the pages of a book, pursed his lips a
moment, then said, "All right, Miss Miller. Just tell us when you leave
and when you will return."

I could not believe my ears. Only the day before a fellow
student-teacher had applied for a week off and had been flatly refused!
I still do not know how to explain it, but my full credits were given
to me.

I came out of the office walking as if in a dream. I inquired about the
boat schedule and sent word to Mrs. Whipple that I was coming, how and
when, and went home to pack my suitcase.

So it came about that one evening in July, 1923, my boat arrived at the
Bellingham pier. I had never been there before and knew no one, but as
I looked eagerly around for Mrs. Whipple, a young man and a sweet-faced
girl stepped up to me.

"Isobel Miller? We've come to meet you. Elden Whipple and Evelyn
Watson--do you remember meeting us in Seattle? We have a car here. Hop
in! We have to drive to the conference grounds, but it is not too far."

Their warm friendliness made me feel at home immediately and soon we
were whirling out over curving roads with fragrant woods on either
hand. It was a twisting labyrinth to me, but finally we turned into a
path, drew up among tall fir trees, and there was dear Mrs. Whipple
coming to meet me. Her radiance, rippling laugh of joy, and overflowing
hospitality was something to cuddle down into. I was duly hugged and
kissed, then shown into a big firelit room. Older people sat on chairs,
and the younger ones on the floor before the big, crackling open
fireplace of logs. The flames threw a golden light over all faces, and
the young people pulled me down on the floor to sit with them while the
evening devotional service continued. Though always shy and reticent
with strangers, here I was soon at home and filled with a wonderful
content. The atmosphere was charged with the presence of the One whom I
was learning to know and adore, and He was the center of everyone
else's attention too.

In the doorway I had been introduced to "my sister-in-law, Mrs. Edna
Whipple Gish, whose story I told you in Seattle. She is to be your
cabin mate." Years afterward I asked Mrs. Whipple if this had been a
premeditated arrangement, for it was to have a lasting effect on my
life.

"I can't remember that it was," she said simply. "Edna's was the only
cabin with a spare space, as I remember it."

After the campfire service Edna led me through a woodsy path to the
little cabin in the woods where she and I were to live. We slept
together, but before going to sleep she pulled out a little worn Bible
from beneath her pillow and read a chapter with me, prayed, then at
"lights out" we settled down with the perfume of the fir trees soothing
us into slumber.

I had time to think back over Edna's story just before falling asleep.

"This is Ellis's Bible," she had said to me as she reverently took the
worn, much-marked book from beneath the pillow. Then I remembered what
Mrs. Whipple had told me in Seattle.

Edna had met Ellis when he was on his first furlough, and found him her
ideal. He was a young man of deep devotion and consecration, and
together they had gone to China to the South Gate section of Nanking.

The next year they went for their vacation to beautiful Kuling, a
famous mountain resort, where there is a pool and good swimming, also
many lovely walks.

One morning they had decided on a swim--both were expert swimmers. As
they left their tent they heard a cry from the pool. Ellis immediately
ran and dived in to the rescue--a young missionary had caught a cramp
and had gone down. Ellis was successful and saved her life, but he
himself disappeared. Then Edna dived in to search for him. As time
dragged on and she could not find him, one can imagine the terror and
anguish of her feelings. Diving, searching, she did not notice that her
body was being bruised and battered against the rocks. _Ellis_--that
was all she thought of. Finally she saw his body washed up behind a
little waterfall. Again she dived, reached him, dragged his body with
her and got it to shore. But life had gone.

Exhausted, she sank on a tree stump and covered her face with her
hands.

A few minutes later she happened to look up and saw some Chinese
coolies standing terrified with the dead man before them. Quickly she
approached them and explained that the body on the ground was not her
husband--that he was safe with God--and she preached Christ to them.

Edna herself was so bruised that she was sent to the hospital and later
advised to take a short furlough. Ellis's insurance money was enough to
bring her to The Firs for the summer, and the conference council had
asked her to lead the young people's meetings. We never knew what it
was costing her to set aside her daily heartbreak and be our cheery,
radiant Bible teacher. Years later Mrs. Whipple told me how Edna would
go to the council and tell them she could not continue, but they would
promise to pray for her, and back she would come to us.

She laid before us the Scriptural challenge to a consecrated life and
to missionary service. I had never given the foreign field one thought
up to that time. I was a stay-at-home body by disposition and a
veritable slave to physical comforts. Travel never attracted me, for it
meant strange faces and strange ways--in other words, discomfort. Edna
was the first to show me that I ought to be willing to give this up, if
God asked me to do so. When finally she gave a challenge to those who
would surrender for foreign service, if He called, I put up my hand. I
was surprised to see how thrilled she was. For to me it was a matter of
course. That night I had made my bargain with God: I had promised Him
my life. If He wanted it on the foreign field--why, of course, then I
must go to the foreign field. It was not a question of if I wanted to
go or not--_I was no longer my own_. At the time I had no clear
indication that it was the foreign field He wanted. I was willing, if
it were, to go--that was all. Why were they all so excited that I had
raised my hand?

A much deeper blessing Edna had unwittingly brought me. Cabin life with
her was my first encounter with a Spirit-filled life living in its
daily routine habits. It was Edna _off the platform_ who wrought most
for me.

She sought the Lord's face before that of anyone else at the beginning
of each day. There was no wake-up chatter and pillow-flinging nonsense
at dawn. This deeply bruised heart hungered and panted after the Lord,
and her first waking thought was a longing for His fellowship and
presence. And she kindled the same hunger in me. Remember, I had a
bruised heart, too.

She read Philippians with me and Ellis's marginal notes.

"This one thing I do"--how it smote home, because this precept was
lived out before my eyes. I marked it in my Bible, too.

"Rejoice always"--Edna had attained to that. How could I ever learn the
secret? I marked the verse, but decided to try for Philippians 4:11 as
perhaps more within the possibility of attainment: "For I have learned,
in whatsoever state I am, therewith to be content." This became my
life-verse for the next ten years or so.

"That I may know him, and the power of his resurrection, and the
fellowship of his sufferings, being made conformable unto his death"
(Phil. 3:10). Great words that moved me to the depths of my being--I
was on that quest. But little did I know, beyond that mere fact, that
my feet were on the High Way--I was searching for Him.




CHAPTER SIX

_EXTINGUISHED TAPERS_

    Who extinguishes their taper
      Till they hail the rising sun?
    Who discards the garb of winter
      Till the summer has begun?

                              --Anonymous


It will doubtless astonish some adult readers and perhaps make them
shake their heads dubiously to learn that all this time I was still
indulging in theaters, dances, and other worldly things. My father had
long years before urged me to separate myself from these amusements,
but my mother felt he was narrow in his views on such matters, and that
they did no harm if indulged in discriminately. So I had gone along
with her viewpoint as the easier and more pleasant.

Occasionally I had wondered about it, but had always been sharply
conscious of that old taunt, "You do this, or believe this, because
your papa told you so." I was not going to give up any habit just
because some human being told me to! If God told me to stop them I
would obey. Otherwise I would continue as I had been.

These amusements were like the _taper_ of our verse. They formed the
light moments of my life, and I wasn't going to give up any _fun_ just
because some old religious fogey was prejudiced against it!

The first taper that I extinguished was card-playing. In McMillan's
boardinghouse the young folk often played until past midnight, and if
they had the wherewithal they put up some small stakes. I suppose the
sailors thought a game inane if it did not have the element of gain or
loss to stimulate them. Of course, they called me in to play with them.
I hesitated--more from reluctance to waste time and my precious pennies
than for any other reason.

"Maybe Isobel doesn't think she should play cards, because she is
religious," offered Jack gravely. Jack was one of the sailors, but very
open to counsel. He even asked me to teach him the Bible at one time,
and I believe he would have accepted the Lord if his wife and the
others had not pulled him away. I grabbed at this offer of a legitimate
excuse in order to get out of such invitations easily.

"Well, to tell the truth, Jack, I would prefer not to," I answered.

"Then we're not going to tease her into it," Jack informed everybody.
"You play the piano for us, Isobel! We'd like some music while we play
cards."

I loved to play the piano and preferred hymns above everything else.
Those young people did not object to my religious selections, so the
strange anomaly took place night after night. They played cards and
gambled while I played from my hymn-book. Of course, this left me free
to go to bed as early as I liked and the arrangement pleased me well.
But having given up card-playing, supposedly for religious reasons, I
must in consistency hold to it on other occasions. So I did just that.
It cost me nothing. I always thought cards were a tiresome waste of
good mental energy--they achieved nothing but amusement, and I did not
find them very amusing. So out went the taper of card-playing.

It was during the summer of 1923, perhaps before I went to The Firs,
that I had to extinguish a second taper. This was quite a different
affair and one concerning which no human being had ever spoken to me.

I was a voracious reader of romantic fiction. Novels gripped me and
were my favorite mental escape from trials and difficulties, or from an
evening which had to be spent alone. With a good love story I was
immediately transported into another world, and if the plot was
exciting I could not put the book down until I finished it.

We were living with my brother on his ranch for the summer, and as
there were no other young people around I had to occupy many evenings
and found a good novel was my first resort. This particular time, it
was an exciting story that I could not lay down. I never did read the
modern sexy novels, but chose clean, exciting love stories. Very often
these were not really true to life. Life does contain moments of
adventure, but these times are interspersed with long periods of plain,
unvarnished hard work. The real things of life are attained at these
monotonous level periods, so to speak, more than they are at the high
peaks of excitement. People who in their reading feed on the lurid and
melodramatic are not prepared for the long stretches of routine work
which fill every life. I believe this is partly responsible for many
broken marriages today. Young people think married life should be all
moonlight and thrills, and they balk when they find themselves on the
level stretches of plain, ordinary working together, which actually are
the real life and backbone of a home.

Anyway, I was deep in the excitement of the book. Midnight came and I
was so near the end that I could not stop. In fact, it was one o'clock
in the morning before I finished the book and took up my Bible for
evening devotions. But I got no blessing from it. Never had the Bible
seemed so drab and dull. When I tried to pray, the Lord seemed far
away. _It's just sleepiness_, I told myself, and curled up for slumber.

But the next morning things were little better. God still seemed far
away and the Bible stuffy and uninteresting. Before the Teachers'
Summer Institute opened I was clerking in a Bible Depot which belonged
to my father. He had felt that Victoria lacked a Christian bookstore
so, supported by Christian friends, he had opened this Bible Depot as a
sideline. I substituted for the clerk while she was on summer vacation,
and traveling into town by bus gave me time to think. What had happened
to me, that the Lord seemed no longer real? And why had the Bible,
which I had begun to read through from Genesis to Revelation for the
first time in my life--why had the Bible become insipid? I was alarmed.
Sitting in the bus, I talked to the Lord about it in my heart.

"Oh Lord, what is wrong with me?" I prayed. "Why can't I sense Your
Presence now as I have lately? Why has the Bible become dry?"

"When a child fills her stomach with ice cream and soda pop," the Lord
seemed to answer, "why does she lose her appetite for meat and
potatoes?"

"Lord, do You mean the novel did that to me?"

"It excited all the fleshly part of your nature, didn't it? Did it do
_anything_ to help you spiritually?"

"Nothing, Lord. It kept me up so late. I'm tired this morning. Lord, if
I promise to give up novel reading, will You come back to me? Will the
Bible come alive to me again?"

"Try it and see."

From that moment, the Lord was real and present once more and the Word
took on new meaning. My spiritual growth could have been traced by the
markings in that Bible as I read it from cover to cover. I discovered
verses that seemed to spring out of the page as His voice to meet my
need at the moment. One verse I remember particularly: "For the
mountains shall depart and the hills be removed; but my kindness shall
not depart from thee, neither shall the covenant of my peace be
removed, saith the Lord that hath mercy on thee" (Isa. 54:10). I have
claimed this verse through the years and it has been fulfilled to me.

I hardly need say that the taper of novel reading, which included
magazine stories, was extinguished from that day on. For about fifteen
years I never permitted myself to read a love story. After that, when I
had to be alone in Lisuland so often, with problems pressing upon me, I
used to read a bit at mealtimes, usually the old classics of Dickens,
Thackeray, Bront, and Barrie. These I had read before so they had no
hold on me to continue reading past mealtime, and they did give me a
wholesome mental holiday for an hour, lifting me out of the
canyon-world back into life among my own race.

Did I find it hard to make this self-denial? Does one miss candlelight
when morning sunshine is pouring in the window? No, I was richly repaid
for this self-discipline.

The next taper that the Lord touched was my dancing. Mac continued to
invite me to the university big dances, and to some of the smaller ones
occasionally. It was at one of the latter--probably a fraternity
dance--that I ran into Marion A---- in the dressing room. Marion was a
Christian girl in our year who had abstained all through her course
from worldly amusements. We had both graduated now and here we met
_at a dance_!

"Why, Marion!" I exclaimed in surprise.

"Well, you are to blame, Isobel Miller," she said with her merry
frankness. "You are the reason I am here tonight. You are a Christian
too, aren't you? And all through our four years you danced and had a
good time while I got left out of everything. People say you are a good
Christian, but you dance, so I decided to dance, too. This is my first
dance."

I did not know it at the moment, but this was my last dance. I do not
know how Marion ended up, but I fear she drifted from the Lord.

For one memorable dance I had as partner a science major named Keith
whom I had known since high school days. As we were waltzing around he
made some contemptuous remark about "old-fashioned fogies who believe
in God." _Ah_, said I to myself, _here is my chance to witness_. I
always felt that if I kept in touch with the dancing crowd, it would
afford me contacts for Christ with people who would not be contacted
otherwise. So I started in eagerly, "Keith, why do you say that? I
believe in God, and you used to."

"Oh, that was before I met Dr. Sedgewick or studied science," he
replied impatiently. "No one with a scientific approach to life
believes that old stuff any more."

"Oh, but they do!" I cried eagerly. "I have been investigating God and
have indubitable proof that He exists!"

"What proof?" he scoffed. Then I tried to tell him, but he refused to
believe. He got angry and we were arguing together hotly when a ripple
of laughter brought us to ourselves. The orchestra had stopped playing,
the dancers had taken their seats. Only Keith and I were left on the
floor. Unconscious that the number had ended, we were waltzing round
and round in the center of the room obviously fighting over something.

"Better give up, Keith!" called out a pal from the sidelines. "A woman
convinced against her will is of the same opinion still. They never
give in and they don't know how to reason!"

When Keith saw what a laughingstock we had made of ourselves he swore
angrily, marched me to a seat and stalked off in high dudgeon. If there
is one thing a man can't forgive, it is a wound to his pride. I had
caused Keith a public humiliation and he cut me dead from that hour. My
testimony to him had not only been a failure, it had left him more
antagonistic than ever.

It was a very subdued and thoughtful Isobel whom Mac saw home that
night. Was this the Lord speaking to me? I had led Marion A---- astray.
I had further antagonized Keith. Was dancing worth all this?

A few nights later Mac telephoned to me and asked me to the
Agricultural Ball--in April, I think it was to be. "Mac, I'm not sure,"
I parried. "That is so far ahead. Call me a little later, will you?" I
would need to pray about it before going to another dance. Was this
only an accident or was the Lord speaking to me about giving up this
amusement?

I was in the throes of indecision when the telephone rang again and a
cheery voice with a rippling laugh called me from the other end. "Guess
who is speaking, Isobel!" Only one person had such a contagious,
delightful approach.

"Mrs. Whipple!" I cried in joy, almost trying to jump into the
receiver. "Are you in town? Can I get to see you?"

"That you may," was the answer. "We are here on some business for a day
or two and staying with Mrs. Ernest Walsh. Can you come out, or shall
we come to you?"

McMillan's boardinghouse was no place for a quiet discussion. "Oh, I'll
come to you," I cried. "Tell me how to get there." Inside of an hour I
was in the parlor of Mrs. Walsh's home, seated on a stool at Mrs.
Whipple's feet. Oh, it was the most wonderful feeling just to be near
her again! Mr. Whipple was one with her, but had a shy silent
disposition which took time and experience to appreciate. She often
appealed to him for his opinion, however, and it was always worth
waiting for.

"Well, tell me what you have been doing since the conference," she said
gaily.

"That is just what I want to do," I answered, "for I have a pressing
problem. Just before you called, a boy friend phoned to ask me to the
Aggie dance and I put him off but told him I'd tell him definitely a
little later. I'm all in a stew about it." Then I told her of my
adventure with Keith. Mrs. Whipple probably was scandalized to see that
the girl she thought had been led into full consecration was still deep
in worldly amusements, _but she didn't show it_. To have looked shocked
at my doings would have made me resentful--for wasn't I _honestly_
seeking the Lord and His will? I was merely refusing to act on _Your
papa and your mama told you so_.

Mrs. Whipple gave a significant glance at her husband, then answered me
sweetly: "I can quite see that you are in a mess, Isobel. You are
trying to serve two masters at one time, and it always has painful
results. Let's see what the Word of God says." She opened her Bible to
I Corinthians 6:12 and read: "'All things are lawful unto me, but all
things are not expedient.' You are compromising, Isobel, and that is
fatal whatever realm it occurs in. Have you ever told Mac that you have
become a Christian?"

"Oh, no," answered this product of the twentieth century. "Our set
doesn't do that. It is a point of honor among us not to thrust our
religious opinions upon the other fellow. I've never told anyone! It is
my private life with God."

Poor Mrs. Whipple! What a warped little human being she had to deal
with! But she was full of faith and of the Holy Ghost.

"Those are standards of your old life, Isobel," she said gently. "II
Corinthians 5:17 says that 'if any man be in Christ, he is a new
creature: _old things are passed away_; behold all things are become
new.'"

What a lovely verse! It sounded as if it had been written just for me.
Then and there I marked it in my Bible.

"But look at II Corinthians 6:14-17, Isobel," went on my dear spiritual
mother. "'Be ye not unequally yoked together with unbelievers.... What
communion hath light with darkness?... Wherefore come out from among
them and be ye separate, saith the Lord.' That is the basis of our
separation from things of the world and standards of the world. I Peter
3:15 says that we should be ready always to give a reason of the hope
that is in you. I think it is your duty, under the standards of your
new life with God, to tell your friends about Christ and what He has
done for you. You will be surprised at the spiritual blessing it will
bring."

"But I did try to tell Keith," I wailed, simply terrified at this idea
of witnessing.

"But look at the place you were in when you told him," went on Mrs.
Whipple. "You stood in the place of compromise and worldliness and then
expected him to respect your testimony. No wonder he despised it. But
now if you take your stand against dancing as belonging to your old
life and unsuitable to the new, I believe you will find Mac showing a
different reaction."

"Well, I'll try," I said dully. Young people always think that the
older folk don't understand their generation. Inwardly I felt this way
at the moment and dreaded speaking plainly to Mac. He had been so kind
to me. I shrank from offending him or rendering myself odious in his
eyes as I had done to Keith.

All the next day I dreaded that evening phone call, and when the moment
came I went cold all over and was nearly paralyzed with fright. But I
gritted my teeth and took up the receiver. It was Mac, all right.

"Well, Isobel," he said, "what is the decision about the Aggie ball?"

My throat was so dry I could hardly get the words out.

"Mac," I answered, "I hope you will forgive me. But I have become a
Christian lately and have decided to give up dancing altogether. I do
not criticize the gang in this matter, but I have had some experiences
which make me feel that God would not have me continue to dance. I'm
sorry not to have told you before--I was just undecided."

