"I want to be of use in the church, but how can I when I know nothing? Every child here knows more than I do, and I am not fit to teach even a Sunday School class". So I soliloquised one evening as the revival meetings were drawing to a close.
It was about a week afterward that my employer burst upon me with the question:- "What are you going to do this winter? Will you work for me at four dollars a month, or do chores for your board and go to school?"
Once more I said in my heart "That is my Father's doings". Four Dollars a month -- it seemed so contemptible! Grace alone kept me from resenting it. As for the chores -- that meant a good half days work every day, working in the mornings and evenings, and then all day Saturday, and it included looking after the stock, doing a certain amount of housework including the cutting of firewood, and then a day of threshing on Saturday to find peas for the pigs, and straw for the sheep for a week. It was a pretty good price to pay for board. Again I was nearing my nineteenth birthday, and to start in to school at such an age with no one of a similar age, and with attainments that scarcely fitted one for the first standard -- it looked rather humiliating, and it demanded courage, and only a strong sense of duty could tolerate it. Yet with all this weighing of pros and cons, I said "It is my Father's way"; and aloud I answered the farmer and said "I will go to school." That meant working the gold mine -- but not the farmer's gold mine.
The first Monday in December, accordingly, found me with a few possible school books, slate, pencil, copybook, ink and pen, and a small dinner pail containing some sandwiches and baked apples and a piece of apple pie, on my way for a mile and a quarter walk to the country schoolhouse. All this created a great sensation in the community, and much wonder in the mind of Schoolmistress White. I had the satisfaction of being the biggest one in school, if bigness can ever give satisfaction.
I was set upon a new course, and the stream ran fast, although I did not know it. It was the custom of those who worked for the farmers by the month in summer to "do chores" in the winter, and attend school; it was a quiet and pleasant way of spending winter, and to some extent profitable, inasmuch as it added to the equipment for life's work, and at this time there were four or five such farmers' helpers in school, although none as big or as old as myself, and none of them as backward as I. They were all, with a few girls, in the highest class in school, and they followed such studies as geography, grammar, history, reading and arithmetic. Out of consideration for my personality, the teacher placed me in that class; that was like throwing a young duckling out with an old flock and telling it to swim with the old folks. However there was but one thing for me to do, and that was to observe and follow. What sport those young fellows had over my infirmities and mistakes! John George was my good-natured tormentor. He lived across the road on our concession line, was the son of an English farm labourer, and one of a family of nine children; he was a perfected mischief, and withal conceited. What he came to school for I scarcely knew unless it was to talk and stick pins into others. He seemed determined that no one should study; yet he always had his lesson ready. He lacked one month of being three years my junior.
So I was good carrion for him and that winter he did his picking well. He sat alongside of me as we took our places in class form. He well knew my weaknesses, and he did not intend to be a blind leader of the blind but he pretended to be a very sympathetic leader.
I remember especially our reading class which was also a class in grammar -- a class that after reading "analysed" a paragraph, and proceeded to "parse" a sentence. All of this was as new and unnatural to me as would be the study of Greek. How could I be expected to know anything about the "principal subject" or "the predicate complement"? Or why should a word be called a "Noun" in one place and a "Verb" in another? "I simply cannot see anything about these words to show what you are to call them" I said, "they are all printed in the same way, and to that extent they all look alike to me". John was very comforting, "You will get used to it after a while", he would say in a comforting tone, "I will help you". And being a neighbour I would depend on him.
So in class-work we took our turn trying to analyse, and get the insides out of those concrete words, words that seemed as resistful as modern concrete does nowadays. There was no concrete then. Well, it was my turn -- "Principal sentence", John whispered and I repeated his words, (to myself I said how can it be otherwise, it's the only one), "it does duty in expressing action" he added, and I repeated that and thought that was a wonderful piece of information, and I seemed to be getting very wise. The painful ordeal was over. It was the turn of "the next". "You are doing well" John whispered.
We came to parsing, and now it was dealing with the single word. I had known powders to be wrapped up in papers, but how did any one manage to wrap up so much in a few letters? "This is easy" John whispered, "adjective -- just adjective". I repeated -- "just adjective". There was a giggle along the class line -- just as if an adjective could be anything else than just. In myself I asked, "What kind of a creature is an adjective?" I never saw one running about. Master John helped me along in his kindly, seemingly innocent and soothing way.
