VI.

THE HOLINESS OF HELPFULNESS.

ROM. xii. 11: "Not slothful in business, fervent in spirit, serving the Lord."

GEORGE STEPHENSON was getting ready to go to Methodist meeting. He was a young man, just at that period in life when young men go to Methodist meeting more and more until they are brought directly under the influence of the master-spirit of the place, and become in a sense religious men. There is not much doubt in my mind, as I read this young man's life up to this time, that he is in a fair way to that preferment. He has that thread of natural piety and goodness in his nature that is almost sure to draw him into a more intimate relation with the forms and industries of the recognized religious life about him, if nothing prevent. I said he was getting ready to go to the meeting, when a neighbor came to tell him he was wanted. He was then running an

engine at a coal-pit. There was another pit between this and his home, which he passed every day, that had been flooded with water, so that the men were beaten out. The company got a steam-pump to clear the pit, and kept it at work for twelve months, with no success at all. The water, when they had been pumping twelve months, was as deep as when they first began to pump, and the wives and children were starving for bread.

This young Stephenson had a most active energy and fervent spirit towards whatever went by steam. The great ambition of his boyhood was to run an engine; and when he rose to that position, as he did very soon- for it is a cheering fact, that while a man may long for a hundred things and not get one, a boy hardly ever fails to accomplish his purpose if he has a genuine hunger to be, or to do, some particular thing, when this boy rose to the position he wanted, he treated his engine as if he loved her. Whenever there was a holiday and the works were stopped, instead of going out with the rest, he studied her until she became as familiar to him as his own right hand. He was not slothful in busi

Intimate

ness, and he was fervent in spirit. with the charge that was laid upon him, he soon began to perceive why those women and chil dren were starving. The difference between what the pump was, and what it ought to be, was the difference between a tall, slender, nar row-chested man and a short, sturdy, broadchested man, engaged in digging earth or scooping out water. Every pump owner in the country-side had tried to mend this pump and failed, — because, I suppose, pump-mending and enginerunning with them was a business and not a passion. This young man, with the fervent spirit, said one day, as he went past the pit," I can clear that pit in a week;" and they laughed him to scorn. But they could not laugh the water to scorn; and so at last they sent for him to come and try his hand. He went there instead of going to the church. He went into the pit on a worked all that day, and

Sunday morning, and

until the next Sunday, cleared out all the water in a week, and sent the men down to earn their children bread.

From that time the young man comes into notice. He works through all sorts of opposition,

and never rests until he

run fifty miles an hour.

has got an engine to He is, more than any

other man, entitled to be called the Father of the railroad system. He kept the diligent hand and fervent heart right on to the end of his life. He was a good husband, a good father, a good friend, and a good citizen. But it is a curious fact that, from the time when he was prevented from going to meeting on that Saturday night, he never seems to have gone, or to have thought of going again, to the end of his life. He did not turn religious, as we say, even when he had nothing else to do, but lived a kindly, sunny, or shadowy, faithful life, right on to the end, and then died quietly, and made no sign. He never said he feared he had done wrong in turning from that church to that coal-pit, and trying to mend the pump Sunday, instead of keeping the Sabbath day holy by doing nothing; indeed, it never seems to have occurred to him to think the matter over in any way whatever: his heart was too full, and his hand too busy about engines, to find room for the idea; to find time, as we should say, to save his soul. And so it brings up a question, that to me has a good deal of interest, namely: While this

man was so busy and so fervent in the way I have noted, did he also serve the Lord? or, from the moment he turned aside from the meeting, and began to lose that sense and liking for meetings, and their peculiar services, did he cease to serve the Lord altogether, and remaining only diligent in business and fervent in spirit, go out of this world into darkness and despair?

Now, I am well aware what the common answer to such a question would be: it would be, "We must leave him in the hands of God; we cannot answer the question, because we have no data." But that is not true. If he had been an idle good-for-nothing, a scampish sharper, an abandoned libertine, an unprincipled truckler, or a political vulture; if he had beaten his wife, trained up his child in the way he should goto state's prison; if he had been a common nuisance for sixty-nine years and a half, never going into a church except to make a disturbance, never keeping the Sabbath except in sensual sleep, and six months before his death, or six weeks, or six days, had repented of his sin, had led a good and pure life, adopted religious ideas like those commonly held, and said clearly that