There was a long silence at the other end, during which my heart beat
so violently I was afraid he could hear it. I was trembling from head
to foot.

At length Mac's voice came over the wire: "Thank you, Isobel, for being
so straightforward with me. I honor you for not playing with me about
this. May I have the pleasure of your company to the baccalaureate
service on Sunday instead?"

"Oh, thank you, Mac!" I said. "Yes, indeed. I would be delighted to go
with you."

"It's a date, then. I'll call for you at nine-thirty. Good-by."

I staggered to my room and fell across my bed in the weakness of
relief. Mrs. Whipple had been right after all. Mac had said he
_honored_ me for being straightforward! And to prove it he had asked
for another date immediately! Oh, how good of the Lord to let it happen
that way. How did Mrs. Whipple know? She knew the general principles of
life--that compromise wins respect from no one, but a straightforward
testimony does. Clean-cut action does, too. The older generation may
not understand all the new scientific terms of the young generation,
but they know the principles of life which never change. And it is a
wise youngster who will not discard the inheritance of wisdom and
experience from those who have gone before.

So the taper of dancing was extinguished, and forgotten very quickly as
the Rising Sun flooded my life with new and fascinating interests.

There remained but one taper now, the theater. I had gone only to good
movies, an occasional classic opera, or wholesome family theater acts.
There could be no harm in such, I thought, and they taught one much of
human nature.

The last one I went to was a sweet, harmless story--I think it was
_Smilin' Thro'_. I enjoyed it very much, but as I went home, once more
all the old longings for romance and storybook experiences flooded me.
The music, too, had stirred up the emotional side of me and once more
prayer was a blank and the Bible had lost its savor. In vain I tried to
push through to the Lord's presence. "My Beloved had withdrawn Himself
and was gone" was as true of me as of the little bride in the Song of
Solomon. "I sought Him but I could not find Him: I called Him, but He
gave me no answer." Later, when I read the Song of Solomon and came to
this incident, I knew what it meant, perfectly. I had been there
myself--this, for the second time.

"Oh, Lord," I prayed, "if You will but return to me I will never go to
the theater again. You may have that also."

"It was but a little that ... I found him whom my soul loveth: I held
him and would not let him go" (S.S. 3:4).

Nothing was worth the loss of fellowship with Him. Then did the Sun of
Righteousness arise in my heart with healing in His wings.

I remember only once being tempted to relight this last taper. Remember
how alone I was, how young, how accustomed to having many friends of my
own age. It was an evening, perhaps in May, when everything in youth
was calling for companionship and fun. The McMillan young folk were all
going out together to see a movie and I would be left alone in the
house.

"Oh, come on, Isobel," they teased, catching me by the hand. "It's a
good clean movie tonight--can't possibly do you any harm. What does a
young girl like you want to mope in the house for on such a lovely
evening? Be companionable--come on with us!" They were a kindhearted
group and I was sorely tempted to go. The perfumed May air called to me
from the open doorway. I was about to yield when I saw a doubtful look
in Jack's eyes.

"Don't press her to do what she doesn't feel is right," he said
quietly. That settled it.

"No, thank you," I returned. "Have a good time!" and waved them gaily
off, then turned to go upstairs with a heavy heart. I entered my room,
drab, rather dark, with its cheap furniture, and cried into the silence
of the empty house, "Oh, Lord, is it to be so dull always? And I'm
still young! A girl looks her nicest at twenty-one or two. Nobody to go
with! Nothing to do but Bible study! Oh Lord, speak to me!" And I
pulled over my Bible and opened it at random.

The words on the page sprang up before me: "Then said Jesus unto the
twelve, Will ye also go away? Then Simon Peter answered him, Lord, to
whom shall we go? thou hast the words of eternal life" (John 6:67-68).

I sat there reading and re-reading that quiet, potent question. God did
not refuse to let me go back to my earthly tapers. He just wanted me to
think well before I did. Did I really prefer them? Would I change
places with any one of the three girls who had just left the house? God
forbid--I shrank from such a thought. Did I want to go back to Ben's
world of loose loyalties? Again I shuddered. _Lord, to whom shall we
go?_ There was no other road. The low road? Not for a moment. The Misty
Flats? God deliver me from ever again drifting around there! Then there
remained only The High Way.

"Forgive me, Lord," I bowed my head in contrition. "There is no one I
want but Thee. Please comfort me." Then the sense of His Presence so
filled the room that it is too sacred to talk about. Suffice it to say,
that I never again looked back, but more and more learned the value of
communion alone with Himself.

Dr. Tozer has pointed out how our generation is in danger of missing
this sacred joy. He says: "We have been trying to apply machine-age
methods to our relations with God ... our thought habits are those of
the scientist, not those of the worshiper. We are more likely to
explain than to adore." _Searching_ is a scientific procedure, but we
want to beware that it does not get into mechanical ruts. "We read our
chapter, have our short devotions, and rush away, hoping to make up for
our deep inward bankruptcy by attending another Gospel meeting, or
listening to another thrilling story told by a religious adventurer
lately returned from afar."

We need to worship and to adore as well as to analyze and explain. Mary
of Bethany learned much by just sitting at Jesus' feet, listening to
Him and loving Him. Our generation's greatest lack is just here.

By the summer of 1924, unknown to me, my year in Arabia was over. Mac
had gone out of the city on a summer job. When he returned I was in
Chicago at Moody Bible Institute. We have never seen one another since.
My Rising Sun had planned many things to fill the place of my
extinguished tapers, but each was to be a separate and delightful
discovery. Next on God's program for me was a contact which changed the
whole course of my life.




CHAPTER SEVEN

_J. O. FRASER OF LISULAND_


When at the close of The Firs conference in 1923, Mrs. Whipple lent me
a book called _The Growth of a Soul_, she had no idea that for many
years Dr. and Mrs. Isaac Page had been secretly praying that God would
lay His hand on Isobel Miller for missionary service in China. She did
know, however, that in the life story of Hudson Taylor, founder of the
China Inland Mission, were experiences of searching for God and proving
Him which were parallel to some through which I was now passing.

Anyone who knows _The Growth of a Soul_ will recognize the gold mine it
was to me. Hudson Taylor went much deeper in his searchings, of course,
and came out with definite maxims for life and conduct. "Learn to move
man, through God, by prayer alone" was one of the many that I eagerly
noted, and it has blessed me all my life.

By the time I had finished the book one thing was clear to me. I wanted
to belong to the Mission that Hudson Taylor founded: I wanted to work
with the group who had proved God in that quiet, unostentatious
fashion.

Having finished _The Growth of a Soul_, I went on to read the second
volume, _The Growth of a Word of God_--the founding of the China Inland
Mission. It was while reading this that I received a call to the field.
Previously I had felt a call to the _Mission_ regardless of where it
worked. But as I read of the sorrows and sufferings of Chinese women my
heart was greatly stirred. I knew now what a heartache was. When I had
been groping for a way out of spiritual darkness, my Bible was handy on
my bookshelf. It was easy for me to find the way. But what about those
who had never heard of Christ? No matter how willing they might be to
follow Him fully, if they only knew of Him and of His death for their
salvation, they must perish unless someone went and told them. _How
shall they believe in him of whom they have not heard? and how shall
they hear without a preacher?_ (Rom. 10:14). I knew I must go and tell
them. So when I arrived at The Firs in 1924, my decision to apply to
the China Inland Mission had already been made.

No one needed to give up a pair of shoes to bring me to the conference
for the second time. I had been saving money during the year, and had
also applied for the position of waitress to earn my board while there.

I was simply thrilled to be back at the beloved place. I ran, almost
flew, from spot to spot of hallowed memory. The cabin which Edna Gish
(now back in China) and I had shared, the spot in among the tall fir
trees where I had often prayed alone, the open-air auditorium where our
classes had met, the original Firs cabin with the big fireplace where
we had held such blessed times of testimony--I wanted to see them all.
Last in my inspection tour was this old cabin. I dashed in eagerly and
was halfway to the center of the room before I could check my impulsive
entrance. For it was not empty. One lone occupant, a middle-aged
gentleman, was sitting there by himself. He smiled at my surprise, and
I tried to apologize while backing out as speedily as I could.

_Some old bachelor_, I told myself, and flew off to look at the
kitchen. How I sensed that he was unmarried, I do not know. Maybe it
was a certain lonely, wistful look in his eyes. Anyway, I promptly
forgot him in the joy of greeting other arrivals, and getting into the
swing of the waitress routine, which was new to me. Little did I dream
that I had just met one who was to be a spiritual lodestar to me and to
the dear husband God was planning to give me, but of whose existence I,
as yet, knew nothing.

It was not until the evening meeting that, to my intense surprise, I
found that the "old bachelor" of the sitting-room loneliness was seated
on the platform, and being introduced as our principal speaker for the
conference--Mr. J. O. Fraser of the China Inland Mission. I had never
heard of him before, and apparently neither had anyone else. Even Mr.
Whipple probably did not know at the time that this young Englishman
was an honors graduate of London University in electrical engineering,
and a brilliant pianist. He appeared among us as a simple missionary,
and never by word or action gave any hint of his extraordinary gifts.

When he got up to speak, he told us simply how the C.I.M. had sent him
to one of the farthest corners of China, to the border of Burma and
Yunnan Province. There he had worked among the Chinese for several
years, but had frequently noticed a people coming into the market who
were not Chinese at all. They did not speak Chinese among themselves
and they did not dress like Chinese. They wore turbans and their
clothing, especially that of the women, was very colorful and trimmed
with cowrie shells and silver bangles. They knew some trade-language
Chinese and through this he discovered that they were Lisu tribespeople
who lived in the mountains of the Salween River canyon. They had never
heard of the Lord Jesus Christ, and their language had never been
reduced to writing--they were entirely illiterate. Moreover, they were
not idol worshipers like the Chinese, but animists who worship demons.
God called him to go to these people with the Gospel.

Since he was scheduled to speak several evenings during the conference,
Mr. Fraser told us of a different phase of work among the Lisu each
night. For instance, one night he took us itinerating over those
wonderful alpine mountains, climbing great heights to where small
villages perched--precariously, it often seemed!--on the edge of
abysmal ravines. He told of the language difficulties--how he learned
it from living with the people in their smoky little shacks, how he
reduced it to writing, and how with two colleagues he was led to form
what is now called the Fraser Script.

Another evening he stressed the patience needed in teaching the older
folk, illiterate from their youth. He was full of humor and his
descriptions of the old ladies who declared they had no power of
memory, and then were tricked by him into relating with detail what had
happened to their children fifteen years ago, were simply
hilarious--and touching. We learned to love those old women.

One lecture was on the spiritual battle in the heavenlies. How he
roughed it, and labored, and had given them a written language--and
still there were so few converts, and such as did come were not stable.
Then he wrote his mother in England to gather in the neighbors and
pray. It was only after this prayer group began to function in earnest
that "the break" came in the Lisu tribe. At that time he on the field
had been led to resist in Christ's name the devil and his host who were
holding this tribe enchained.

As I sat listening I saw plainly that it was true the Lisu church was
born in prayer travail, and I decided that I must also employ this
weapon of "all-prayer." It is so obviously effective and is attainable
to any of us. I received a life-pattern at that moment for which I have
ever been grateful.

Another evening was given over to the joys of harvest. He took us on a
trip with him, and his descriptions were so vivid that we were simply
transported out of America to the mountainous banks of the Salween
canyon. We saw him dressed in the costume of a Chinese coolie, lest
better clothes detract from his message, with a Lisu carrier or guide,
climbing the steep approach to one of these high villages. He cupped
his hands to his mouth and gave the Lisu call: "_Ma-pa chi la-o!_"
(The male teacher is arriving!) at which all the dogs of the village
rush out and down the path at them. Then followed the banging of doors
and merry shouts as the brightly colored costumes of the women flashed
back and forth and the menfolk darted forward to drive off the dogs.
The Christians lined up to shake hands, and as the tall missionary went
down the line each woman managed to stick an egg into his hand as she
gave the handshake of welcome! They had learned that he liked eggs, so
he always had to carry a bag over his shoulder to hold the eggs, fresh
and ancient, which such a visit collected!

He told of the Prophet's Chamber behind the chapel, which the Christian
villagers built for him on learning that queerest trait of the white
man, that he liked privacy sometimes! Imagine _wanting_ to be alone!
_Eh_, _eh_, how queer! Perhaps it came from the color of his skin. But
if he wanted privacy he should have it. So he had a little Prophet's
Chamber of his own in each village.

Then would start the catechizing for baptism. He told of going to call
the next candidate and finding the man on his face, prostrate in
prayer, asking his new-found Saviour to help him to answer correctly,
so that he might be adjudged ready for this solemn step.

And so on.

The last night Mr. Fraser said he needed more missionaries--young men
of consecration, willing for the privations and loneliness such a life
entailed.

Down in my seat in the side aisle my heart thrilled with love for the
Lisu people. Inwardly I prayed, "Lord, I'd be willing to go. Only I'm
not a man." Never did the vision of the Lisu tribe leave me. I dared
not name it a _call_, but I believe that time has proved it was.

My father was with me at The Firs that summer. And as it happened, he
was Mr. Fraser's cabinmate. To my surprise, I found out that Father had
invited Mr. Fraser to come and stay with us in Victoria for a week,
before he sailed for China in August. That summer we had rented a house
at Oak Bay, near the beach, and had room for a visitor.

I was amazed at Father's temerity in inviting Mr. Fraser without
consulting Mother, because she and my brother at that time were both
opposed to my going as a missionary to China. And Mother was not likely
to be pleased at bringing a C.I.M. missionary into her home when she
was trying to influence me to be content with Christian work in
America!

But I was thrilled at the possibility of having a private talk with Mr.
Fraser about missionary service. I was hoping to go to Moody Bible
Institute that autumn, but the obstacles in my way were so many that I
sometimes wondered if they could be from the Lord. I was Mother's only
daughter: how important was that? I had made up my mind, during those
evening talks on Lisuland, that this unknown missionary was a great man
of God. His gifts, apart from his platform ability, were still hidden
and unknown to me, but the man himself was obviously walking closely
with the Lord. It was one of the thrills of my life in later years, to
discover that many others, far more capable of judging such matters
than I, also acclaimed him as one of the great spiritual men of his
generation. He is, of course, the hero of the book, _Behind the
Ranges_[3]--written many years later after his death by Mrs. Howard
Taylor.

      [3] China Inland Mission, 1944.

Come he did, and by his simple sincerity and kindly interest won the
admiration both of my mother and brother. My mother had been a musician
before her marriage. She composed music and often wrote the lyrics too,
and none of her pieces had ever been refused by any publisher to whom
she offered them. She did not go on with this after marriage--that was
all. It was in seeking for a contact with Mother that Mr. Fraser
suddenly revealed his brilliance at the piano. Mother was enthralled.
They "talked music" and Mother knew the names of his teachers and said
he had been taught by some of the best masters in London.

I was watching for a chance to present my own problems, and it came
later in the week. Mr. Fraser wanted to see the beach and I was
appointed to take him down one afternoon. We were no sooner alone than
I told him I had wanted to speak with him about my missionary call, so
we sat down on the sands by a rocky bit of shore and I told him. I have
never forgotten that session.

"Missionary life can be very lonely," he said quietly, and then he
proceeded to unfold some of his own early sufferings. I believe now
that he did it deliberately to sift me. If I were truly called of God,
I would not be discouraged by plain talk about the cost. If I were not
called by God, but just had romantic notions of a foreign land, the
sooner my gossamer dream wafted away the better. But he little knew the
unveiling of his own life that he was giving unconsciously. In fact, as
he reminisced he seemed to forget for a while that I was present. His
blue-grey eyes brooding out over the sunny, sparkling ocean, he seemed
almost to be talking to himself. In the quiet of contemplation, as now,
his eyes seemed to reveal an understanding of all the sorrows and
loneliness that a human heart can know. _Acquainted with grief_, they
were sad eyes; knowing the victory possible, they were _steadfast and
patient_.

I told him of Mother's viewpoint and her opposition to my call. He
answered with the slow drawl which was his when thinking out a
question--for none could talk faster than he on occasion: "I have
sensed that Satan is opposing you and working through your mother and
your brother. We are taught 'whom resist' when it comes to obstacles
produced by the devil. I think that should be your stand. In prayer
resist the devil, always remembering to be kind to those who are
unconsciously his tools at the moment: II Timothy 2:24. I have a
prayer-formula which I use on such occasions. It is this: _If this
obstacle be from Thee, Lord, I accept it: but if it be from Satan, I
refuse him and all his works in the name of Calvary._ I have found that
this formula works." I was to use it throughout my life and never found
it to fail when prayed with the honest intention of obeying all that it
implied.

Again Mr. Fraser brooded out over the ocean thoughtfully, then added,
"I wonder if you will ever get to China. You are very young and you
have great obstacles to face." He lapsed into a reverie for a few
moments, then began to talk as if he knew what to say: "It is even
conceivable that _after you get to Bible school_, Satan will attempt to
get you away. For instance, a telegram might come saying that your
mother was very sick and urging you to return home immediately. Now, if
that should happen, you cannot leave the moment you get the telegram.
You would have to pack your trunk and buy a ticket, and these things
take time. Is there any Christian in Vancouver or here whom you can
trust to be unprejudiced and yet godly enough to discern such a matter
and be able to advise you?"

"There is Mr. Charles Thomson, district secretary of the C.I.M.," I
answered.

"The very man!" he replied quickly. "If you get such a telegram, _wire
immediately to Mr. Thomson_, asking him to check just how ill your
mother is. By the time your trunk is packed you should have his reply,
and can then see more clearly the path the Lord would have you take."

I listened in awe, but would have been still more amazed if I had known
how exactly that prophecy was to be fulfilled.

_He that is spiritual judgeth all things_ (I Cor. 2:15).

It was an afternoon well spent. Upon the plastic material of a young
life had been imprinted standards and ideals which were to last
forever. And a deep glimpse had been afforded me into the life that is
hidden in God--the cost of it, the fragrance of it, and the power of
it.




CHAPTER EIGHT

_THE MOODY BIBLE INSTITUTE_


September 3, 1924, found me in Chicago, enrolling as a student of the
Bible-missionary course at Moody Bible Institute. This was a most
unexpected turn of affairs and not the product of my own planning. I
was so very Canadian in loyalty that I would never have chosen to come
to the United States for my training. And I admired Professor Ellis so
much that I would not have thought of looking beyond the Vancouver
Bible School for my missionary preparation. But the Lord took the
matter out of my hands.

At the end of the school year 1923-4 I still lacked funds to put me
through any Bible school, but outside of my parents and one other
person I told no one. God in His wondrous workings brought that one
other person into contact with Miss Marjorie Harrison, whom I had met
at The Firs. At the precise moment she was asking Him how to use some
money she had saved, and inadvertently learned that I needed funds to
train for China. _It was Marjorie who chose Moody for me_, directed by
the Lord, I am sure.

Herself a graduate of the Bible Institute of Los Angeles, and knowing
of this small Bible school right in the city where I was living, she
still chose to send me halfway across the continent to Chicago. The
largest school of its kind in the country, Moody Bible Institute
offered rich opportunity for many kinds of Christian work. This was
what I needed more than I knew.