"This is a hard one" he said one day. "Verb, compound, bound to its subject". I repeated it. It was a ridiculous and nonsensical expression which wicked mischief dictated. The teacher was at the far end of the classroom. The members of our class broke into an unrestrained laugh. I looked around and saw the school mistress swaying and holding her sides. I felt a measure of humiliation. I said to myself -- "Alright my boy; but this shall not last for ever".
On the whole, I who had been inside of no schoolhouse for five years or more, found the winter and the school exercises very enjoyable.
There was a measure of child play about the situation. Away, across a large field, was a piece of forest known as the swamp. In summer, much of the ground would be covered with natural springs of water accelerated by rainfalls; in winter this would be frozen over so that the walking would be firm, and then one could press his way among the tangled branches of hemlock, spruce, tamarack, cedar and pine, and hunt for squirrels and chipmunks, or trace the footprints of a rabbit. Some of the school population became much given to cleaving the gum off the bark of the tamarack; this, however, the teacher always discounted by making them empty their mouth into the stove that heated the house. This chewing gum was the precursor of a famous American commercial product.
Snowballing was a great game. It was a manly sport, because there was risk in it; it called for courage; it called for expert action in mixing a good ball. And what if we did get one in the head or the face? There was nothing manly in being a coward and afraid. We were cultivating the straight arm and the strong arm, without anger or revenge, and cultivating our own true aim, and our prize was the other fellow's head; and any one who was afraid of a snowball, we counted would not be much in the battle of life.
I think that my most enjoyable sport was found on the hand-sleigh. We had a very long and steep hill -- fully a quarter of a mile long -- rising to an attractive height to the south of our schoolhouse. Its northern face, coming down to within a few yards of the school, led across a public road; this road in turn was lined on the opposite side by a "snake-rail" fence, and over this fence, with a drop of some three feet lay a field. What boys would not have enterprise enough in a free land like Canada, to remove a length of the farmer's fence? And then who could wish for a greater thrill than was to be had by a hand-sleigh ride, propelled by ice and gravitation, gaining momentum as it sped down the hill, dashing across the roadway and taking a leap over into that field! Snowshoes and skis, and even skates were unheard of among us in that district at that time; we had natural, healthy sport, and had it and enjoyed it as our natural expression of youthful life.
Did we mind the snow and the cold? Not at all. Overcoat and overshoes I did not think of; I wore a pair of well-greased cowhides with leggings into which my pantaloon legs were folded and tucked, and I safeguarded my ears by keeping them well rubbed, and so twenty-nine degrees below zero scarcely kept any one home from school and was hardly talked about at school.
My winter at school went all too fast. I learned much, and I rejoiced in the learning. I was blessed with a teacher who first of all was a Christian, and let it be known in her daily practice of opening and closing school with Scripture and prayer, as well as in her deportment among the pupils; then she was evidently in sympathy with my effort to get knowledge for the sake of becoming useful, and therefore she gave me the benefit of many half-hours of the noonday hour in endeavours to overcome my neglected state of education. And she had her reward, as I also had my encouragement.
Easter came, and with it spring. The rivulets ran rejoiceingly down the gutters of the hilly roads. The crows announced their return to our northern woods. The fields turned bare and muddy. The winds blew softly and the sun put on such a bright smile as we had missed for months. Every farmer was becoming active, sorting out plough, harrows and roller, and oiling up harnesses in readiness for "springs work". "Easter holidays" came to school, and for the older pupils that meant return to work.
So in the middle of April I put my books on a shelf in my room, and turned out with the horses and "stone-boat", to gather stones off the fields -- stones which had been lifted and exposed by the action of frost, and thus I got into action once more as a soldier of agriculture.
My service period this season lasted six months; that is it ended exactly on the middle of October. During the interval I attended to all the varieties of farm work as constituted in those days -- ploughing, sowing, harrowing and rolling, cleaning up the meadows in preparation for mowing days and sowing them with "land-plaster" to increase production, turning up drills and sowing seed for "roots" such as carrots, turnips and beets, planting "corn" and potatoes, in turn weeding and hoeing the roots, corn and potatoes, thereafter turning to haying, then to harvesting, then to threshing and preparation of grain for market, thereafter came the in-gathering of vegetables and corn, the fall ploughing, and finally the corn-husking with the apple-paring "bees" in the evening.
Through all of that summer, while "my hands were engaged below" with the things of the farm, and I wrought diligently and earnestly, I seemed to belong elsewhere. While working in the fields I would imagine congregations before me and I would be addressing them in terms of entreaty, and with Scriptural injunctions. The beets and turnips were as people to me; I sped up the hoeing in my eloquent excitement, but I often forgot where I was.
