y helping.

The best of efforts, however, sometimes "gang aft agley." One day I
received a letter, evidently written in great consternation, from an
elderly spinster of singularly aristocratic connections and an
irreproachableness of life which was almost painful. The name sent to
her by one of our skippers as a correspondent who needed help and
encouragement was one of those which would be characterized as
common--let us say John Jones. By some perverse fate the wrong ship
was given as an address, and the skipper of it happened to have
exactly the same name. It appeared that lack of experience in just
such work had made her letter possibly more affectionate than she
would have wished for under the circumstances which developed. For in
writing to me she enclosed a ferocious letter from a lady of
Billingsgate threatening, not death, but mutilation, if she continued
making overtures to "her John."

CHAPTER V

NORTH SEA WORK

I have dwelt at length upon the experiences of the North Sea, because
trivial as they appear on the surface, they concern the biggest
problem of human life--the belief that man is not of the earth, but
only a temporary sojourner upon it. This belief, that he is destined
to go on living elsewhere, makes a vast difference to one's estimate
of values. Life becomes a school instead of a mere stage, the object
of which is that our capacities for usefulness should develop through
using them until we reach graduation. What life gives to us can only
be of permanent importance as it develops our souls, thus enabling us
to give more back to it, and leaves us better prepared for any
opportunities than may lie beyond this world. The most valuable asset
for this assumption is love for the people among whom one lives.

The best teachers in life are far from being those who know most, or
who think themselves wisest. Show me a schoolmaster who does not love
his boys and you show me one who is of no use. Our faith in our
sonship of God is immensely strengthened by the puzzling fact that
even God cannot force goodness into us, His sons, because we share His
nature.

These convictions, anyhow, were the mental assets with which I had to
begin work, and no others. A scientific training had impressed upon me
that big and little are very relative terms; that one piece of work
becomes unexpectedly permanent and big, while that which appears to be
great, but is merely diffuse, will be temporary and ineffective