Marjorie explained that her money was limited to that little savings
account. She would buy my ticket to Chicago, but could not help me with
the return fare. She would pay my board and room for one year, but had
no money for my incidental expenses. And she could not help me after
that first year. The Institute had an employment bureau to help
students find jobs for odd hours in safe places. For the rest, I must
trust the Lord. Was I willing?

Fresh from reading Hudson Taylor's experience in proving God able to
supply his need through prayer only, I was thrilled with the
opportunity to go on _searching_.

My brother had to make a business trip to Chicago at that time, so I
had company across the continent. Dr. Isaac Page met us at the station
and took me to the school. Otherwise I knew no one in that big,
whirling metropolis. The Pages had but recently moved to Chicago
themselves as deputation workers for the China Inland Mission in the
Midwest.

That first day of enrollment, with its trips to this office and that
for registration, was bewildering, and at the end of the day I was
truly weary. I was put into a double room--cheaper than a single
room--with a strange girl who was European and spoke with a strong
accent. The furnishings were very simple, and the house opened right on
the street. Being on the first floor front, we saw that people walking
along the street passed right under our window. I had never lived in a
house which did not have a front enclosure, and it gave me an exposed
feeling to be so near a public street. This, added to weariness and
loneliness, made me homesick. _Can I stand this for two years?_ I was
asking myself, when a bus rumbled up to a stop at our corner. To sleep
with my head just the other side of a wall from such public things
seemed almost scandalous. But in another moment I was swung into the
heavenlies. The bus was the M.B.I. street-meeting group, returning from
their first evening's witness, and they had begun to sing:

    He makes the path grow brighter
      All along the way:
    He makes the journey lighter
      Every passing day.

Beautiful young voices in four-part harmony, sung with a fervent faith
in words that came right from their hearts--the singing thrilled me
through and through. Something in the traffic held them there while
they sang the hymn to a finish.

"Oh, Lord," I prayed in ecstasy, "thank You! Thank You! This is _the
other side_ of this 'exposed' existence--comradeship in the things of
Christ and in the cause of soul-winning. And Christian friends who are
my own age and who can sing like that? Oh, thank You, Lord!" Truly
transported into His presence, I nestled down in deep content and fell
asleep.

But more good things awaited me.

The next day I was called to the telephone. It was the Dean's office.
"Miss Miller, there is a girl named Lillian Billington, just arrived
from Bellingham, who would like to room with you. What is your pleasure
in the matter?"

"Oh," I cried, "has she really come? Yes, _please_. I would like so
much to be her roommate. I met her at The Firs. She is a young
schoolteacher."

"Yes, that is right," answered the office voice, "but you will have to
change your dormitory. We have Miss Billington down for the third
floor, Ransom Hall Building, Room 303. Will you kindly proceed to move
there as soon as possible, and leave your present room in a proper
state for a new occupant? Thank you. Report to us when the move is
completed."

Room 303, Ransom Hall, was much larger, higher above the street, much
more private, and in every way a happier arrangement to my taste. Best
of all, I was to share it with a girl from The Firs. We had just met
the summer before, but I liked her sweet face. "Billie" and I were
happy roommates for two years. Next door at 304 was a Scottish girl,
Anne Barr--who years later was to be namesake to my daughter--and a
very unselfish American girl, Ella Dieken, who was later to play a part
in my life that the wildest dreams could never have conjured up.

What a meeting Billie and I had! And what fun to help her unpack and
find that she had things I didn't--pretty curtains for our windows,
cretonne drapes for our trunks, lacy dresser scarfs, and so on. Soon
our room was transformed into a real girls' bower, and my beauty-loving
soul was deeply grateful.

Mealtime was an adventure, with hundreds of students all eating at
once. Oh the noise of the talk, the clatter of the cutlery and dishes!
The men sat on one side of the dining room and the women on the other,
twelve to a table. A senior and a junior student were assigned to the
end seats, but the rest of us changed places each day. Two students at
each table were appointed daily to bring in the food and carry the
dishes out.

I was waiting in line one day for the hot vegetables. As soon as the
bell rang, the food would be dished out to us, but there was still a
moment before the hour struck. I was dreaming of Lisuland when, turning
around suddenly, I encountered the eyes of another dreamer--the young
man who ran the dishwashing machine. It was one of those
shock-encounters when you find yourself already over the threshold and
into the other fellow's soul before there is time to knock for
admission. Very embarrassing. Each of us looked away quickly and
pretended not to notice, but it had happened. From then on I was
conscious of that dishwasher! Whether he was a full-time kitchen
employee or student-help I did not know. The annoying thing was that I
had become conscious of him.

Now I had made up my mind that I was not going to have any boy friends
at Moody. I had proved that they were distracting and I wanted these
two years to be given to unhindered preparation for my life-work in
China. So I was extremely cross with myself to find out that as soon as
I entered the kitchen I looked every time to see if he was there or
not. To discipline myself, I did not inquire his name or his status,
but frequently I had to carry dishes past him and I felt sure he knew
my name and all about me.

And I was correct: he did. But he never tried to speak. I did
appreciate that. I did not know that he had come to the Bible Institute
vowing to have nothing to do with girls--lest they distract him from
_his_ studies! But he had made inquiries as to who the girl was who
wore the green blouse trimmed with brown swan's down.

Shortly after my arrival, Dr. and Mrs. Page invited me to supper in
their apartment. He had long been my father's close friend and I had
called him Daddy Page for years. After I had taken off my wraps, he
thrust a bundle of photographs of the Institute and Moody students into
my hands, excusing himself while he went to help his wife in the
kitchen. As I looked over the pictures I came across one which greatly
attracted me--the portrait of a girl that showed character as well as
beauty.

"Oh, Daddy Page," I cried, "who is this? What a lovely face! Is she
here at the Institute?"

He came in and looked over my shoulder. "Oh that," he said. "Yes,
Isobel. She _is_ a lovely girl. Her name is Kathryn Kuhn, but she has
just graduated and gone on to Wheaton College. I wish you could meet
her. She has a brother here at the Institute."

"Oh, yes?" I said politely, and quickly changed the conversation. But
inwardly I said, _Well, if her brother looks like she does, I'll stay
away from him. Here's where you don't go to any mixed parties, Isobel
Miller!_

Apart from the freshman reception, I quietly refused invitations to any
party or picnic where young men would be present--that is, during my
first term. It was my second term before I found out all this reserve
had been in vain, for I learned that the dishwasher in the kitchen was
the brother of Kathryn Kuhn!

Of my studies during those two years and four months--I was ill and
lost a term--I can only glance at the blessing they brought me. Dr.
James Gray was President then and I was privileged to have a class
under him. Bible Analysis under Dr. Robert Jaderquist was an
outstanding joy, and I later passed it on to the Lisu church, analyzing
First and Second Peter with our Bible School students. Those notes are
still being used.

Dr. Elbert McCreery taught Comparative Religions and was one of my
favorite teachers. He was himself the blessing, with his gentle,
Christ-like life.

Dr. Robert Hall Glover made me sit on the edge of my seat in eagerness,
week after week, as he presented the challenge of missions, and in
another class taught the History of Missions. His fire continually
enkindled my own.

Talmage J. Bittikofer taught us part-singing and conducting, which I
was to use constantly with the Lisu church. We all loved "Bitti" and
his solos stirred me to the depths.

So I could go on, but I think the greatest help came to me at Moody in
the practical work assignments, under the direction of Mrs. Frances C.
Allison. Every student had to take one or more assignments each week;
and these assignments were changed each term, giving every student a
great variety of experience. Open-air meetings among the Jews would
likely mean rotten eggs and tomatoes pelted at you, so you wore your
oldest clothes. (I was knocked off the pavement into the street once
when my turn came for Jewish work). Sunday school classes and hospital
or jail visitation were considered the easiest assignments, and my Lord
started me off gently with these. A slip of paper from the Practical
Work Department told me I was assigned to teach a Sunday school class
and do visitation during the week in the Italian slums. I would work
under senior student Miss Ethel Thompson, Room X, 830 Building, and
would I please report to her immediately for instructions.

So behold a young Moody freshman climbing the stairs of the 830
Building and standing before a closed bedroom door, about to knock.
What would Miss Thompson be like? How could I ever do slum visitation?
How my heart beat as I firmly knocked at that door! Once it opened, I
was in for it--that is, I must plunge into soul-winning, from which my
shyness had always shrunk.

The door was opened by a short, slim young woman, perhaps in her early
thirties, who, when she heard my name, welcomed me quickly with a soft,
southern drawl in her voice. After asking me to sit down, she began: "I
suppose I had better tell you about our assignment. We are working
under a community house or church in the Italian quarter. The minister
in charge is a modernist and conducts dances on Sunday evening, and so
on. This is our big difficulty and the most discouraging feature. But
we are in charge of the Primary Department on Sundays and have full
liberty to preach the Gospel there. They think we cannot 'hurt' the
little ones!

"During the week we go into the homes--tenement houses--knock at doors,
and present our message. The people are poor, of course, and many of
them are Roman Catholics, but there have been a few decisions for
Christ. Personally, I think the work needs prayer almost more than
anything else."

"Tommy" (none of the students called her Ethel) eyed this new freshman
questioningly, wondering what the Lord had sent her in me.

Remembering Mr. Fraser's lessons on the place of prayer in Christian
service, I answered eagerly, "Oh, I believe in prayer too! I'd be happy
to come over here to your room every day for a time of prayer
together."

"Would you?" said Tommy, her face lighting up with hope and joy. "All
right. I'm working my way through school here, so I am busy, but half
an hour before noon each day--how would that suit you?" It fit into my
schedule and became an important part of my life.

That first Sunday Tommy took me to the community center and introduced
me to the Rev. Mr. K----, the minister in charge, as her new helper.
"Fine," he said, "how about having lunch with us today? I told the wife
there would be a new worker and we ought to get acquainted--so she is
prepared."

That meant our staying for the morning service. Mr. K---- spoke about
courage or high ideals or gave some such verbal essay, but there was
nothing in it to bring new life to anyone.

After dinner in their apartment, he said to us rather patronizingly,
"You know, girls, I used to believe like you do. In fact, you may be
surprised to learn that I am a Bible school graduate myself. But after
graduation I went into a seminary and there learned that no one
nowadays believes in that old-fashioned stuff. I lost my 'faith,' as
you call it, at seminary. But somehow our liberalism does not energize
people like your teaching seems to, so when I found out how dead the
work is here, I asked for a couple of Moody students to be sent us, to
stir up interest in the neighborhood. You bring them in, and we'll mold
them into a good community!"

We stifled the comment that rose so quickly to our lips, and I said,
"This is very strange, Mr. K----. You have departed from the old faith
and I have just departed from liberalism to return to the faith! I lost
my belief in God in college, but I have done some personal
investigation in the matter and I'm now convinced that He is, and the
only way to Him is through faith in the atoning power of the blood of
Christ to bring forgiveness of sins and eternal life. You and I are a
contrasting pair--you have entered The Misty Flats while I have just
found my way out of them back on to the High Way again."

Mr. K----'s eyes sparkled with interest, and he leaned forward, plying
me with questions. He was sarcastic and argumentative, but evidently
moved. Tommy sat quiet, praying. She had never heard my story, but
recognized instantly the working of the Spirit of God.

When it came time to leave, Mr. K---- was belligerent again. "You're
too intelligent a girl to slip back into that old stuff," he challenged
me. "We'll have to have some more talks about this! You girls must come
to supper some night after your visitation work."

On the long car ride home Tommy said, "I believe God has already begun
to answer our prayers. Just think of His sending a worker who had been
through all this liberal stuff that is binding this man from any power
really to help change lives! I watched his face while you talked and
many of your points went home, though he was too proud to acknowledge
it. I have faith now to believe that God will bring Mr. K---- back to
the faith! Let us agree together on Matthew 18:19[4] and add this
request to our daily prayers."

      [4] "Again I say unto you, That if two of you shall agree on
      earth as touching any thing that they shall ask, it shall be
      done for them of my Father which is in heaven" (Matt. 18:19).

Tommy proved to be a most rare companion. She had a keen sense of
humor, and droll wit simply poured from her. Visitation was in itself a
grim experience for me. Those dark, dirty tenement houses, with broken
stairs, bad plumbing which often made the place reek, and whole
families cooped up in one small room sometimes, would have terrified me
if I had been alone. But Tommy always had a merry retort or comment for
a stubbed toe or an offended nose--a remark so pungent in its truth and
applicability that I was shaken with laughter which often helped me to
overcome my distaste. She always took the brunt of the first attack, so
to speak. She was an artist at tactful approach, and I sat at her feet
and tried to learn. More than thirty years have passed since those
days, so I cannot remember details of her personal work conversations
or of her delightful wit. But I do remember one incident. In a long,
dark hall of an old tenement house we were going from door to door,
seeking entrance and opportunities for conversation. One door was
opened by a big brute of a man who scowled at us and shouted, "What are
you after? What ya doin' here?"

"Brother," smiled up Tommy at him with her soft, southern drawl, "we're
a couple of friends who are interested in seeing that you get a better
deal. Won't you let us come in and talk a moment?"

"Ah, come on," growled the man suspiciously. "Nobody's really
interested in helping us. What's your line? Salesman? Politics?
Whatever it is, we ain't interested," and he moved to the door as if to
bang it in our faces.

"Now, brother," piped up Tommy plaintively, "a pair of poor tired girls
can't hurt a big fellow like you. Won't you even offer us a chair a
moment? We've been on our feet for hours and we did hope----" A woman's
voice came from within: "They can sit down a moment, can't they, Bill?
I know what it is to have tired feet."

Bill cursed bitterly, but left the door open; then he turned and
stalked to the far side of the dismal room. Tommy, with a droll remark
about her feet, made the woman laugh, and a conversation was soon under
way. The Lord's name was no sooner uttered, however, than Bill appeared
in our midst again, eyes blazing with anger. "So it's religious sluts
you are! That's the worst of all! I'm not going to have any blankety
blank"--he swore profusely--"whinings around here! I'm an atheist, I
am"--and so on.

Tommy turned on her loving, merry humor. I do not know how she did it,
except that the Spirit of God was working with her, but she had him
quieted and listening before we left. If I remember rightly, his wife
decided for Christ. Almost every visitation day, some soul made that
decision for eternity. Dear Tommy--it was she who taught me that
"loving folks" is the only way to approach them for the Lord Jesus
Christ.

In the Primary Department of the church, also, God began to work. The
children started to ask the Lord to come into their hearts. Mr. K----
was interested and indifferent by turns. Sometimes he would ignore us
for weeks, almost as if antagonistic. On other occasions he would come
into our Sunday school, listen and watch, and invite us around for a
meal.

How we labored in prayer for this man! Tommy with her cute remarks in
the dark hallways of tenement houses was one person; on her knees
praying for the salvation of souls and the reclamation of Mr. K----,
she was quite a different person, yet the two sides of her character
blended into one another. If you heard only her jokes, you would never
have guessed at her tears and her passionate pleadings for sin-bound
souls.

In my second term I asked to be reappointed to the same assignment, as
Tommy and I both felt the Lord's work was not completed in that place.
But that was the term I fell ill and lost six weeks of study, and of
course could not go with Tommy. At the end of that term she graduated
and left for Mexico.

But there is one precious thing yet to record.

After I came out of the infirmary and just before Tommy left the
Institute, we were both called down to the reception room one day. To
our surprise, it was Mr. K----. He was a changed man and his face wore
a gentle, chastened look, and there was a light there we had never seen
before.

"I am calling on you girls to tell you that the Lord has answered your
prayers for me," he said. "I have come back to Him. It has been a
bitter fight, as you doubtless have watched and seen. Pride refused to
be crucified for a long time. But week by week it became more evident
to me that the Word you girls preached was the power of God unto
salvation. Lives were changed through your ministry; my honesty had to
admit it. Nobody was changed through mine. Maybe you don't know that I
began to preach the Bible again when I saw how God used your Bible
teaching. But nothing happened. Then I had to come to the place where I
was willing to preach the cross of Christ as the _only_ way, the blood
of the Redeemer as the _only_ atonement for our sins. The preaching of
the cross _worked_--for me as well as for you. There has been an awful
fuss. I made a confession in the pulpit and stopped the Sunday dances.
Attendance picked up, the church was filled for services, but the
committee got wind of what I had done and were very angry." Tears came
into his eyes. "In short, they dismissed me, but I have a little
country church appointment now and will be moving out there with my
family. And I can preach the truth there. My wife is wholeheartedly
with me and we both feel we have to thank you two. God bless you. And
_God bless the school that D. L. Moody founded._"

With tears in our eyes and awe in our hearts we said a hearty "Amen."

We did not see Mr. K---- again.




CHAPTER NINE

_SPIRITUAL PREVISION_


In December 1924 I received a letter from my mother saying that she was
facing the possibility of undergoing a surgical operation. It was
discovered that she had a tumor and there was a choice before her:
radiology treatments over quite a long period of time, or surgery. She
was inclined toward surgery as being less drawn out--to get it over
with instead of making the many long trips to town which the radiology
would necessitate. I had not heard definitely what her decision had
been when a telegram arrived saying she was with the Lord. She had
chosen surgery and had died in the hospital following the operation.
Father wired me lovingly, but said the funeral would be over before I
could reach home, so I should not try to come.

This was a shattering blow to me. My mother had opposed my going to the
foreign field because of her clinging love for me, her only daughter.
In the agony of her pleadings with me she had said some bitter things
which at the time I had not taken to heart, as I recognized they were
the upflinging of violent emotion and not the result of considered
thought. But one word had been: "You are praying to go to China, and
God answers prayer, but you will go only over my dead body." Of course,
that memory now came back to me and simply lacerated my heart.

I owe a great deal to my mother. With her deep affections she held high
ideals and was very conscientious. She sacrificed her musical career
and many opportunities for a musical evening with other young people in
order to baby-sit with her two children at home. She married young and
was still in her twenties when my brother and I were born. She had
great ambitions for her children and carefully watched over us. We were
never allowed to run the streets. She gave up her evenings to reading
to us and planning to make home a pleasant place where our friends were
welcome. She was a Christian, at one time a consecrated Christian, and
always trained us to love the Lord and honor His Word. As we grew older
she wanted us "to move in good society," and this was the temptation
which had led her to compromise with worldly things. But at the root of
it was her natural love for us.

I took my mother's love for granted, accepting the warmth of the daily
sunshine in such careless security that I had not shown her the
gratitude which was her due. All these things came back to me now that
she was gone, but it was too late to express my thanks to her and my
heart was sorely torn.

During that Christmas vacation I took employment as a waitress in a
restaurant. School reopened in January.

One day in class a messenger went up to the platform and handed the
teacher a note. He read it and said: "Will Miss Isobel Miller please go
to the office of the Dean of Women? There is a telegram for you."

Astounded and wondering, I got up and sped toward the Women's Building.
What could it be? I was trembling by the time I reached the office, and
from the Dean's face I knew it was bad news of some kind. I could only
look at her in agony and beg that she tell me quickly and not prolong
suspense. She did so. "Sit down, dear. The telegram reads: FATHER
FATALLY INJURED IN ELEVATOR ACCIDENT. COME HOME AT ONCE. MURRAY. Who is
Murray?"

"My brother," I choked. "Oh, but I can't stand it. Father too! Oh----!"

"Is there anyone we can call to help you, dear?" she asked tenderly.