It was in the month of April that farmer H.J., who was Secretary to the Church Board of the Circuit, made a startling announcement one Sunday morning... "Our Board met yesterday and authorised me to tell you that we have put you on the Local Preacher's plan". Why did they do it? I wondered; and what would it involve? Among the lay preachers of that country circuit were two whom I especially remember; and they constitute types -- one, preacher Jones, was fiery and imaginative, letting his brain, rather than his Bible, rule his utterances. I have a very vivid recollection of how on one occasion he opened up hell until the flames seemed to be burning behind him -- I might have heard them crackle, only that he made so much noise himself. Under such preaching as that, I sat stolid and unmoved. I never could be frightened into anything. Moreover I did not think that there was any reality about it, and it did not represent to me the spirituality which I thought belonged to God and all that was His. I was equally against the pictures of a golden heaven which I sometimes heard; I was sure that golden streets could not be suspended in the atmosphere, and such a city could not become a God who was everywhere.
The preacher that drew me was Robert Dunnet, a West of England man, a farmer, living in a locality known as Shiloh -- he was a man of quiet speech, and impressed one with his godliness. Through the years I had liked to listen to him mainly because he always talked from the book; he gave us pictures of Jesus which seemed to be real, and I accepted them without question. From one of his habits, however, I had always shrunk -- he took advantage whenever occasion offered to press me with soul-appealing questions. During the revival meetings he had preached on a Sunday morning, and during his sermon he had said "God has work for you young people to do", and I had wondered what has He for me to do? After the preaching service the preacher had said to me "I am glad that you have found your way to the Cross, and entered the Master's service".
This was the man of God who led me to my first effort in the pulpit -- a very poor effort it was, but it was a committal, and once taken I did not go back on it. I think he must have had a good understanding of human nature. He made it convenient to take dinner at our house on a Sunday after he had conducted morning service. Across the dinner table he asked me to ride with him to his afternoon appointment, and I had no reason for declining, indeed I relished the prospect. On the way I learned that he was the one who had proposed my name for lay-preachership. He learned by questions what my interests were, then pleading weariness after a week of hard work in the fields, asked me to assist in the conduct of the service, such as announcing the hymn, reading the Scripture and offering prayer; to all of which I gladly consented, as I had no reason for refusing. A little farther along the road, he suggested that the congregation would like to hear my testimony, and therefore it would be good of me to relieve him to some extent from the sermon; and to this I agreed. The church was to be seen down in the hollow as we reached the top of a hill, and now he thought it would be good of me to take charge of the whole service; and having gone so far in concessions, who was I that I should draw back, or withhold a modicum of aught that I might do? I agreed. He therefore introduced me on that Sunday afternoon in the month of April eighteen hundred and seventy nine. Old Testament prophets had their trials but they had no such trial as I endured during that service. It was a full church that I stood before, a church of intelligent yeomen and their families -- a reading people, and people having a public spirit leading them to look far beyond their surroundings; Sunday School Superintendent and teachers were there; Methodist Class Leaders were there; the Member of the Dominion Parliament sat in the front seat; and the trial came from the fact that I had previously met these distinguished people and knew that they knew me. Then there came upon me the thought of what I was doing, and the tremendous responsibility. It was only April, but I felt as if it was August, and I scarcely knew what words passed from my lips; I thought my effort a failure and scarcely wished to meet any one afterward. Probably many a beginner falls into the valley of self-depreciation; and it is well for him if he does not discover that the spirits are subject unto him.
When I came into the house from my field work on the following Monday evening I learned that two visitors from that church had brought some report of Sunday's doings, and the lady of the house greeted me with the words:- "We have heard the great thing you were doing yesterday", while the farmer himself said:- "I suppose there is no greater work a man can engage in than to preach the gospel".
As I returned to school for my second season, at the middle of October, it was too early for any others of the young people, and I therefore had a class standing all to myself; that gave me advantage of going ahead as fast as I wished, or worked for. I have found through the years that a man usually gets what he works for; and moreover water finds its level. It was the third morning of the week. I had arrived early, and the schoolmistress was alone. "What are you going to be?" she asked somewhat abruptly -- "a teacher, or a preacher?"
"I think", I replied, "that I shall have to be a teacher first".
"That is what I have been thinking", she said; "and I want to help you as much as I can for the short time that I am to be here. I have only two more months -- my time expires at Christmas. And I have been mapping out a course for you -- I would advise you to aim higher than I did. I made a mistake by contenting myself with a Third Class Certificate. My advice to you is to attend the High School and gain at least a Second. Now, there is an examination on December fifteenth in the village High School building, and I want you to prepare for it. If you can pass, and I think you can, it will admit you to High School standing. I have the programme of studies required, and I shall be glad to give you all the help I can in preparing for the examination".
