taken things as
they came, and didn't go looking for what I couldn't see. I was enjoying
every day's living, and didn't care deeply about anything else. Why,
though I've been a Methodist all my life, you remember how I knew
nothing at all about the Methodist Church outside of Delafield, except
what little I picked up about its Sunday schools by serving as an
assistant to our Sunday school secretary. And when I began to hear, at
the Institute, about home missions and foreign missions, about Negro
education and other business that the church was doing, I saw right off
that it was up to us young people to supply the new workers that were
always needed. But, even so, only those who had a real fitness for it
ought to offer themselves, and I thought too that something else would
be needed. I wasn't any duller than lots of other church members--even
the older ones didn't seem to know much more about the church outside
than I did. You would take up collections for the benevolences, but if
you told us what they meant, we didn't pay enough attention to get the
idea clearly, so as to have any real understanding. I suppose the
women's societies had more. I know my mother talks about Industrial
Homes in the South, and schools in India--she's in both the societies,
you know--but that is about all."
"And it seemed when I began to find out about things, Mr. Drury, that if
our whole church needed workers for all these places, it needed just as
much to have in the local churches men and women who would know about
the work in a big way, and who would care in a big way, to back up the
whole work as it should be backed up. So, when you spoke at the camp
fire it was just what I wanted to hear, and when I was called on, I made
that sort of a declaration the next day at the life decision services."
"Yes I remember that too," said Mr. Drury, "and I remember telling Joe
Carbrook that you had undertaken as big a career as any of them."
"That's what I kind of thought too," said J.W., simply, "but rooming
with Marty Shenk--he's going to make a great preacher too--keeps me
thinking, and I know about all the students who are getting ready for
special work, and lately I've been wondering----"
"About some special sort of work you'd like to do?" Mr. Drury prompted.
"No; not that at all. I'm just as sure as ever I'm not that sort. If
only I can make good in business, there's where I belong. But can a
fellow make good just as a Christian in the
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