Suddenly in imagination I was far away, sitting on a seaside beach
beside a tall, strong man who was looking out over the breaking sea
with brooding eyes, and he was saying, "Satan may try to get you away
from the Institute. Is there anyone you know who can be depended on for
godly, unprejudiced judgment?" In a flash I recognized that Mr.
Fraser's foresight had been an exact premonition in all except one
detail. He had thought it would be Mother, but it turned out to be my
brother who summoned me home. The memory of Mr. Fraser's advice
steadied and quieted me.

Sitting up straight, I said, "Yes, please. I would like Dr. Isaac Page
to come and help me."

The dean was relieved to be able to do something, and in a moment she
was talking to him on the telephone. I heard him say, "I'll take a taxi
and be there immediately." I waited in the dean's office until he
arrived--my father's intimate friend.

"Daddy Page," I said, "Mr. Fraser told me this might happen. He also
told me what to do if it did happen. I will go and pack my trunk, but
will you please do two things for me? Reserve a ticket for the train
tonight, but don't buy it yet. Will you please wire immediately to Mr.
Charles Thomson and ask if Dad is as bad as Murray said?"

"Excellent idea, Isobel," said Dr. Page. "First reports of these
accidents are often excited and exaggerated. Mr. Thomson will know. I
will go and do that immediately--there is no train going to Vancouver
until this evening, anyway. And you? You will trust and not be afraid?"

"Yes," I said, much calmer now that a plan of activity was under way.
"Thank you. Everyone here is so kind and loving to me. I will be all
right."

"I'll come back just as soon as I have wired and made the train
reservation," he said, and was gone.

Before supper that evening the answering telegram arrived. It read:
FATHER IMPROVING SENDS LOVE AND SAYS STAY AT YOUR POST. WRITING.
THOMSON.

Oh, what a relief! The letter that followed told how the elevator girl
had lost control and the cage had crashed four stories to the cement
basement. Daddy was injured internally and the jar began a trouble
which did finally take his life, but he lived for nearly twenty happy
years before that took place!

"He that is spiritual judgeth all things" (I Cor. 2:15).

How did Mr. Fraser know this might happen? When God's child is living
close to Him and perfectly yielded to His Will, it is possible to
spread his mind out in the Lord's presence and catch the instruction of
God, especially if interceding for someone else. If there were no God
this could not be. Satan can read man's thought and describe the past;
he can use intelligence and _guess_ at the future, but he cannot _know_
the future.

This experience was followed closely by another special instance of the
Spirit's operation.

The Otis Whipple family were no longer in Seattle, but in China. Mr.
Whipple, a fine architect, had been called to build a missionary
hospital in one of the big inland cities. He took his family with him,
so it was some time before Mrs. Whipple heard of my sorrows.

One day I received a letter from her. It said something like this.
"Isobel, I feel your mother was spiritually prepared to go home. It was
very strange. I knew nothing of the possibility of her operation, let
alone her danger, but on the day of her death I was so burdened for her
that I spent a long time in prayer and had assurance that she was at
last yielded to God's will in all things.

"But now as I write I have another burden that presses upon me. It is
for you, and somehow connected with your father. I am in much prayer
for you, dear, and for him. I do not know what is happening, but God
has called me today to intercede for you both, and claim only His will
to be done upon each of you."

I looked at the date of Mrs. Whipple's letter. It was the very day the
telegram came telling of Father's accident. Mrs. Whipple was in inland
China, halfway around the world, with no human knowledge whatever of
what had taken place. She could not possibly have known, for I did not
learn it myself for several months, that before she went to the
hospital Mother admitted that I had chosen the better course in
pursuing the will of God. What had been worldly ambition in her life
she confessed to Him and before she died she came back to her earlier
consecration of all to the Lord. And who knows how much Mrs. Whipple's
intercession helped to win that battle?

I was deeply impressed, wistfully wondering if I would ever attain to
the place where God could trust me with His counsels in this way. I did
not know that God has these gifts in greater or less measure for all
who are born again of the Spirit and living in obedience to that Holy
Spirit. I was soon to learn.

Joy at Father's recovery was quickly followed by a new anxiety. Mother
had been the business head in the family and it was she who had managed
to make ends meet, and who had planned so carefully that I was able to
get an education. Father was of Micawber's optimistic and gullible
temperament. He was always going to "strike it rich" by investment in
copper, silver, or gold mines, or some such venture. The fact that he
had consistently lost all his life savings in these "promising" stocks
never seemed to teach him. After Mother's death I was perturbed to hear
that Father had given up his profession and had gone in for
stock-selling--this time a new invention which would make us all
millionaires in a short time! Brother, too, had sold his chicken ranch,
and apparently was not working at anything. Why start something new if
you are going to be independently wealthy soon? They rented a little
bungalow in North Vancouver, sold some of our furniture, and moved the
rest in. These cheerful, wonderful-sounding letters only served to
burden me: the higher Daddy's expectations rose, the lower sank my
heart!

"Lord, is life to be always grim?" I whispered to Him. His answer was
not long in coming.

It was in General Missions class that Dr. Glover repeated a previous
announcement. "I have told you before," he said, "of the Foreign
Missions Convention of the United States and Canada to be held in
Washington, D.C., January 28 to February 2. The Moody Bible Institute
has been allotted eight delegates, but we only have six signed up to
go. This will be a wonderful experience, since famous missionaries and
native converts from all over the world are coming. President Coolidge
is to open the session. I am sure there are some in the student body
who can afford to pay their own way. The time is getting short. I would
urge you to sign up. Next week is the last opportunity, so get ready."

Delegate to a great missionary conference in our nation's capital! My
heart reached out in longing to go. Suddenly I felt I was to go. It was
as if the Lord said, "You had a long enough siege of sorrow, dear. I'm
going to send you to Washington for a little time of joy." I thrilled
through and through and believed Him. Yet it was an impossible hope. I
had not a cent to put toward the expense. All week long I imagined the
Lord sending me a huge gift of money and my trotting up to Dr. Glover
and offering to be a delegate--but not a cent came in.

The last day of opportunity arrived. At Missions class that morning
several student volunteers had been asked to speak three minutes each,
telling why they felt they should go to the foreign field, and at the
end Dr. Glover again made an impassioned plea for one more delegate to
the Washington Conference. The opportunity would close that night, he
said. I left the class wondering if it had been the voice of the Lord I
heard, or had I been deceived by wishful thinking? That noon there was
a note in my mailbox. _Call at Dr. Glover's office immediately_, it
read. With high-bounding heart I simply ran to the building where the
Director of Missions had his office and, trembling with excitement,
knocked at the door. "Come in! ... Oh, Miss Miller, sit down," Dr.
Glover beamed at me. "I sent for you to tell you that someone has
offered to pay your way to the conference. Would you like to go?"

"Oh," I gasped. "_Would I_? But who could the donor be?" I wondered if
perhaps Dr. and Mrs. Page might have offered this help, but how could
they afford it?

"The donor wishes to remain unknown," Dr. Glover replied, "and I
believe she is a stranger to you." He had said _she_, so I knew it was
a woman! He went on: "She has paid your fare, your hotel fees, and
meals, and has added an extra twenty dollars just for fun. Here it is.
The rail fare and hotel bill I'll pay for you. Now you'll have to be
ready to leave by tomorrow. Can you make it? I already have permission
for you from the Dean of Women."

I made it, all right!

But I would like to tell you how God worked this out for me, for the
dear benefactress did allow me to know the story later on. She was a
well-to-do Christian recently widowed. That Thursday morning she
happened to be downtown on business near the Institute, and, glancing
at her watch, saw there was time to slip in and listen to Dr. Glover's
Missions Hour. As she slipped into a seat among the students, I was
called up to give my testimony. When I had finished, Mrs. X----
whispered to the girl seated next to her, "Who was that speaker?" We
neither of us knew who that girl was, but she told not only my name but
also added, "Isobel has been going through deep sorrow. Her mother died
before Christmas and a few weeks later her father was nearly killed in
an accident." The kind little widow's heart went out to me, her own
bereavement still fresh upon her, so when Dr. Glover arose to make a
last plea for the one remaining delegate, she felt instantly that she
would like to send me. "A change of scene, inspiring messages,
sightseeing around the capital," she thought, "is just what that girl
needs. I'll give it to her, and incidentally Moody Bible Institute can
have its full quota of delegates."

God bless His generous stewards who live in the flow of His thoughts,
so that He can think and act through them.

Such spiritual premonitions I never had before I found the Lord. From
time to time I have had them ever since. I believe they are given for
the purpose of comfort and to refresh our experience that _He is
there_, and that He cares. Only God could have worked out that little
forecast and fulfillment.

And so began one of the high peaks of joy which tower up exultantly
above the painful valley experiences of my life. It was one that has
always been outstanding, and it molded my life as I little suspected it
would have any power to do, for one of the other eight delegates was
John B. Kuhn.

I had been formally introduced to him at last, and it was at a mixed
party after all! The occasion was Daddy Page's birthday, when a group
of young Student Volunteers whom the Pages had often had at their home
decided to give him a surprise party. I was told there would be boys
present and also that one of these would be the brother of Kathryn
Kuhn, so I knew I was to meet him at last. But how could I get out of
it? If it had been the birthday of a member of the staff, for instance,
I could have found an excuse. But my own dear Daddy Page--I just _had_
to go to his birthday party!

The group was to meet at half-past seven on the corner of Clark Street,
where we caught the street car. We girls arrived first, and the moon
was rising over the tall old houses when we saw the group of boys
approaching. "Oh, here they come!" cried the leader of us girls. "Miss
Miller, let me introduce Jack Graham and John Kuhn and--" I heard no
more. I found myself looking straight into the face of--the dishwasher
from the Bible Institute kitchen!

It was a wonderful convention, with world-renowned missionaries taking
part. We heard them speak and met some of them personally. Between
meetings we went sightseeing. We visited the White House and were
presented to President Coolidge, shaking hands with him. After it was
over we all had a short trip to Mount Vernon to see the home of George
and Martha Washington. What good times we had--sitting together, eating
together, sightseeing through snow-slushy Washington, laughing and
teasing when we set out to buy Gordon Hedderly Smith some rubbers, only
to hear the clerk say they did not carry such a large size!

How little we knew of what future years would hold--that two of the
delegates would marry each other and serve Him in far-off Lisuland,
that Jack Graham would serve in the same province, ministering to the
Miao tribe, that Irene Forsythe would have a wonderful ministry in
Shantung among the Chinese, that Gordon Smith would open up work among
many new tribes in Indo-China. Friendships were formed during those
delegate days that have sweetened the whole road of life ever since.




CHAPTER TEN

_AT SUNDRY TIMES AND IN DIVERS MANNERS_


WHEN IS THE SEARCH ENDED? In one sense, it is finished when our hand,
stretched out to God in the name of His appointed mediator Jesus Christ
feels the answering grasp and knows that He is there. But in another
sense the searching never ends, for the first discovery is quickly
followed by another, and that by another--and so it goes on.

As I write it is dawning a new day. The far horizon has seen the bright
spot of the rising sun, but heavy clouds soon covered it. These clouds
have become illuminated and streaks of pink and gold beauty are
breaking through chance rents in their filmy cover. Glory after glory
appears as the eye eagerly explores the heavens. And so it is with God.
To find that He is, this is the mere starting-point of our search. We
are lured on to explore _what_ He is, and that search is never
finished, for it grows more thrilling the further one proceeds.

Up to this point I have discovered that God is, and that He is mine by
the mediatorship of Christ. I have discovered that He can and will
teach me His way, or His plan for my life. I have found that He can
overcome obstacles and that we do not need to arouse a great hullabaloo
to get Him to do so. Hudson Taylor was right in his discovery: "Learn
to move man, through God, by prayer alone." _By searching_ I have
discovered that God has strange and sweet ways of manifesting Himself,
at sundry times and in divers manners He is still speaking. He is just
as versatile in caring for the needs of those who trust Him, and in
this chapter I am going to tell how He provided for me in different
ways at different times. I have already told how, through Marjorie
Harrison, God provided my fare to Chicago and board and room at the
Institute for one year. I have also told of His remarkable provision
for my trip to Washington. How He made provision for the autumn term of
1925, when Marjorie's money had all been used up and I was entirely
dependent on my own earnings is another story of God's care. It
involves another life which had touched mine the previous spring.

It must have been about April, 1925, that I was struck by a prayer
request given in the evening devotions hours. A graduate student got up
and asked prayer for "a girl friend who has suffered a terrible tragedy
and has lost her faith. She is coming to see me at the Institute. Pray
she may find the Lord again."

A girl, struck by heartbreak, pushed onto The Misty Flats and was
floundering bitterly--I saw it all with a sympathy that pierced my
heart. _Lord, give her to me_, I prayed inwardly. _Oh, I can understand
how she feels!_ I felt He answered that He would.

Humanly speaking, there was no likelihood of our meeting in the
ordinary course of events. I was now working part-time as a noon
rush-hour waitress, and the graduate student who had given the request
moved in a different circle. "The lite" we laughingly dubbed those
students who were wealthy enough to go through school without working
their way. They had plenty of leisure and we had none, so "the lite"
and "the workers" seldom met outside of classrooms. They had picnics
and parties for which we could not afford the time and naturally each
group clanned together. I could have pushed my way up to the graduate
student and asked for an introduction and would have been nicely
received, but I decided that if it were of the Lord, He must work it
out in His own way. Then I would know that it was not my own impulsive
wishing. I prayed about it.

The strange thing is that neither Ruth nor I can remember how it came
about. I have a dim recollection of a chance encounter in the post
office. I was watching the lite set for the appearance of a stranger,
so spotted her early. She was tall and slim, with naturally curly light
brown hair, and the soft accent of a Southerner. But why she noticed me
among the hundreds of unfamiliar girl-faces at the Institute, I will
never know. God answered my prayer and "gave" me Ruth--that is all I
need to say.

Soon she was coming to our room for talks and pursuing me wherever she
could catch this student laborer. I remember once encountering her just
before the noon hour, when I was rushing off to be waitress at that
restaurant--the employees' restaurant of a large corporation near by.

"I want to talk to you!" she said.

"Fine," I answered. "Can you come in tonight? I'm on my way to work now
and dare not stop--I'll just barely make it."

"No!" she replied petulantly. "I want to talk _now_. I'll walk with you
to your job--nothing against that, is there, ma'am?" (We had great fun
over the difference in Canadian and Southern speech-forms. To me,
_ma'am_ was the language of a servant to a mistress; to her it was the
polite way to apologize. She laughed much and mimicked drolly my _I beg
your pardon?_ and rubbed in her _ma'am_ as often as possible with a
teasing sparkle in her eyes.)

Now I was just a little diffident about Ruth seeing me in that
restaurant. I was servant to the servants there, so to speak, and the
rush-hour girls had to take left-over apron uniforms, usually very
ill-fitting ones. Ruth was the only child of well-to-do people, and
cultured homes were her natural environment. What would she say if she
saw me in that restaurant? But she was quick to notice my slight
hesitation in accepting her escort, and nothing would shake her off
from that moment. Right into the restaurant she came and saw it
all--saw, too, my embarrassment, and mischievously determined to make
the most of it.

Ruth was the twentieth-century counterpart of Mary Tudor--sister of
Henry VIII. Charming, capricious, affectionate, and utterly lovable,
clever and nimble-witted, she was still untamed. To use a more vulgar
but more explicit word, she was _unspanked_. Her parents had spared the
rod, and that kind of upbringing always follows a child through the
rest of life.

It was impossible ever to "handle" Ruth. She saw you tuck the handle
under your apron just as soon as you moved your arm, and with an almost
devilish mischief she would whisk it out and brandish it before your
chagrined face and defy you. She was my superior in personality,
brains, social culture--in everything but one thing. She did not
possess the fellowship of the Lord Jesus Christ or know Him as I
did--and that was what I longed that she might. But I had not been with
her long before I knew that I could never "deal" with her. She was too
quick to recognize any such effort, and she had my own resentment at
the invasion of her spiritual sanctum. She would open it up when and
where she liked, but no one should knock it open. The only thing I knew
to do was to love her and pray for her.

Somewhere along the line--maybe an evening session, relaxed on her bed,
talking in the dark--she suddenly opened up and told me her tragedy.
She had become engaged to one of God's finest gentlemen, one who knew
Him and served Him devoutly. But they had quarreled and Ruth had
high-handedly broken their engagement. She had never meant really to
break with Jack, for she loved him too dearly for that. But she had
conceived a pique against life for disappointing her, and had to take
it out on someone. At the first overture Jack might make she would melt
and be his own darling Ruth again--that was her inward thought. But no
overture came. She did not know that even while she had this tiff with
him, he was going down with a fever. When she did learn of it, he was
already in Heaven.

After this she had an unfortunate experience with a religious
hypocrite, and with her lightning-like petulance had said that she
could not believe in God when a Christian would act like that.

Yes, it is better to have the rod when you are a child. When life must
wield it against you, it is too cruel. Can you think what her agonies
were? Not just to have lost him--their wedding date had been set--but
to have him go before she was able to say, "Oh, I did not mean it! I'm
sorry. Please forgive me."

Her kind, worldly father did the best he knew. He handed her his
check-book and said, "Go to New York and have a good time. Forget the
irrevocable." She went, and all the wild life she led I did not care to
hear about. One question was making my heart stand still: "Ruth, did
you not grope for the low road?"

She was silent a moment. "I know what you mean. No. Somehow there has
always been in me a hidden passion for chastity. But everything else I
did--I was wild."

I sighed a _Thank God!_ Christ can save from the low road, where a man
"wallows in fleshly things until his appetites become fibrous," as
praise God our city rescue missions all testify. As for the hidden
passion for chastity, I understood that too.

    Hast thou heard Him, seen Him, known Him?
    Is not thine a captured heart?

Anyone who has ever really known the Lord, even only in reflection, can
never again be satisfied with less.

"Did the check-book and New York's wildest--_help_?" I asked.

She withered me with a look. "You know it didn't."

How I prayed for this dear, honest, if willful young life. I thought I
had been able to help her out from The Misty Flats, but later she was
sucked back in again. She is His now, however. In my Moody autograph
book--which is a large tome--her autograph covers four pages, written
in three installments. The first is one of her nonsense poems, shrewd
with perspicuity. (She has a literary gift, among other things. The
lite publishing houses reach after her manuscripts! They do not even
know that I exist.)

The third installment reads:

    Wonder if I'll ever finish this--sounds like The Perils of Ruth in
    three installments. What I've been trying to say for the last two
    pages is that I love you (just plain, unadulterated, simple-minded
    love). You have meant so very much to me--you, yourself--and you
    have meant infinitely more in that you have both _showed_ me the
    way and _fought with_ me during these hard days of decision. I can
    wish no greater thing than that you may mean just that to these
    dear folks in China.

I know that Ruth had been "sifting" me. When she caught a glimpse of
pride wincing, she seized on it and walked right to the restaurant to
see every bit of it. More than that, at a later date, without any
warning she brought a college girl friend with her to that same
restaurant to catch me as I was.

But she did more than sift. Tenderly affectionate and generous, she
discovered that I enjoyed beautiful things. Maybe it began by her
getting permission from the dean to take me out for a meal--so we would
have that much more time to talk. My frank delight in the harmonious
drapes, shaded lights, and soft classical dinner music amused Ruth.
From then on she deliberately hunted up quaint, pretty tea-rooms and
increased the frequency of her invitations. With her unfailing charm,
she could wangle a permission out of a dean that no one else would even
dare to propose. And so she "embroidered" my days.