This was a surprise. It was in vain for me to protest my unattainments, and incompetency; my teacher was sure of the ground.
Thus it was that for two months, every spare minute of recess and the dinner hour, and sometimes for half an hour after school closing, Miss White listened to recitations in history, geography, literature, grammar, recitations of poetry, spellings and etymology of words, or suggested solutions of arithmetical problems, and on the afternoon preceding the day of examination she tested her pupil on an examination in the pages of chronology in Collier's History of England, and "That time he did not fail"; so I left the school house with her motherly blessing. There were but twenty candidates at the sittings. At least three weeks passed by before there was a reliable report of results. In the meantime there were rumours. Farmer H.J. one evening said he had seen the Secretary of the school board, and he had reported that only two had passed, and I was not in the list. I replied that if that was God's will it was alright.
One evening, some time later, I was reading the village newspaper when I came upon an innocent looking report of examinations for entrance to the High School -- a list of successful candidates. There were six names, and mine was number two. Without a word, I jumped from the floor towards the ceiling as high as my knees. "Why what's the matter?" exclaimed the farmer; "you act like a crazy man". "And why should I not? My name is there. I have passed the examination. I am number two". "Well, I thought you said you did not care". "Oh no. I said if it was God's will that I should not pass it was alright; but now it seems it is His will, and I am glad".
Teacher in the meantime was gone, and I am not sure that she ever heard of the result.
A new era had come to me. Here I was eligible for attendance at the village school; what should I do? How could I attend without a large sum of money? I was reminded at home that people in the village do not have "chores" to do. Quietly and calmly the good Spirit of my God wrought upon my mind and I was kept free from worry. Christmas came and passed, and I said nothing. Those around me looked on and wondered what might be passing in my brain. Gradually I came to a conclusion without human assistance -- I would continue at the country school where I could take up the same studies as in the village, and with the added advantage that I might be in a class by myself, and thus might forge ahead as fast as I pleased.
But a new difficulty arose. When the Christmas holidays ended and school should be opening, the announcement passed through the neighbourhood that the Board of Trustees, which had always engaged only Third Class teachers, had been unable to find a supply; it had become a case of room at the bottom. And yet I was maintained in peace feeling that the matter was in the hands of my Heavenly Father.
I could not forget the events of the week following upon my emergence from farm to school life. That first week -- more than a year before, had settled matters for me, and I was sure that God was faithful Who had said "I will never leave thee nor forsake thee". I remembered how the first thoughts of preaching had come into my mind during that first school week, as I walked alone down the last quarter of a mile on the sideline road; and how those thoughts had persisted day after day, until I saw an enormity in them -- an unholy ambition that I was sure was prompted by the devil; and how in desperation I had, on arriving home, hastened to my room, and had there cast myself upon my knees before God and had prayed that He would pardon my sin and cleanse me from this unholy thought which I was sure was begotten of the devil. "Thou dost know Lord" I pleaded "that I have no fitness for such a holy work. I have no education, and a minister of Thy gospel must needs have education. I should need to attend college and I am a long way from fitness to do that, and besides I have no money and no friends. Therefore Oh Lord save me from the torment of this vain ambition". As I ceased my petition, it seemed that I heard a voice distinctly ask:- "What if God has need of you?" So I followed with a surrender and I added:-- "Nevertheless Lord, if Thou hast need of me I am willing". Rising to my feet I said:- "I have laid the responsibility on God, but I must see to it that I do not neglect any opportunity".
At the time of waiting for the opening of school, I remembered all that past -- it was between God and myself. I had neglected no opportunity. The way to the village school was apparently closed. I had done my best; my Father had the matter in His hands, and like Israel at the Red Sea I must stand still and see.
One week of school time had been apparently lost, and on Sunday morning a sleigh-load of people under the guidance of one of the Trustees came up to our church; the word was quickly passed around -- "The new school teacher. School opens tomorrow". It was a teacher with a Second Class Certificate who had been secured -- a teacher direct from the Collegiate Institute, whose qualifications were such as to fit her for teaching all of the subjects which I would have taken in the High School -- and I was the only one in school who would have need of such teaching! Again I said:- "It is my Father's doings, and it is marvellous". And I was happy. I was humble also, for I was under a pledge not to hinder God's purposes.
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