But her careless use of money shocked me. When away from Chicago she
once sent me a telegram in lieu of a letter. When I remonstrated by
letter I received a second telegram to laugh at me! No, you could not
"handle" Ruth!

But there came a day when, to her astonishment, she found that someone
else could be hard to handle too. The summer of 1925 I spent in Canada
with my Aunt Nellie, Mother's younger sister. On returning to the
Institute I now faced having to support myself entirely. This meant
working three times a day instead of only at noon, but I was highly
favored, for I had obtained the post of waitress at the faculty table
in the Institute dining room. This meant being down half an hour before
each meal in order to prepare the food nicely, and it meant staying
half an hour afterward to wash up and set the table, and then there was
the time consumed in having my meal after the other students had
already finished theirs. It was not too strenuous, however, for it was
work among Christians--no more heathen Americans shouting at me. It was
exacting, for I had to be there right on time, but it was no great
distance away, such as the other job had been. No time was wasted in
getting to work.

One day I was in the act of preparing a meal when in breezed Ruth. She
had arrived unexpectedly with her parents for a short visit. "So this
is what we are now!" she teased. "Say, I've got something to tell you."
With an eye on the clock hand which was traveling close toward my
deadline, I said, "Keep it, dearie, until tonight--can you? I'm dying
to hear it, but my job has to come first. I have to get this finished
before the faculty arrives. I'm working full-time this term." There
would be no more meals out in pretty tea-rooms.

Ruth stood and pouted. "But I want to talk to you about my soul!" she
said with a twinkle in her eye. "How important is _that_? And you stand
there flaying radishes into rosebuds and say, 'Another time.' How do
you know I'll feel like talking about it at another time? There is
something wrong here. Something's got to be done about this." Then she
had to leave because the faculty were already beginning to arrive.

I felt very uncomfortable. It was true that Ruth wasn't the kind of
person who could open up the doors of her sanctum at any odd moment. On
the other hand, I had to work, and surely the Lord expected
faithfulness in my job. Inwardly I prayed for help and went on with the
task in hand.

Ruth was busy too. She arrived in my room that evening her old gay
self. "I have it all arranged!" she said happily. "No more
table-serving for Little Pats!" That was her pet name for me.
(Apparently I am addicted to short, quick movements when showing
affection--many short, little kisses, and many little pats on the back
in a hug. My children laugh at the former and Ruth declared she got
homesick for the latter--and the name has pursued me through the
years.)

"I told my father about you, and he says he will be delighted to
support you through the rest of your schooling here. Now then! Whenever
Ruthie arrives and needs talking to, she can have it. And many others
too. Don't you see the Lord's hand in this--_ma'am_?"--with roguish
delight. But I didn't, and there was an awkward silence. Ruth's father
was a fine, clean man, but he played the races and gained his money in
the usual worldly ways. Hudson Taylor believed firmly that God does not
need, and will not use for blessing, money offered by unbelievers. God
is able to provide for His own children apart from help from those who
serve Mammon. "We can afford to have as little as the Lord chooses to
give," he once said, "but we cannot afford to have _unconsecrated
money_." But would Ruth ever be able to understand what I meant by
refusing on that score? Her eyes sparkled with mischievous delight when
I said her father's money was _unconsecrated_--she would have a good
time telling him that! Miserably, I tried to explain without appearing
ungrateful. But when she saw that it really touched what was sacred to
me, she accepted it quietly, for Ruth was a lady born. When her visit
ended I was still faculty waitress.

But I had not counted on Ruth's decisiveness. After a week or so, I
received a letter from her. I wish I had it by me to quote from now,
for nothing reveals her charm as much as her little notes. It simply
stated that she had got herself a job teaching physical culture at
their local Y.W.C.A., and her monthly salary was enough to pay my room
and board. Now, she wanted to know, was _that_ consecrated enough for
me to use--_ma'am_? Not one cent of her father's money would taint it.
"Now, Lambkins, you know it will be good for Ruth to have to hold down
a job! Now don't you? Just think of the good you are doing me by
accepting and thus making me an honest worker in the hive of life, and
not a drone. _Please_ write and tell me you accept."

So you see, Ruth had "handled" me after all. I was never able to handle
her, but that is how the Lord sent me support for the closing school
term of 1925.

                     *      *      *      *      *

For Christmas, 1925, I was invited to the Harrison home. Dr. and Mrs.
Norman B. Harrison were now living in St. Louis, where he was pastor of
the famous old Washington-Compton Presbyterian Church. They have a
family of six talented children, and with two or three of us guests
added we made an hilarious house party. Members of his congregation
invited us out to meals and helped to entertain us, but the most fun
were the good times in their own home, where music and youthful antics
embellished every day.

I arrived back at the Institute in January, 1926, expecting to continue
in my luxurious leisure. But a letter from Ruth was awaiting me. She
had taken sick and the doctor forbade her to continue with her physical
culture class. "_Please_ let Father support you until I get stronger,"
was her little wail. But I could not consider it, for it was not the
pattern which God had showed me. One of my lodestar verses was Hebrews
8:5: "See that thou make all things according to the pattern showed to
thee in the mount."

From the mountain-top to the valley in one swing! How often life does
just that! One moment having all things and at the peak of fun, and the
next moment facing a grim poverty and hard work. For I must seek
employment now and I had lost the comfortable faculty waitress job--it
was never available for me again. Totally unprepared for this, I had
not been careful in my spending, and now I anxiously marshaled out my
funds. There was just enough to pay the first month's board--we paid in
advance--with something like eleven or twelve dollars over. I would
barely make it. I must go to the employment office immediately and see
what jobs they could find for me. The nicer jobs would be all gone by
this time, and more than that, friends had been told that I was being
supported all through school and no one would think to send me any
extra gifts. But the Lord had not left me. It was another chance to
_search_ His powers--He was asking me to be willing for uncongenial
work again.

As I sat looking at my accounts I suddenly saw something that made me
go cold. In the Christmas rush I had forgotten to tithe my last income.
What should I do? Let the tithe continue to slide for a while? I
pondered a moment. What came first in life anyway? "Oh, Lord, You come
first," I whispered and resolutely set aside the tithe. That left me
less than two dollars for a month's carfare and incidentals--and I
still had no job.

The Institute's Employment Bureau found me two jobs, noon rush-hour
girl at the same old restaurant, and waitress for Evening School supper
at the Institute. I was now very busy indeed. The long walk to and from
the restaurant, and a later hour getting to bed from the evening school
began to tell on my health. Always thin, it was dangerous for me to
lose weight, but I knew that I was doing so. By February my friends
were beginning to notice that I looked haggard and tired, and I myself
felt that I was near the breaking point. "Lord, is it Thy will that I
have a breakdown?" I prayed in private.

One evening I was called over to the reception room to meet a visitor.
Standing there, tall, smiling, and fatherly, was Dr. Harrison. In the
city on special speaking engagements, he thought he would look me up.
His keen eyes looked searchingly at me as we shook hands and he said,
"How is it, Isobel? You look tired. Not working too hard, are you?"

"Perhaps I am," I answered. "When I returned here from your place I
found that I must work my way again. The lady who had been supporting
me since Marjorie stopped has been sick and cannot do it any more."

"Well, Isobel"--and the keen, kindly eyes again searched my face--"isn't
it wonderful that _stop_ isn't in the Lord's vocabulary? He never gets
sick and He never forgets our needs and He is never at the end of His
resources. Do you remember when you were at our place at Christmas that
you were invited out to dinner with Marjorie by a Miss Boyle?"

Oh, yes, that had been a real treat. Miss Boyle was a wealthy lady in
Dr. Harrison's congregation. She lived in an exclusive apartment hotel,
the kind of place where an ordinary mortal scarcely dared to look, much
less enter. Because of her love for Marjorie, Miss Boyle had included
me in the invitation, but she had scarcely noticed me beyond the usual
courteous care of one's guests. But I did not mind that--it left me
free to enjoy the exquisite appointments of the room, the table, and
the meal. How much the Lord did give me! "As having nothing and yet
possessing all things." I was beginning to understand what Paul meant.
But Dr. Harrison was talking.

"I saw Miss Boyle just before I left and when she heard me say I was
coming to speak at the Institute she said, 'By the way, I was thinking
the other day that I have never made any gifts directly to a student at
Moody Bible Institute. I feel I would like to help that little friend
of Marjorie's who came to my place for lunch that day.' And Isobel, she
handed me a check for two hundred dollars. I intended to give it you in
small gifts, perhaps ten dollars at a time. But maybe I'd better give
it all to you now."

Two hundred dollars--just like that. Truly _at sundry times and in
divers manners_.

"Oh, if you did," I cried, "then I could give up one of my jobs and not
have to work so hard."

"I'll see you get it morrow, dear," said that dear servant of the Lord,
who went on his way.

So I was able to give up the evening work. The noon rush hour, though
disagreeable, paid better for the time used, so I retained it. By this
and with other gifts I managed to pay my way until summer.

When I returned for the last term (September-December, 1926) I was once
more faced with earning my way entirely. The employment bureau put me
in touch with Mrs. Frances Allison of the Practical Work Department,
who gave me a very special assignment for Sundays--one which paid a
salary! I was the Sunday pianist for St. Charles Reformatory for Boys,
with the government paying the bill. I gasped at that assignment and
expostulated to Mrs. Allison, "Oh, I can't play the piano well enough
to hold down that job! I am largely self-taught, and always before,
this assignment has been given to a music major student. Isn't that
so?"

"True," answered Mrs. Allison, "but I have heard you play for evening
devotions, and I think you can make it. I'll ask one of our instructors
to give you some tips on evangelistic piano playing and get permission
for you to practice on one of the pianos in the music department. The
reason I chose you is that this assignment gives such a wonderful
opportunity for personal work, and the lady who has been in charge
until now is sick. A friend substituting for her is quite inexperienced
in bringing children to decisions. You know the Reformatory, don't you?
Every kind of boy problem is there, from playing hooky from school to
murder. There have been some remarkable conversions and we don't want
to see it slump. You are paid to play for the morning and afternoon
services, but are allowed to visit the boys who are sick in the
infirmary and deal personally with them between services. You get two
meals into the bargain, so it will help you financially."

With fear and trembling I accepted, and for four months every Sunday
brought me thrilling experience. "My strength encampeth on weakness" is
one rendering of II Corinthians 12:9. The substitute leader who taught
the Sunday school lesson in the morning service was very conscious of
her inexperience and the pianist (!) trembled lest she be called on to
give a piano solo, which had sometimes been done. Truly I was weak, and
therefore the Lord alone was exalted when scores of those boys decided
for Christ. I could fill a chapter with all that took place at St.
Charles Reformatory, but this is a chapter on finances, so I must
continue with that theme.

Of course, the salary for piano-playing was only a mite. I had to take
a major job besides that. The employment office found me another job as
a waitress--those hours fitted my schedule best, but at a select
tea-room near Michigan Boulevard. Noon and evening I was to serve, and
the salary promised was good. It was situated in a private house, and
the clientele were mostly high-salaried clerks or office workers from
the wealthy district around. Undoubtedly I would get good tips in
addition to the good salary. The widowed proprietor, Mrs. Mac, had been
investigated, the moral atmosphere of the place had been approved, and
all was trustworthy. Now at last I ought to have plenty of money, and
this was a good thing, for the last term of school always brings extra
expenses.

I liked it very much. Mrs. Mac was a middle-aged Southern lady,
gracious and warm-hearted. The tea-room was pretty, the food delicious,
and the clientele very nice to me. My tips grew, and I was
congratulating myself when a cloud appeared. At the end of the first
month I walked in one morning to hear shouts and high words. The cook
was swearing at Mrs. Mac, who was at the telephone.

"Isobel, stay here in this room," commanded Mrs. Mac, all flushed up.
"This woman is threatening my life. I've called the police and I do not
dare to be left alone with her until they come here and put her out."

"No need for the police if you will give me my salary!" shouted the
excited and irate cook. "This is a nice place for you to be in, Miss
Isobel! She pays nobody! I've worked here two months and have been paid
hardly anything. She owes the butcher, the baker, the--"

"Shut up!" cried Mrs. Mac. "You lie." And then they were at it again
when a tall policeman arrived at the door and the cook had to leave.

My heart sank. That wonderful salary--would I really get it? Today was
the end of the month and payday. Just what was the situation, anyhow?
Within half an hour a new cook had arrived and the business of the day
rushed on, but as I went from table to table my mind was busy on this
problem. Should I ask Mrs. Mac for my salary? Or should I just pray
that God would move her to give it to me? By the end of the day I had
made a decision--I would speak if she did not offer to settle accounts.
She made no offer, nor did she give any hint that she remembered my
salary was due.

"Mrs. Mac," I said as I put on my hat and coat, "tomorrow is the first
of the month and I must pay my board and room bill at the Institute. Do
you think you could let me have my salary tonight?"

She hesitated, then went slowly over to the till. "I had an
unexpectedly big bill to pay today," she said. "Could you take half
your salary now and I'll pay you the rest later?"

This was what I had feared. The dismissed cook had told the truth--Mrs.
Mac was not in the habit of paying her bills. Her promises were
wonderful, but it was quite a different thing to get her to keep them.
Again I was in a predicament. If I reported this to the Institute, they
would recall me, of course. But at this late date what other jobs would
be available? Here at least I received something from tips--in fact, my
tips for the first month, combined with what she had just given me,
almost equaled the sum of the promised salary, and this gave me an
idea.

"Mrs. Mac," I said earnestly, "I am a Christian and accustomed to ask
God directly for what I need. I cannot serve you for nothing, but I am
willing to keep track of my tips, and at the end of each week if you
will make up what is lacking to the amount you promised to pay, I will
be content with that. Then we will ask the Lord to move the clients to
tip me as much as is needed."

She flushed a little. "But that is not right, Isobel," she said. "The
tips should be yours as extra."

"But I am content and can make ends meet if I get what you originally
promised me," I replied.

"It is very good of you," she said sadly, then opened up and told me
her troubles. I do not believe she was deliberately crooked. She was
just utterly undisciplined and improvident, having no conscience about
debt, and spent freely what came into the till. Each Saturday I
faithfully reported my tips, which continued to be high. Better able to
part with a small sum than a large one, Mrs. Mac gave me her portion. I
believe now that I was the only worker she hired who got paid
regularly. Of course I talked to her about trusting the Lord for
salvation. She liked to listen and often agreed with me, but as far as
I could see the miracle of a new birth within her never took place. I
fear that the habit of dishonest thinking had become her refuge from
conscience. The new cook lasted only six or eight weeks and then there
was a scene similar to the first one. She would pay a little on her big
butcher's and grocery bills, just enough to keep the stores from suing
her, but of course that way of doing business could not go on forever.

One December morning I walked in to find the tea-room empty--nothing
cooking in the kitchen, and nothing prepared for the lunch-hour
clientele. I called Mrs. Mac, but there was no answer. The upper
stories of this beautiful old home had been let out to roomers, and one
of them hearing me came downstairs, dressed for departure.

"There has been a big blow-up here," she said in a low voice. "I didn't
get it all, but I think the old lady has gone bankrupt. The cook made a
furor about salary not paid and Mrs. Mac said she wished she were dead.
Do you think she can have hung herself in the cellar? Better go down
and have a look! I'm going to my office. Good-by." And I was left alone
in the empty room.

There followed a nerve-racking experience. All was silent as the grave,
and imagination conjured up my going down a cellar and bumping into her
dead body dangling from the rafters. I shook all over and couldn't get
up enough courage to open that cellar door. I prayed for the courage to
go down and look, but did not receive it. I despised myself and
lectured myself and asked the Lord how could I ever go to China if I
did not have nerve enough to open a cellar door and go down and
investigate. But I was petrified. I just could not do it.

After about an hour at length I heard a step on the veranda and ran
forward eager to see another _live_ human being. It was Mrs. Mac.

"Oh, Isobel," she said with a heavy sigh, "I forgot about you. There
won't be any more tea-room. I'm bankrupt and the receivers are coming
to take over the building. I've lost everything. I couldn't stand the
silence, so I've been out for a walk."

"Mrs. Mac, I do wish you would give yourself to the Lord!" I said,
trying again to help her, but nothing seemed to penetrate her mind. She
was appreciative, almost affectionate toward me, but in spiritual
matters she was vacant. She would not acknowledge she was a sinner, and
that is the first step toward knowing God, so I had to leave her.

Again I was in a predicament--only a few weeks until graduation, and no
income! I remember only two details of those last days. Mother had left
me her silver service and Father asked to buy it from me for fifty
dollars. That helped a lot.

Then came a day when a bill was due and I was five dollars short. I had
been praying about it, but nothing had come in. The morning I had to
pay it, I received a letter in which five dollars was enclosed, a
letter from an old Christian lady whom my father had visited. When he
told her I was working my way through Moody, she decided to send me
that gift. She had not given me anything before, and she never gave me
anything afterward, but on the morning of my lack her five dollars
arrived.

At sundry times and in divers manners, always the good hand of my God
was upon me. He had wrought wonderfully for Hudson Taylor, but as I
looked back over my two years and four months at the Moody Bible
Institute I felt He had done just as wonderful things for this little,
unknown Bible student. _By searching_ I had found God able and faithful
to supply my financial needs. And He will do this for any of His
children who trust and obey Him.




CHAPTER ELEVEN

_GRADUATION AND C.I.M. CANDIDATURE_


I was elected girl class speaker for the graduation exercises in
December, 1926. I prayed for a message, taking as my theme, _The Print
of the Nails_, based on Thomas's words in John 20:25, "Except I shall
see in his hands the print of the nails, and put my finger into the
print of the nails, and thrust my hand into his side, I will not
believe," making it representative of what the unbelieving world is
unconsciously saying to the Christian church today. The heathen around
us have not much respect or interest in a smug, ordinary Christianity.
"If it costs you nothing, what proof have you that it has any value?"
is their indifferent, shrugging attitude. But when they see in any life
_the print of the nails_, they are challenged and, like Thomas of old,
if they can be made _to see Him_ at that moment, they will fall down
and cry, "My Lord and my God!"

I felt this message deeply and wanted it to speak to other hearts as it
had to my own. The valedictory messages had to be written out, checked
for doctrine and grammar, and be memorized by the speakers. This
bothered me a little. I didn't mind memorizing the speech, but I had
never been able to pour out my heart unless given the freedom of
extemporaneous speaking. I did not know this at the time, for I had
done comparatively little public speaking. All I knew was that I felt
hampered, somehow, on reciting a memorized text. But rules were rules,
and I fell in line, as I had tried to do throughout my school days.

My father came to Chicago for my graduation, and Miss Boyle sent me a
white silk dress. She and I did not correspond--in fact, apart from the
two-hundred-dollar gift at the beginning of that year, I had heard
nothing from her. And certainly no one was told that I had no money to
buy the required white dress for graduation! (Remember, I had lost my
employment at Mrs. Mac's.) Moreover, in those days, Moody Bible
Institute required that girl students' clothing have sleeves below the
elbow and skirts nine inches from the floor. The 1926 styles were worn
shorter than that, yet when Miss Ruby Jackson, Registrar of the
Faculty, measured the gift dress, it fulfilled all the requirements and
did not have to be altered at all!

Miss Boyle's gifts to me ended here. I have never heard from her since.

As we went up to the platform, on sudden impulse I gave the text of my
message to Anne Barr, our vice-president, just in case I got stage
fright and needed prompting. I had recited the whole thing more than
once before our speech instructor, so it was not that I did not know
it.

When my name was called, I went forward and faced that big audience. I
did not feel as nervous as I expected to, and started in easily. But as
I proceeded, I felt that I was merely reciting and not pouring out my
soul. I felt the message was not going into the hearts of the audience
and in my anxiety to give it the meaning it had for me, I forgot how
the next paragraph started. It was only for a second, however, and Anne
behind me prompted quickly in a low voice that not everybody heard, but
to me it was a catastrophe. I got through the message, went to my seat,
hung my head, and waited until the end of the program when I would be
free to dash for my room. Once up there--during my last term I had a
room to myself--I fell on my knees in an agony of humiliation and
failure. Through the heavy city atmosphere a pale December sun shone
weakly on me, and then suddenly the Lord was there in the room. I felt
His love folding me around. "Never mind, dear," He was saying. "Failure
or success, it is all over now, and My love is just the same."

"The beloved of the Lord shall dwell in safety by him; and the Lord
shall cover him all the day long, and he shall dwell between his
shoulders" (Deut. 33:12).

The words came to me as if spoken, and the tenderness that engulfed me
was as the balm of Gilead to my agonized soul. Slowly I quieted,
relaxed, rested back on Him, and drank deeply of His love. It was a
wonderful experience and I was lifted up in spirit so that I no longer
cared about any personal humiliation. I was deeply sorry to have
disappointed the expectations of my class, but apart from that _I was
beyond hurt_. I have never forgotten the outpouring of God's love upon
me that day when I felt such a failure.

                     *      *      *      *      *

After graduation came candidature at the China Inland Mission in
Toronto. The 1926 candidates class had been held in August, when
Kathryn Kuhn and her brother John, with many others, had been accepted,
the party sailing for China in October. I was the only candidate
applying in mid-winter, and as I would be leaving for my home on the
Pacific coast, the Mission decided that I should come to Toronto
immediately after graduation. Toronto being the place of my birth, we
had relatives and friends there with whom my father stayed, waiting
until he and I could travel west together.

Daddy Page came to the train to see us off. I do not know whether I was
looking anxious or sad or just plain tired, but suddenly a tender
compassion lit up his face and he leaned forward to say, "Don't be
afraid, Isobel. There is nothing to dread in candidate school. The
C.I.M. has known you from a child." I thanked him for this good cheer
and for all his loving, fatherly care of me during my Institute days,
and then the train pulled out.

The Rev. and Mrs. E. A. Brownlee were in charge of the Toronto Mission
Home, but Mr. Roy Seaman--the Seamans were on furlough and staying at
the Home--was the one appointed to start me on Chinese language study.
Candidates learn to recognize the difficult radicals which roughly
correspond to the English alphabet, and other simple beginnings. I was
also to help and act as companion to the widow of one of the Mission's
donors, whose bereavement had made her distraught; her family felt the
quiet, prayerful atmosphere of the C.I.M. Home might benefit her.

Dana, son of Mr. and Mrs. Brownlee, was living in the Home, and the
only other young person I remember was Miss Ida McInnes. I had met Ida
at Moody--indeed, it was she who had organized Daddy Page's surprise
birthday party and had introduced me to John--and I had learned to love
her. She had graduated earlier and applied to the China Inland Mission,
but did not pass the medical examination. China being closed to her,
she became office worker for the Mission to Lepers, but was allowed to
stay on in the C.I.M. Home until she could find a boardinghouse
elsewhere.

Ida was "the embroidery" to my candidate days. She was devoted to the
Lord, and we were one in the things of the Spirit. Her keen sense of
humor was a safety valve for my youthful spirits. Quick, impulsive, and
daydreaming, I had been an easy prey to _faux pas_ all my life and
was not in the Home twenty-four hours before I had made the first one.

Knowing the Brownlees' reputation for perfect administration I am sure
the fault was mine, but I did not know the daily schedule. Most likely
they had told me while I was daydreaming! Conscious that this was more
than probable, I felt shy to ask what the hours were, and decided to
watch carefully the bells which summoned the household to meals and
meetings. I got along well the first morning, but at half-past one in
the afternoon I was startled by the clang of a bell. What did that call
me to? I rushed to Ida's room, but she was out. A girl was dusting in
the corridor, so I asked her, "What was the bell for, please?"

She looked at me wonderingly and announced, "It's the prayer meeting
bell."

A prayer meeting? And the candidate not attending? That would look bad!

"Sorry," I said hastily. "I'm new here. Which room is it?"

She told me, indicating the office buildings, and I rushed over. The
door was shut, but a murmur of voices within settled it for me. I
knocked gently and opened it. In my excitement, I did not notice that
only the staff was present!

"Excuse me for being late," I murmured and sank into a seat. They
received me politely, albeit a little blankly, and that day the staff
prayers were very general! After the meeting Mrs. Brownlee came and
told me gently that the half-past one meeting was for the staff only
and that my presence would not be required.

How Ida laughed when I told her! "They probably _discuss you_ at that
meeting!" she teased, and from then on there were many pointed remarks
as to when my presence was required and when it wasn't. We had
hilarious times in her room.

I was in Toronto some three or four weeks before being called to meet
the Council. That is a formidable occasion and I was nervous, as I am
not quick at thinking on my feet. I always do better with preparation
and time to consider the best answer. The meeting came and went,
however, and that evening after supper I was called into the
sitting-room by Mr. Brownlee to hear the verdict. He said something
like this: "The Council was quite satisfied with your answers today,
and we in the Home have enjoyed your presence. But the Council has
asked me to speak to you upon a very serious matter. Among your
referees there was one who did _not_ recommend you. The reason given
was that you are proud, disobedient, and likely to be a troublemaker.
This person has known you for some years, and the Council felt they
could not ignore the criticism."

"Who was it?" I asked quickly, simply dumbfounded.

"The C.I.M. does not betray the confidence of referees. We write to
those who have had business associations with you as well as the
referees you yourself give--and we promise to keep all reports in
confidence. I cannot tell you the name, but I would like to discuss
with you what havoc such characteristics can cause on the field."

He then proceeded to do so. At the end of an hour of earnest
exhortation, he pronounced the verdict: "The Council decided to accept
you conditionally. There is an anti-foreign uprising in China just now
which is very serious and we dare not send out any new candidates. That
will be our public statement on this matter. For yourself alone, and we
hope you will not spread it around, during your waiting period the
Vancouver Council will be watching to see if any of these characteristics
show themselves. If you prove that you have conquered them, you will
then meet with the Western Council and be accepted fully, and sent out
with the first party that goes. As we anticipate your victory in these
matters, it was voted to pay your train fare to Vancouver, as _en
route_ for China. I can assure you I have not found it easy to say
these things." And indeed his face was sad and tired. I felt sorry for
him, even with the misery that was numbing my own heart.

"Good night." And I went up to bed, but, as you can readily believe,
not to sleep. Who could be the unknown referee?

_Proud. Disobedient. A troublemaker._ This was the third time the
adjective _proud_ had been attached to me. The first time was by
Daddy Page himself months before. He had read me an anxious lecture on
the subject, to my extreme surprise, for pride was one of the human
frailties of which I felt I was not guilty. I would have taken Daddy
Page's lecture to heart if he had not ended it by holding up to me, as
one example to emulate, a certain fellow-student. That particular
student stood high in the regard of the staff, but I happened to room
near her and I knew that secretly she broke many Institute rules, also
she lied about her age to her boyfriends, and so on. I was sure if Dr.
Page knew what I knew, he would never have held her up as a pattern of
conduct. So I concluded he did not know either of us and brushed the
accusation aside. China was later to be a painful revelation to me of
my own heart and frailty. From this distance I now know that Dr. Page
had indeed sensed a real flaw in my life but had hold of the wrong
label, that was all.

I was selfish. I had whimsically divided the world into two
classes--people who interested me and people who did not. I felt I was
not proud, because the people who interested me were often among the
poor or the uneducated, but when it was so, my friendship for them was
still as warm as for those who had social or educational advantages.

Toward people who did not interest me I must have appeared proud. I
cold-shouldered them and brushed them off me as time-wasters. This was
of course a serious flaw for a missionary, but I fancy its basis was
selfishness rather than pride.

The next point was--disobedience. How I did get indignant! There were
many rules at Moody Bible Institute which were difficult to keep. The
rules have been revised since, and it is no longer so, but I had been
meticulous in obeying simply because I had signed a promise to do so. I
felt honor-bound to keep that promise. The little matter of laundry,
for instance: we had washbowls in our rooms, but their use for laundry
was forbidden. To rinse one pair of stockings a day was allowed, no
more. There was no laundry in Ransom Hall, so I had to waste many weary
steps going to another dormitory to do my laundry and waste more
precious minutes because it was required that each time I get
permission from the Matron to do so. And I could not always find the
Matron. This was my most galling trial. The girl who had been held up
to me as an example washed all her lingerie and sometimes even
nightclothes right in her bedroom at hours when she knew the inspectors
would be busy elsewhere, and dried them on her radiator! "The rule is
unreasonable" was her only answer when I remarked on it. But I had
promised to obey, so I dragged my weary self over to the other building
every week. And now the C.I.M. had been told I was disobedient!

I had been told not to spread around this second condition of my
acceptance by the Mission, but I did write a few friends. They wrote
back quickly, indignant and sympathetic, and I was somewhat mollified.
All except one, Roy Bancroft, a music student with a beautiful baritone
voice and a consecrated heart. We had invited Roy out to St. Charles
Reformatory to sing to the boys and help deal with them. I happened to
be writing to him those days and impulsively told him. A letter came
back quickly and I opened it with a smile of anticipation, thinking
that Roy too would be indignant on my behalf.

But I got a shock.

"Isobel," he wrote, "what surprised me most of all was your attitude in
this matter. You sound bitter and resentful. Why, if anyone had said to
me, 'Roy B., you are proud, disobedient, and a troublemaker,' I would
answer: 'Amen, brother! And even then you haven't said the half of it!'
What good thing is there in any of us, anyway? We have victory over
these things only as we bring them one by one to the Cross and ask our
Lord to crucify it for us."

These words "stabbed my spirit broad awake." Faithful friend he was,
not afraid to season his words with salt even as he did not forget to
speak with grace also. I was on my knees in no time asking the Lord to
forgive me.

I arose from my knees with a different attitude. Instead of resentment
there was alertness to watch and see if these three horrid
"Diabolutians"--pride, disobedience, rebellion--were really lurking in
my camp. The town of Mansoul should not protect them, if detected. This
brought me into peace, even though I always shrank from the memory that
I was to be watched for their appearance in my life.

Subsequently it so happened that in a most unexpected way I learned of
my detractor's identity and then I knew the reason for her hostility.
It will suffice here to say that she was a teacher in a school which I
had attended. She wished me to assist her in spying on my
fellow-pupils. I felt that was unworthy and so had incurred her
displeasure by refusing. When I learned this I was tempted to clear
myself with Mr. Brownlee and the Western Council. But should I? I
seemed to hear a voice say, "If that had been said of me, I'd have
answered 'Amen, Brother! And then you haven't told the half of it!'"
Dear old Roy--he was right. Why try to make the Mission think I was
lily-white? They'd have personal experience before long as to just how
earthly a person I was!

"No, Lord!" I whispered. "I won't bother the Mission with it. But how
princely of You to let me know--it is like a miracle. Only You could
have done it."

    For the Lord is always kind;
      Be not blind.

Kind? To let me end up at Moody, where I had striven so to be faithful,
under such a cloud? To let me begin with the C.I.M. under such a
stigma? _Kind?_

Yes. You see, the Lord foreknew there was a work to be done in
Vancouver before I sailed for China, and if I had ended up Institute
life with great _clat_ I would quite possibly have wrecked that work
at the very outset. My self-confidence needed to be thoroughly jarred
before He dare put this delicate affair into my hands. And He jarred it
all right. My Master is thorough, and "no one worketh like Him." But He
had also been meticulously kind--just as soon as He dared, He showed me
why. And that after-graduation ceremony experience of His enfolding
love has blessed me all my life.

Only _by searching_ can we find out what He is.

Again to jump ahead of my story, but to complete this little matter,
when the door did open for China again Mr. Thomson wrote me a letter. I
cannot quote it verbatim, but it ran like this: "I have never mentioned
to you that little condition of the Toronto Council. From the first,
both Professor Ellis and I felt there was a mistake somewhere, and I
want you to know that so thorough was our confidence in this that I
have not felt it even necessary to call the Western Council together. I
telephoned each one of them, and we all want you to know that you are
accepted by the China Inland Mission unconditionally and unanimously.
Every one of them said that. And our loving prayers and blessings go
with you."

I bowed my head over that little letter and wept tears of gratitude.
Yes, my Master is thorough. He wounds, but He binds up, and His balm of
Gilead heals without stinging; it cools, refreshes, and restores in
every part. He gives the garment of praise for the spirit of heaviness,
and brings beauty out of our ashes.




CHAPTER TWELVE

_THE VANCOUVER GIRLS CORNER CLUB_


Father and I traveled on the train together from Toronto to Vancouver,
where my brother Murray met us at the station. It was strange to be
together without Mother, and still more strange to find myself going
across the ferry to North Vancouver in order to get _home_.

Father and Murray had rented a small four-room bungalow on Twelfth
Avenue. Dad had one bedroom, I was given the other, and Murray put up a
cot in the sitting room at night and slept there. The fourth room was a
kitchen. A bathroom separated the two small bedrooms, and a good big
basement took in my trunk and suitcases. The little place was scarcely
big enough for the three of us. There were familiar things in the
house--Mother's piano, the well-known parlor chairs, friendly
bookcases, and a big fireplace--just like the one in the old home. It
was good to be back and I came to love that little house on the hill.
From the front porch I could see the harbor and the waters of Burrard
Inlet, beyond which lay--China.

There now faced me the need for employment. I must earn my living until
the door to China reopened. Was I to go back to schoolteaching? I would
have to sign a contract and then would not be free to leave if the way
opened before the contract expired. I felt great reluctance in spirit
to do this. God had led me _out_ of schoolteaching. I felt it would be
like sending Abraham back to Ur of the Chaldees to return to it. While
I was praying and pondering I received an invitation to speak to the
Vancouver Girls Corner Club (V.G.C.C.) at their evangelistic service on
the next Tuesday night. Yes, I replied, I would be very pleased to be
their speaker. Then, hanging up the phone, I asked my father who the
V.G.C.C. were.

"Christian business girls banded together to try to win other business
girls to the Lord," answered Father. "The Club was founded by Mrs.
Neff, a worker in the big evangelistic campaign held here when you were
in your teens. Don't you remember? Well, when the meetings were over
they had a final supper with the converts, and some of the business
girls got into a corner to discuss how they could keep together and
keep going on after the campaign ended. They decided to form a club and
to hold a weekly meeting to bring in unsaved friends. 'Here we are in a
corner,' said one jokingly. 'Let's call it the _Corner Club_.' And that
is how it started and how it got its name. It is a fine work and I am
glad you are going to speak to them."

The next Tuesday evening Father took me downtown to the Club rooms.
They had a big lounge overlooking Granville Street, one of the busiest
streets of the city, a small office for their Superintendent, and a big
dining hall where we went for supper. On Tuesday evenings a good supper
was furnished for only fifteen cents a person. The dessert was always
cake, and those delicious cakes were baked and donated by the women's
societies in various churches, thus enabling the supper price to be
kept low.

After supper the tables were cleared, pushed back, and the chairs
arranged for the meeting. A platform and piano were at the end of the
long room and a bright evangelistic service was conducted for an hour.
Christian business girls themselves led this meeting, and it was an
enjoyable time, I thought.

In less than a week I received a second phone call. It was from the
girls' President of the V.G.C.C., who astounded me by an invitation to
become their Superintendent! I had not noticed that the position was
vacant, but apparently they had been without one for some time. "We
feel shy to ask you to take it," said the President, "because we can't
afford to pay you the salary you deserve, or even as much as we have
paid in the past. Corner Club is run down a bit, having gone so long
without a Superintendent. We can give you only eighty dollars a month
to start with, but as the work picks up we hope to increase it. Your
hours will not be heavy, and you will not need to be in the office
until ten o'clock each morning."

When I asked what were the duties of the Superintendent, she replied,
"Well, to lead and direct the work. Every day at noon, tea, coffee, and
milk are sold in the dining room. Business girls bring their bag
lunches there and enjoy getting hot drinks to go with them. You will
circulate among these girls, get to know them, and try to lead them to
the Lord. Every Tuesday evening you will be in charge of the
evangelistic service and will speak. The Corner Club has had to draw
speakers from various churches in the city during this period without a
Superintendent, and we would like to pay back our debt to them, so to
speak, by having you speak at any of their young people's societies who
invite you. This would also advertise the Club. And maybe you yourself
will create some new activities. Remember our motto is _The Other
Girl_."

I asked for time to pray about it and a date was set for my answer.

Nothing else was offered to me, and as I waited in prayer I felt the
Lord wanted me to accept this invitation. So it came about that I
became Superintendent of the Vancouver Girls Corner Club for 1927 and
part of 1928. I had stipulated that the moment the door to China
opened, I should be free to resign, and that was agreed to.

I now entered upon a fascinating period of my life. Corner Club was run
by a Girls' Board, a Women's Board--representatives from different
churches and denominations in the city--the Superintendent, and a
business manager.

The business manager was a godly, middle-aged woman whom everyone
called Mother Fitch. Mrs. Fitch was one of those energetic saints who
are described as being _full of good works_. She had not enjoyed a
higher education but had been taught of the Spirit and lived for the
glory of God and the winning of souls. There was no big evangelistic
effort in Vancouver without Mother Fitch having a hand in it somewhere.
The city missions were enriched by her prayers and practical services.
Realizing that God had not trained her for platform work, she humbly
accepted any mundane service--cooking, serving, or even scrubbing--and
prayed it into a ministry of blessing. Every Sunday she went to the
jails to preach and during the week she ran the kitchen department of
the Corner Club. Needless to say, I found in her a kindred spirit,
although she must have been more than twice my age. We were a
queer-looking team, but always a united one.

The Girls' Board were elected by members of the Club. I was only
twenty-five years old by now, and most of the Girls' Board, I think,
would have been a bit older than that, but our times together are among
my happiest memories. I have always felt that my Corner Club girls were
among the loveliest young women that God ever made. They were ready for
any venture that would win souls, but they were also a very merry
group, and the Club rooms resounded with laughter and gay banter in
between the earnest prayer meetings and discussions.

I did not meet the Women's Board immediately, and Mother Fitch laid
hold of me early in that first week with a warning.

"Isobel," she said, "I would like to suggest to you that you do away
with the Women's Board. They are not spiritually minded like the Girls'
Board, and I think they may be a drag on you. I believe God has sent
you here for a red-hot soul-winning campaign and I am behind you one
hundred per cent. You preach and I will cook! I know my place. The
Women's Board won't allow you to give a call to decision on Tuesday
nights, and I'm afraid you will meet with other restrictions. It is
true the Club does get support from their churches and they would cut
it off if the Women's Board were dissolved, but I am willing to live by
faith like Hudson Taylor, and I am sure you are too. I think you could
talk the girls into agreeing, for they are anxious to give you a free
hand to direct things as God leads you."

Now this was the delicate situation into which I had come. I was young,
inexperienced, and the words _red-hot soul-winning campaign_ thrilled
my soul. To give up a salary and live like Hudson Taylor would be
heroic--the strongest kind of appeal to me at that time. It was many
years before a quiet article in the C.I.M.'s private _News Bulletin_
alerted me to the danger of _missionary heroics_. The article pointed
out that just because a line of action is difficult, painful, or
dangerous does not necessarily prove that it is the will of God. A
simple illustration was cited: A call for medicine comes in the middle
of a missionary's meal. She jumps up and leaves her food half eaten and
rushes off to answer. That may seem noble and sacrificial on the
surface, but in reality it could be foolish and harmful. Of course, I
am not referring to life-and-death emergencies, when promptness is a
duty. I mean an ordinary medical call. The messenger has probably
dilly-dallied several times already and an extra ten minutes' wait
until the nurse's needed nourishment is properly masticated will hurt
no one. As I read the article, I recognized my own behavior pattern
with deep chagrin. I was not given to breaking up my mealtimes, but I
had been guilty of other extremes of conduct. Some natures are more
open to this temptation than others, and mine is one. So at this time
of my youth, Mother Fitch's suggestion appealed to me as quite possibly
the highest line of conduct. I was cautious, however, and told her we
must pray much before doing anything so radical.

I believe it was that very evening when I met the President of the
Women's Board. She was a warm-hearted Scottish lady who shook hands
with me, giving me a hearty welcome to the Corner Club. Then she added:
"You are a candidate of the C.I.M., aren't you? I'm good friends of Mr.
and Mrs. Charles Thomson, and he told me to keep an eye on you and let
him know _how you get on here_!" And she beamed at me cordially,
perfectly unconscious that she had just brought a whiplash down over my
shoulders with a sting!

I never for a moment thought that Mr. Thomson had betrayed our secret
to her. Charles Thomson was a godly Scotsman, the soul of honor and
common sense. I was sure that Mrs. Mc---- did not know the full
implication of what she had said, but I saw in a second that I was in
no position to begin my Superintendent's career by dismissing her! Some
more gentle method must be found, so the Lord used this whiplash to
guide me on to a better road. I told Mrs. Fitch that I felt we should
go slowly and try what prayer could do first. She sighed, but never
refused a challenge to pray. The day was to come when the President of
the Women's Board would kneel beside me in the little office, and with
tears thank God that He had brought me to Corner Club. And I--likewise
with tears in my heart--thanked Him for keeping me from the precipitate
action which would have wounded this dear life and hindered the
accomplishment of His purposes.

As I gradually met with other members of the Women's Board I found a
group of women very different in temperament one from the other, but
gifted, reasonable, and co-operative. They did ask that I issue no
calls to come forward for decision, feeling that the business girls
would prefer more decorum and dignity in the Tuesday night services
than the usual penitent form method, but they too wanted to see people
converted.

God blessed the Tuesday night meetings in a quiet way. Not many made an
open profession of Christ (which troubled me) but the attendance grew
by leaps and bounds. No one knew how difficult I found those services.
I was tormented by fear of stage fright again, or my mind going blank
like it had during the M.B.I. graduation ceremony. Many a Tuesday
night, as the girls were gaily putting out the hymn books, I slipped
down the corridor to the bathroom--the only place where I could be sure
not to be seen--and, leaning up against the wall, cried to the Lord for
nerve to go back and get on that platform. He never failed me: the
stage fright never came back seriously, and gradually I began to count
on His help, and speaking grew easier.

Invitations to churches began to come, too. Finding that several of the
girls had beautiful voices, I organized and trained a quartet,
following the teaching I had received at Bible school in this. One of
the younger members of the Women's Board had a bell-like contralto
voice suited to sing the bass part, so the quartet represented both the
Girls' and Women's Boards and was a real success. "Miss Miller and the
Corner Club Quartet" began to get calls from all different
denominations, and our opportunities to witness for the Lord
multiplied. Often we took our suppers to the Club and ate before
leaving as a team for the church of the evening. Then it was that the
empty dining-room rang with laughter, for all four had a keen sense of
humor and the relaxation from their office work prompted an ebullition
of youthful spirits. But always the evening's work was brought before
the Lord in earnest petition before we left.

I began to see what a power a Christian Business Girls' Club could be.
Through its interdenominational character, it was quietly reaching out
and challenging young people's societies in many denominations
throughout the city.

And even into the business life of the city an influence was going out.
A lawyer asked what had caused the change in the life of his
stenographer and her answer had an effect on him. I saw more and more
the wonderful potentialities of the work when first things were kept
first. There have been corner clubs in other cities, but the temptation
is to let them sink into merely social service efforts. Young life must
have an outlet, and I soon saw that. So we had picnics, seaside corn
roasts, hikes on Saturday afternoon, and in the winter we had a stunt
night for girls only. This was one of the most hilarious evenings I
ever spent. The stunts were all wholesome fun and revealed much brains
and talent. I myself had opened it, dressed up as a cartoon version of
an old maid school-marm, and I announced that the students of my
boarding school were about to put on a program for their relatives and
friends. Most of the girls had never seen me lay aside the dignity of
my office just for fun, and it tickled their fancy to find I could
enjoy a joke as much as the next one. That stunt night broke the ice
between me and a certain girl for whom I had been fishing in vain for
several weeks. It was only a short time afterward that she accepted the
Lord in my office. But all our parties were threaded through with the
love of Him, and a deadly earnestness that others might find Him too. I
think that is the secret. A merely social club helps nobody very much,
for it does not offer any solution to the problems of life.

My noontime circulating among the lunchers was to me the most difficult
part of my work. Always shy about meeting strangers, I also had this
unfortunate background of having so fiercely resented personal work in
my own earlier days that it made me timid to barge in on other lives. I
always felt I was a failure in those noon contacts, where a gifted
evangelist could no doubt have reaped a big harvest. But I made friends
and had their confidence. The sins and temptations which they gradually
opened up to me about were appalling and led us into many unexpected
adventures.

Let me tell about two of them.

Edith was a clever young girl who had come out from England to get work
in Canada, and she lived with an aunt while doing so. She met and fell
in love with a young man, and we followed her joy through the day she
appeared in the lunch room with her new diamond ring, to the time when
she said good-by to office work and invited us all to her wedding. She
had her dress and trousseau, had resigned her job, the wedding day was
set, and the invitations had all been mailed. A night or so before the
wedding her telephone rang. Edith heard a strange woman's voice on the
wire: "Is it true that you are to be married to Mr. So-and-so in a
couple of days?"

"Yes," answered Edith, wonderingly.

"I am very sorry, but I must tell you he is already married. I am his
wife. I have our wedding certificate here."

Can you imagine the shock of this to that young English girl? The shame
of it? The heartbreak--for she had given her love unreservedly? But you
cannot imagine the worst. Her aunt, humiliated at having to cancel the
wedding, in a towering rage ordered the girl out of the house. She
would have no such thing of shame under her roof, she said.

Out on the street, homeless, wild with grief and heartache, where could
Edith go? Her church? They were her aunt's type and would probably hold
the same views. _Corner Club._ She crept in, broken, distraught--then
found herself clasped on Mother Fitch's broad bosom. Corner Club
protected her, loved her, found her a home, and led her to the Lord.
She proved to be an exceptionally gifted girl, and it was only a year
or two before she had earned enough money to go back to England, where
her own mother still lived. It was a soul saved and a young life saved
as well.

The most exciting story perhaps was that of Flossie. A knock on my
office door came one afternoon and I opened it to see a fashionably
dressed woman standing there.

"Miss Miller?" she asked. "May I have a word with you? I have been to
your Club rooms several times and admire the work you are doing very
much. There is a young girl named Flossie in my boardinghouse who needs
help. May I tell you about her?"

I led the woman into the lounge and we sat while she talked. "Flossie
is a nice young thing from the prairies. Her mother is a widow, I
believe, who sent her to Vancouver to study to be a nurse. She is a
pretty girl and seems to have a lot of dates with young doctors, you
know, and I guess she neglected her studies. Anyway, she failed her
year, is out of the hospital, and has no money. I am anxious that
the temptations of a big city do not suck her under. Do you think
your Corner Club could help her? I told her you were very nice,
despite--ahem--your long hair, and--ahem--your long skirts"--this with
an eye to each. (The fashions in 1927, you remember, had shrunk skirts
until they barely reached the knees, and although I had shortened my
dresses I still felt that modesty required that the knees be covered.
My hair should be long for the China of those days, so I had never cut
it.)

I was much amused at her two "ahems," but boldly ignored this little
difference of opinion between us, and answered, "We will certainly do
anything we can to help Flossie. We are not an employment agency,
but--"

"But do you have dishes to wash and dry?" urged the lady. "I thought if
you could employ her here it would give you a chance to talk to her and
perhaps steady her."

"I will consult our business manager," I replied. "Leave me your
telephone number and I will call you. We do have dishes to wash, but
our help is voluntary. Our budget does not allow for much paid labor."

Mother Fitch, of course, was enthusiastic about taking in another young
life to influence for Christ, and it was agreed to employ her for a
week or so while we sought to get her regular employment. So Flossie
was brought to us.

She turned out to be a gay little chatterbox. Most of the time she was
busy in the kitchen, of course, but there came an hour when I was able
to have her alone in the office and presented the claims of the Lord
Jesus for her heart and life. She listened with the tears running down
her face and acquiesced in everything. When she had left, Mother Fitch
came in to inquire about the result.

"Well," I answered slowly, "I am not satisfied. She was certainly
touched and willing to follow me in prayer and accept Christ as her
Saviour. She wept, but somehow I cannot believe she is born again.
Something did not seem to click--if you know what I mean."

Although we were not an employment agency, and certainly not a rescue
mission, still it was possible at Corner Club to announce to the girls
that a certain one needed work and to ask that the members keep their
eyes open for a suitable vacancy. This we did, and Flossie was not with
us long before a noon-hour girl named Helen came to my office.

"Do you suppose, Isobel," she said, "that this girl Flossie would be
willing to take a poorly paid job until something better turns up? My
mother has had a stroke and is completely paralyzed--she cannot even
turn in bed. I am only an office worker and cannot afford a trained
nurse to care for her during the day while I am away. But Flossie has
had some training. I would give her room and board and a little pocket
money if she would come and care for Mother."

We called Flossie in, and she accepted the position. She would be free
every evening and we urged her to come to our Tuesday supper and
service, and said good-by. As our life was full of unexpected cases, it
was not possible to follow up Flossie very closely.

Summer came, and I was to have two weeks' vacation, which I chose to
spend at The Firs, naturally. A few days before I was to leave I had a
telephone call from Helen.

"Isobel, have you heard about Flossie?" she asked.

"No, not a word," said I in alarm. "Please tell me."

"Well, she is in the hospital. She began to act and talk strangely here
and one evening she had a sort of spell so I called in a doctor. He
sent her to her old hospital and now says she is insane. I don't
believe it myself. In fact, I think she is acting a part to get away
from here. It is a bit quiet for her, I guess. I feel she's been
accustomed to hit the pace, you know. Anyway, I wish you would go and
see her. Her doctor might believe you. He won't listen to me. Here is
his name and telephone number."

I was staggered at this news, but promised to go and see Flossie. Helen
hung up and I called the doctor's number. A crisp, professional voice
answered.

"Doctor, this is Miss Miller, Superintendent of the Vancouver Girls
Corner Club. I believe you are treating Flossie ----?"

"Yes," he said, shortly.

"Well, our Club is interested in her, and I have been asked to go and
see her at the hospital if you will allow it."

"It would do no good, Miss Miller," came the answer quickly. "She would
not know you. She recognizes no one and I have had her put in the
violent ward."

"Well, Doctor, the friends with whom she was staying feel that she is
just acting a part."

An exclamation of anger stopped me. "Miss Miller, I have been a
specialist in mental cases for many years. Do you presume to tell me I
cannot recognize insanity?" He was clearly insulted.

"No, Doctor. I beg your pardon. But for the sake of her friends, could
you not give me permission to visit Flossie? My pronouncement would
quiet them."

He gave an exclamation of impatience.

"All right. Be at the hospital on Saturday afternoon at two. I'll give
orders for you to be admitted." He slammed down the receiver.

Down went my phone, too. And up went my heart to the Lord. "Now, O
Lord, I'm in for it! I have a new search on now. Can you control the
highstrung bunch of nerves which is me, and enable me to face an insane
person?"

I think that most people must have a private horror, a phobia, about
some one thing. Most women fear snakes. I've known a big man almost to
go to pieces at the news that a rat was near. A famous scholar of our
generation admits to a phobia regarding insects. Now my own private
fear has always been insanity. I don't like snakes or rats, but they do
not set my nerves ajingle like the word _insane_.

"Lord," I prayed, "when I felt I should go down into that cellar to see
if Mrs. Mac had hung herself there, I asked You for the nerve to go,
_and I didn't get it_. Of course, You knew she wasn't there and that I
didn't need to look. But still--can You nerve me to face insanity?
Saturday afternoon will be my proving time."

I was to leave on Saturday night for The Firs, so I was packed and
ready for the train. Leaving my baggage at the Corner Club, I proceeded
to the hospital at two o'clock in the afternoon and inquired for the
ward where Flossie was. It was in the basement. Across the corridor
were heavy, locked doors, and in front of them, at the side was a desk
with two nurses in attendance. On the other side of the doors, someone
was singing a ragtime song at the top of her lungs.

I went up to the nurses and said, "Please, may I see Flossie ----?"

The nurses looked at one another. "I'm sorry," said the elder of the
two. "It's against the rules. No one is allowed to see her."

"But I was told that I might, if I came at this hour," I said. Again
they exchanged glances, then the younger nurse said to me, "She is
violent. That is her singing now." The youthful voice was rollicking
on.

"Dr. ---- told me he would give orders to let me in," I protested. That
was a magic word. "Oh," they said, scrambling through some papers on
the desk. "Yes, here is an order for a Miss Miller."

"I am Miss Miller."

"All right. Step this way."

The nurse took a big bunch of keys and opened the corridor door,
ushering me into the aisle on the other side. Small cells lined this
corridor on both sides, and each door was locked. The cells were
beneath ground level, but had one iron-barred window high up near the
ceiling, level with the ground outside.

My heart was beating so violently I felt dizzy and sick, but before I
knew what was going to happen, the nurse had unlocked a cell, and
pushed me in alone. I heard her lock the door behind me!

Flossie stood with her back to the door, looking up through the little
barred window and shouting her song. She was in a disheveled mess that
it would not be kindness to describe. At the sound of the key in the
door she whirled around like a wild animal about to spring on its prey,
but as soon as she saw me she went limp, blinked stupidly for a moment,
then said, "Miss Miller!"

"Yes, Flossie dear," I answered. Going forward and taking her in my
arms, I kissed her. "I've only just learned that you were sick. I've
come to see you. Get into bed, dear, and then we can talk."

Like a lamb she climbed on to her cot and I sat at the foot of it, as
there was no chair in the cell--nothing else but the iron bed. I talked
about the Corner Club, trying to draw her memory back to quiet things
and to the Lord. She answered each question intelligently and only once
did she exhibit anything strange. I was telling her of some little
Corner Club incident and said, "Mother Fitch--you remember who she is,
Flossie, don't you?"

"Yes," came from the young face on the pillow. Then there followed an
expression of cunning, "_And I know you_," she cried emphatically. I
went cold all down my spine, but ignored it, continuing my quiet
chit-chat. I told her to trust in the Lord and promised to write her
mother. "I am going on my vacation," I said, "but will come and see you
as soon as I get back." I stayed about fifteen minutes, then knocked
loudly on the door, hoping the nurse would hear. She came at length and
I left--leaving Flossie still lying quietly in bed.

When I got back to the Corner Club I telephoned the doctor. "Yes," he
said. "Well, how did you get on?"

"She knew me immediately, Doctor, and called me by name."

There was a staggered silence at the other end of the line, then I
heard him say to himself, "Well I'll be----." To me he said, "Miss
Miller, please tell me exactly what happened, right from the first."
After I had done so, he said, "How soon can you visit her again?"

"I am leaving in a few hours for vacation, Doctor. I will be gone two
weeks, but will call you as soon as I return."

"You do that!" he said earnestly, and we hung up.

Of course, I felt that Helen must be right--Flossie was playing a part
for some reason. If I had known it was so important, I would have given
up my vacation to attend her, but I didn't. In my next telephone
conversation with the doctor on my return from The Firs he told me she
had been sent to an insane asylum outside Vancouver. He was quite
indifferent whether I visited her or not, saying, "This time she won't
know you," but he gave me permission for a visit with her.

Looking back at this incident after nearly thirty years, and after
having had more than two decades of experience with devil-worshiping
mountain tribes, I am inclined to think that Flossie was demon-possessed.
The Devil has hoodwinked educated America into thinking he is a myth,
and he is working havoc unrecognized. My reason for believing this is
twofold. First, I found that _the mere presence_ of a consecrated
Christian in a demon-haunted house was enough to force back those
powers. My entrance into that hospital cell brought with it the power
of my Master and the demon force was temporarily quelled. Second, that
look of cunning when she affirmed--unasked!--that she knew me, was the
very same that I have seen on the face of a demon-possessed tribes girl
just before that demon was cast out. And the compulsion to confess
recognition is similar to what took place in our Lord's day. But as
Superintendent of the Corner Club, I knew as yet nothing of these
matters.

Now I felt I must visit Flossie in the asylum. Again I was terrified at
the thought, but as God had taken care of me in the hospital, He would
surely help me in this second step. So one afternoon found me arriving
by bus at the famous institution which I had never dreamed I would ever
see.

It was a huge place several stories high, and as I approached the large
entrance, men patients behind the iron bars of a veranda screamed out
to me and thrust their arms through the bars as if trying to reach me.
Not very soothing to the nerves! Inside, I was ushered first into the
office of the resident physician. He was a young man, and as I advanced
to his desk he exclaimed, "Why, it is Miss Miller!" It was my turn to
be astonished.

"Isobel Miller of Arts 22, U.B.C. (University of British Columbia),
isn't it?" he repeated, shaking hands cordially.

"Why, yes. But how do you know?" I queried. He laughed.

"I was an undergraduate, a year or so behind you. What have you been
doing since then?"

We had a little chat. My work at the Corner Club brought up the name of
Flossie. There must have been several thousand patients in that place,
so I asked, "Would you possibly know Flossie?"

"Would I?" he returned. "I'll never forget the night they brought her
here. It took four strong men to hold her!"

"What do you think? Is she incurable?"

"No-o," he answered thoughtfully. "This type is brought on by
dissipation and with the use of modern drugs we can often effect a
cure. Did she talk very much? That is the first sign of this condition
coming on--extreme talkativeness. She'll be here two years at least,
though, and then there is likely to be a recurrence later on."

"My Club would like to help. Of course, we believe that prayer will
help her, but is there anything else you can suggest?"

"Yes," he answered. "She is run down through late hours and the life
she led. If your Club can send her nourishing food, with extra protein
values, such as meats and broths, that might hasten her recovery. The
ordinary food here is good, but she needs extra meat and such, which a
government institution can hardly provide."

I promised that we would do our best, and he rang for an orderly to
show me the way to Flossie's ward.

"They must prepare her to see you," he warned, "so you will have to
wait awhile."

Again I was taken to a corridor with a locked door. A lounge opened off
at the side where harmless patients were sitting around, some
embroidering, some reading, one playing the piano, and a nurse at a
desk was obviously in charge. I sat in a bench opposite the locked
door. Up tripped a young woman who asked me boldly, "Who have you come
to see?"

"Flossie ----," I replied, rather wonderingly.

"Oh yes, a nice girl, I know her!" This with a loud voice, her eyes on
the matron at the desk. Then behind her hand in a whisper she said to
me, "She is no more insane than I am."

"I've brought her some chocolates. Do you think she'll like them?" I
asked, more to make conversation than anything else.

"Oh, yes. The food here is fine!" This also in a loud voice toward the
Matron, then behind her hand in a whisper, "It's awful. They starve us.
Bring her _lots_ of chocolates!" And so she went on--compliments in a
loud voice for the Matron to hear, and complaints in a whisper behind
her hand to me. It was all I could do to keep my face straight, but
evidently she was known to them, for after a few minutes the Matron
quietly lifted her head and ordered, "K----, you come back in here."

"See our bondage!" whispered the woman, making a wry face to me--but
she obeyed.

At length a nurse came with a key and I was again ushered in behind the
door to where a second nurse had brought Flossie, then to my horror
both nurses left me alone and locked me in with the patient.

I would not have recognized Flossie. She was so thin and a mere shadow
of herself. The preparation they had given her was to drug her into
stupidity, then immerse her, hair and all, in a bath to clean her up.
She stood before me swaying unsteadily, her damp hair clinging to her
like a drowned rat, and she obviously did not know me. I told her my
name and repeated it, but she gave no sign of recognition. I proffered
the chocolates and she opened them eagerly, popping them into her mouth
one after the other rapaciously. Within five minutes I knew that
conversation was useless. It was true, she did not know me nor could
she follow my thoughts.

Then the effect of the drug began to wear off. She had been brought to
me in a corridor, with rooms on both sides.

"I want to go back!" she said suddenly, and started staggering down the
corridor, hunting for her own room. As I did not know which one it was,
I knocked and banged on the locked door to call the nurses back. At
length one of them came and took Flossie to her place. But by this time
Flossie had evidently come to. She turned fiercely on the nurse, swore,
and cursed her. A glimpse into the room showed me why they had to drug
her and bathe her before allowing any other human being to see her.
Obviously she was living like an animal. Heartsick, I turned away and
came home. It was an experience I would not care to have often, but the
Lord had strengthened me to go through with it.

At the Corner Club I did not describe what I had seen, but merely gave
the doctor's advice to send her nourishing foods. I told how emaciated
she was and asked for prayer. I also wrote to her mother and the result
was that a sister was sent to Vancouver to visit Flossie and care for
her needs.

Prayer was made constantly for the poor child's recovery, and cartons
of jellied chicken, home-made broths, jellies, and other good foods
were sent by the girls and the Women's Board. Still we were not
prepared for our dear Lord's answer to our prayers, abundantly above
all that we had asked or thought.

Within six months Flossie was dismissed, cured. After asking the Lord
daily to do this, I was taken aback by the speed with which His answer
came. One day I received a telephone call from a stranger which ran
something like this: "Miss Miller, you do not know me, but I am Mrs.
----, neighbor of Flossie's mother on the prairies. My husband and I
are on a trip to the coast and Flossie's mother asked me to bring
Flossie home with me when we return. Do you know she was dismissed from
the hospital a few days ago? No? Well, she was. She is living with her
sister, but would like to come and see you before she leaves and thank
you for what you have done for her. May I bring her this afternoon? We
leave by the evening train. Thank you. At three o'clock, then."

I sat back in my swivel chair and gasped. Then I bowed my head and
thanked the Lord.

I awaited three o'clock with a little trepidation. I had met two very
different Flossies already. Which one would this one resemble? The gay
chatterbox? The doped animal? Could she really be normal? The third
Flossie was the real Flossie, and a distinctly different person still.
She had gained weight to a pleasing plumpness, but was so shy and quiet
I could hardly recognize her. She thanked me prettily and sincerely,
but when she was gone into the kitchen to salute Mother Fitch I turned
to their neighbor and said, "My, she is quiet! Do you think she is
afraid of me?"

The lady widened her eyes with astonishment. "Oh, no. Flossie never did
talk much. She was always the quiet one. She is just like she used to
be. Her mother will be delighted."

And so we parted. But my story isn't ended.

Nine years passed and now I was back at the Corner Club as a missionary
on furlough, a married woman and a mother. What a welcome they gave me!
But before the first message, which they asked me to give at the old
Tuesday evening hour, I had a telephone call.

"Isobel, I wonder if you will remember me. This is Flossie."

I nearly jumped out of my skin. "Flossie! You back in Vancouver?"

"Yes. But I'm married now. Oh, Isobel, the Lord has been so good to me.
I want to tell you all about it before you meet my husband. Will you
take supper with me downtown, just the two of us alone, and then I will
go with you to the meeting? My husband is coming to the meeting
tonight--I got permission to bring him, since John, another man, will
also be present. But I want you to hear my story first."

I wonder if you can understand my joy? No one can who has not mothered
spiritual children. No one can who has not stood and watched the brand
blazing in the fire, and then shrunk from the heat which almost
scorched the hand stretched out to snatch it from the burning!

That evening in a little cubbyhole of a restaurant we sat face to face
once more. She was still sweet-faced Flossie, her quiet manner lit up
with heartfelt gratitude. "Yes, I have a good husband and two darling
children. _And I've never had a recurrence._ I'm sure the Lord won't
let me now. And, Isobel, I want my children to be brought up in the
church. My husband and I are agreed: we want a Christian home."

Just one little peach from a year's harvest at the Corner Club. What
potentialities lie in such work--leading business girls to Christ!

Often, on furloughs, I have heard the impatient remark, "Why go to the
foreign field? There is lots to be done at home here!" There most
certainly is. And there are lots of Christians at home--but are they
doing it?

_By searching_ for Him, He makes us conscious of the need of others,
and helps us cut channels by which He may be poured into their lives.
In no time we find ourselves His fellow workers, and life is rich.

But I must come back to my tale: for by now the door to China was
opening again.




CHAPTER THIRTEEN

_LET US GO ON!_


It was the spring of 1928 when the China Director of the China Inland
Mission, the Rev. George Gibb, paid a visit to Vancouver. I was called
in to meet him and well remember the searching look of concern he gave
me. "My dear girl," he said, "you look worn out. Are you well enough to
go to China?"

"Oh, yes. Physically I am sound. But I am very tired," I admitted. Our
home on the north side was so far away from the evening church
appointments. Late at night the ferry did not run so frequently, and if
I missed one there was a long wait before the next. Often it was
midnight before I got to bed, and six o'clock was my rising hour if I
was to have a quiet time, get the house chores done, and catch the nine
o'clock ferry.

But I think most of it was emotional fatigue. Mentally I knew the way
of victory. I had read of Hudson Taylor's experience, _The Exchanged
Life_, when he rolled all his burdens on the Lord. I had heard Keswick
teaching expounded at The Firs and had seen it lived in lives there.
But how to transmute it into experience was beyond me. I secretly
worried about things. My father's Micawber-like attitude toward
business appalled me. Where would he end up? Now I knew what my
mother's secret trial had been and how much we all owed to her sound
judgment and carefulness.

I worried about my own failure at the Corner Club. I did not have the
gift of evangelism. Young lives were constantly being cleansed,
rededicated and built up in Him, but I did not see that. I looked just
for souls to take the initial step of salvation. Pentecostal girls were
urging me to seek the baptism of the Spirit. One of them was a gifted
evangelist, a golden-haired, angel-faced girl, and I fell into the
snare of comparing myself with others. Peggy had something I didn't.
Was it really the speaking in tongues? Inwardly I fretted. But the Lord
was carefully holding me. I asked Peggy and Dorothy--another girl who
kept at me--to describe what happened when they were "filled with the
Spirit." Their most vivid descriptions were no more than what I myself
had often experienced when alone with the Lord and the awareness of His
presence would flood in. I had never spoken in tongues, but I seemed to
have had everything else they claimed to have experienced. This kept me
from going off into doctrinal extremes.

I always felt there was a peril in seeking just an _experience_ from
the Lord. The temptation is to think the experience has sanctified. It
hasn't. These uplifting times in His presence, provings of His faithful
care, enrich us, add to our joy, but they do not sanctify us. They do
not make us stronger Christians. They do not make us holier than our
fellows, as I was to learn to my shame. But they do make us richer in
our knowledge of Him, and they give us joy that addeth no sorrow to it.

The only way to be holy is daily to hand over to the Holy Spirit what
Dr. Tozer calls "the hyphenated sins of the human spirit ...
self-righteousness, self-pity, self-confidence, self-admiration,
self-love, and a host of others like them ... which can be removed only
in spiritual experience, never by mere instruction. As well try to
instruct leprosy out of our system. There must be a work of God in
destruction before we are free. _We must invite the Cross to do its
deadly work within us. We must bring our self sins to the Cross for
judgment._"[5] The Holy Spirit will crucify these things for us, as we
hand them over to Him, and then we must accept the suffering involved,
rejoicing in the knowledge that His resurrection life will be the final
outcome.

      [5] _The Pursuit of God_, by A. W. Tozer.

And so, with all my rich experience of answered prayers, I was still
full of worry, self-pity, and many other ugly things, but I was not
acutely conscious they were there.

Mr. Gibb was really perturbed. By now I wore an engagement ring, and
John Kuhn was already in China and being used of the Lord there. If my
health broke, would that bring John home? Mr. Gibb consulted Mr.
Thomson, and they both ordered me to resign from the Corner Club and
take six months of complete rest before sailing in October, 1928. Mr.
Gibb intended to give instructions that I be put on Mission support in
order to do this, but, most unusual for him, he must have forgotten. I
waited and waited, but the Mission sent me nothing. And I felt I should
not petition them for it. Hudson Taylor would have just prayed.

I forget how it happened, but Mr. and Mrs. Whipple heard of the order
for me to rest and invited me to spend the five or six months at The
Firs. I could help in cleaning cabins and getting the Conference
grounds ready, but first I was to have a full month of nothing but
rest--even breakfast in bed!

I had been able to save no money, for I had felt I should pay my
father's debts. It was clear to me that the next invention would never
bring him an income, and I was right. So I landed at The Firs with
about thirty-six dollars--all the money I had left.

No one can know what it meant to me to be taken in by dear cheery Mrs.
Whipple, and be given the upstairs porch which they were fixing up as
bedroom for their own daughter, Lois, when she should return from the
Bible Institute of Los Angeles, where she was studying. Two sides of
the room were without full walls and the scented, tall fir trees were
its screen. Mrs. Whipple had procured some old cement sacks. These she
had bleached, stenciling a pretty fleur-de-lis pattern on them, and
hung them up in lieu of walls. When the opening of the conference would
bring many people around, and the fir trees might not afford privacy
enough, these curtains could be drawn. But when I arrived, the scented
green needles were the wall, and I loved it. To wake up in the morning
having slept to the full, no pressure of schedule upon me, to hear the
birds caroling and the sun trying to peep at me through the green
foliage was like living with God in Eden. I can never forget it.

I knew that the Whipples were "living by faith," but had no idea that
when they took me in that first night they were down to rock bottom
financially. I felt I would like to give them my thirty-six dollars.
Before going to bed, I handed the money to her, saying, "I want you to
take this. It won't pay for all I'll eat these months, but I'd feel
happier if I felt I'd given something."

I remember Mrs. Whipple flushed a bit and tried to refuse, but I
insisted, and then the matter left my mind. She told me years afterward
that that was one of the hardest things she ever did--to take my money.
But the milk bill was due in the morning and she had nothing else with
which to meet it. And I myself would need milk. My money fed us until a
gift of sixty dollars came in, and from then on there was no shortage.
This is just a glimpse of how the Whipples lived: although the gifts
had been few, they did not hesitate to invite me to live with them for
six months. And I do not need to say how God blessed them.

They had returned from China to find that The Firs was the only home
they had. With funds low and the need to make and furnish a bedroom for
Lois--and me!--they were put on their mettle. From the attic of a
relative they obtained some old furniture free, and this they
sandpapered and repainted a pretty green for Lois's bedroom. When the
stenciled curtains were hung, it was as dainty a room as a girl could
wish--and I had learned lots about how to convert old things into new!

The Conference that summer (1928) was the most blessed I had ever
known. The special speaker was Dr. Arthur Harris of Wales, and the
Spirit of the Lord was powerfully among us. For one thing, Mrs. Whipple
had prayed that every young person attending the Conference should
yield to the Lord before going home. One evening during the service she
was impelled to go to the girls' dormitory, and there she knelt by each
bed, claiming for Christ the occupant of that bed. Needless to say,
every evening there were decisions made. Toward the last evening there
were a few who still hung back from full surrender, so the staff called
us leaders of the young people to pray all during the evening service.
I can never forget that prayer service. The Spirit of the Lord came
down upon us as in apostolic times, and we all started to pray
simultaneously out loud. As for myself, I was not even conscious of the
others. So lifted up was I into the Lord's presence and so burdened for
the souls that were hanging back, that it was not until a break came
that I suddenly came down to earth and realized that we had all been
praying aloud together. From the upper room where we prayed, down
through the treetops, we could see the open-air auditorium. As we
prayed, one after another of the recalcitrant ones got up and went
forward in surrender. The very last, a girl for whom I had held but
little hope, has now been for decades a most faithful missionary on a
foreign field. Very truly it was the work of the Spirit of God.

Conference over, I needed to go back to Vancouver and get my outfit
ready for China. There were still no funds sent to me by the Mission,
but a love-gift from my brother paid my fare home. (When Murray saw
Dad's invention was not likely to make him rich, he had set about
getting a job.) But where would the next money come from? To add to the
perplexity came a letter from Marjorie Harrison saying that she was
traveling in our parts and would like to stop off and see us. When I
answered with a cordial invitation, I did not have enough money to pay
her carfare from the station to our home, let alone feed her.

Then I got a call from Mr. Thomson to come to his office, as there was
some money waiting for me. _At last!_ I said jubilantly to myself. Mr.
Gibb has remembered his promise! But it was no such thing. It was much
more wonderful than that. It was fifty dollars from my own dear John in
China! I think it was the remainder of a bank account he had left over
from his earnings in preparation for Bible school days. "I want to have
a share in your outfit," he wrote, "but it has no strings on it: you
may use it for any need." And the first bit of it fed Marjorie!

From then on I had no difficulty. The Corner Club girls gave me showers
and a beautiful outfit, which included the money to buy a portable
organ. That little organ went with us to the Salween mountains and
brought much joy to Lisu as well as to us missionaries for many years.

I prayed much about my final message at the Corner Club. I did not
know, though I shrewdly suspected it, that some of those dear girls
were going to prove prayer-warriors for whom I would thank the Lord all
my missionary days. It has been so now for twenty-eight years. God laid
on my heart a message for myself as well as for them from Hebrews 6:1,
_Let us go on_.

The search is not ended. We have only begun to explore our eternal,
unfathomable God. "Let us leave behind the elementary teaching about
Christ and go forward to adult understanding. Let us not lay over and
over again the foundation truths ... No, if God allows, _let us go
on_," paraphrases Phillips. And that was the burden of my message.

On October 11, 1928, I sailed for China. There was quite a large party
of us, one being the little American girl who roomed next to me in
Ransom Hall at Moody Bible Institute: Ella Dieken was engaged to Jack
Graham, and we were to be roommates at the Language School in China. My
father had permission to sail with me on our steamer as far as
Victoria, so that the emotion of parting from him did not take place at
the wharf in Vancouver. The ship was due to pull out about noon, and
the Corner Club girls forsook their lunch and flocked down to the
wharf. They made such a crowd that a stranger asked my brother, "Who is
the girl who is getting this send-off?" Just an unknown missionary
going out for the first time, was certainly not the answer expected.
But God can give special things to His unknown children when He wants
to.

At last a bugler climbed up to the highest bridge of the _Empress of
Russia_ and began to play Queen Liliuokalani's beautiful farewell song,
_Aloha Oe_. It is of course the sad parting of two lovers. It breathes
passion, but no certitude of hope. It is earth doing its best to reach
out for cheer, but failing mournfully. I am so glad that Christian
words have been set to that music for such moments. For it is only
Christians who dare to say, "We never part for the _last_ time." As the
bugle notes poured forth on the noisy air of the wharf, there gradually
grew a stillness over the crowd.

    In these the closing days of time
      What peace this glorious thought affords
    That soon, O wondrous truth sublime,
      He shall come, King of kings and Lord of lords.

    He's coming soon, He's coming soon
      With joy we'll welcome His returning;
    It may be morn, it may be night or noon
      But oh, He's coming soon.

But "the gospel must first be published among all nations" (Mark
13:10).

    And we, who living yet remain
      Caught up shall meet our faithful Lord.
    This hope we cherish not in vain
      But we comfort one another with this word.

The last notes quavered sadly on the high air. The unbelieving in the
crowd, grasping the only best they knew, whispered, "Aloha Oe." The big
anchors rattled as they were pulled up, the paper streamers began to
tear as the mighty ship slowly drew away from the wharf. Beloved girl
faces were working with emotion, and one or two were crying. "Lord," I
whispered, "give me a last word they won't forget." A thrown voice
could still reach the wharf. I leaned over the side and called out
slowly, "_Let us go on!_"

The light of heaven broke through the tears of earth on some faces, so
I knew they had heard. They waved their hands in a signal of assent and
then the _Empress of Russia_ turned her stately head slowly toward the
Narrows, Puget Sound, the Pacific Ocean, and--China.

But there was one more step. At the city of Victoria, on Vancouver
Island, my father said good-by and disembarked. After he had left, the
purser brought me a telegram. It read simply, WE WILL GO ON--YOUR
CORNER CLUB GIRLS.

Tears of gratitude rained in my heart. Twenty-eight years have
passed--a good, long testing period. The Corner Club is still
operating. Most of those girls have gone on with the Lord. There are
people in more than one country of the world who rise up and call some
of them blessed. One of them on the wharf that day had unconsciously
been leaning on me rather than on the Lord Himself, so she sprawled
spiritually when her human prop was removed. But on the whole they kept
their promise.

And now, as reader and author part, I can find no better words to use
than these same, _"Let us go on."_ Go on searching and exploring the
greatness and the dearness of our God.

He has no favorites. He has said, "Ye shall find me when ye shall
search for me with all your heart" (Jer. 29:13).

Notice that last phrase, for it is the only condition. There must be
inner honesty and undivided loyalty--that is the only stipulation. "The
man who trusts God, _but with inward reservations_, is like a wave of
the sea, carried forward by the wind one moment and driven back the
next. That sort of man cannot hope to receive anything from God, and
the life of a man _of divided loyalty_ will reveal instability at every
turn" (Jas. 1:6-8--Phillips thus paraphrases it).

But--"He is a rewarder of them that diligently seek him" (Heb. 11:6).

Said Susanna Wesley, "He is so infinitely blessed, that every
perception of His blissful presence imparts a gladness to the heart.
Every degree of approach to Him is, in the same proportion, a degree of
happiness."

So--_Let us go on_--SEARCHING.


Transcriber's Note: There is one instance where the letter "e" with a
macron is rendered as [=e] in this E-text.


[End of _By Searching_ by Isobel Kuhn]
