A Mother’s Letters to Her Missionary Son, VIII

A MOTHER'S LETTERS TO HER MISSIONARY SON.

EDITED BY SUSA YOUNG GATES.

VIII— THE CRUCIAL FIRST YEAR. '

My Dear Son Daniel: —It is many weary months since I wrote you last. You have heard about my severe illness from your father and the girls. Today is the first time in nearly two years that I have tried to hold a pen in my hand; but I have a longing, which cannot be stilled, to say some things to you. For you are about to return home from your mission, and there are great trials awaiting you. You smile incredulously, I fancy, as you read that last sen- tence. Trials in coming home to mother, father and friends! When there is no sickness, death, nor financial difficulties to meet! And yet — repeat— great I trials await you. So great, that I tremble for your fu'ure. Your letters have heen very enthusiastic, and you have en- tered thoroughly into the spirit of your mission. You say in your very last letter that the past two years have been the happiest and most profitable of your whole life. I rejoice with exceeding joy for all this, and no words can express the pride and happiness which fills your dear father's heart at every letter you write, and with every thought of your home-coming. But I am a mother, with a mother's hopes and a mother's fears, and I, perhaps, see dangers plainer than a man would, plainer, perhaps, than life's I

need see them. And now, what is it I fear? and what is to be your trials? Do

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you remember, in the Civil War, the story of McClellan's long winter inactivity near Washington? Why, forty years of fighting, of struggle, and of bloodshed would not have taxed soldiers nor the country at large, as did that long winter waiting. To see an army idle, its banners rotting in the sun, its armor gathering rust, its soldiers sickening with hope long deferred, while the cor- ruption of idleness steals like a plague over every living thing, is a sight never to be forgotten. If you had spent time and energy in a gymnasium, and had prepared yourself to meet an antagonist, you would go out, full of vigor and zeal, ready to cope with your foe. But, if instead of finding him armed cap-a-pie and squared ready for your attack, you find a fine and dashing fellow who at once takes you by the hand and calls you his best friend; what then are you to do? You can't fight unless you have someone to fight. Your gay fellow will have no disposition to fight, and when the very man, perhaps, who taught you to spar in the gymnasium turns around and laughs at you for a fool, if you try to put his own teaching into practice you will feel as if either yourself or the world were out of joint.

But this is about the situation you will find yourself in on your return home. While you were in the world, your physical, and even your mental, being was set aside, forgotten as it were, in the temporary exaltation of your spiritual self. Every physical and mental desire and impulse was made secondary to the spiritual labors. In order to succeed in your spiritual calling, you were advised to lay aside all other thoughts and works, except such as were absolutely necessary to life. This was right and profitable- We all greatly desired you would do this. And you did so. Most of our missionaries do the same, I am proud to say. But there comes a day when the mission ceases, and the missionary's heart and feet fly homeward to family and friends. Then comes the crucial year after the return home. Not all the trials you have met while away, no matter how severe they may have been; not all the sacrifices and struggles you have endured, will compare in real difficulties and dangers with this trial year of your return. Let us dissect the subject, so that we may know why it is, what it is,

and its remedy, if there be one.

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Do you recall the last prayer made by the Savior for his dis- ciples, before he left them? Read all of chapter 17 of St. John,

and mark well these sentences: "I pray not for the world, but for them which thou hast given me." "While I was with them [his disciples] in the world, I kept them in thy name." "And now come I to thee; and these things I speak in the world, that they might have my joy fulfilled in themselves. I have giv^n them thy word; and the world hath hated them, because thev are not of the world, even as I am not of the world." Particularly note this sentence: "I pray not that thou shouldest take them out of the world, but that thou shouldst keep them from the evil." And do you recall how they all went back to their former occupations after the Savior left them? And even Peter, the leader of them all, denied any association with his Master. The Lord left them to themselves for a season. While he was with them they needed no other light. They walked not by faith, but by sight. He was only with them three years, you know. Just about a mission sea- son. Then came their testing time. He had taught them, by voice and by deed. Great and mighty miracles had been wrought by his own, and even their, hands. Their hearts had been converted and their eyes convinced. Bat would they remember? Would not the world's jolly, good fellows, the pleasures, the vanities, and worst of all, the seeming inactivity of the whole army of the Lord, rust their armor, palsy their hands, and enfeeble their will? Ah, that was a crucial time! Peter went back to his fish net, Matthew to his money changing, and the women — aye, even the women, crept back to their homes, sick with discouragement and disappoint- ment. I see you coming home, so fall of zeal and faith; so anxious to "work in the ministry," the rest of your life; I hear your bub- bling testimony the first Sunday night after your return, bristling with scripture, and full of faith and repentance.I see you shak-

ing hands with a missionary's grip, and can feel the vibrant joy in your voice at greeting every old friend. Even the plain, fa- miliar meeting houseis surrounded with a refulgence, in your

hungry home-coming eyes, as you secretly burn to raise your voice in that pulpit in defense of Christ crucified. I feel all your

fiery zeal to get into the hearts of your young associates, and to

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awaken them to a burning sense of their past indifference and future necessities. Even the children, on the streets, will share in this glowing enthusiasm of yours, and you will want to stop and

chide the rude boy who swears, as his marble flies into the ditch. — And the bishop ah, the bishop! Dear old gentleman, blessed old father to 1 he people that he is; how you will wring his hand in reverent love, and wonder how you ever could have spoken of him as "old cock-eye." I follow you in all this, with my heart in my mouth, and my fingers constantly at your spiritual pulse. For I see, all too plainly, how bare and plain, all these home

people and surroundings will be to you after the* first glow of en- thusiasm has faded, and life resumes its old-time practicality. People will not be as glad to see you as you are to see them; you have been away two years, while they see returned missionaries every few days. Your first speech in the ward will sound flat and dull, even to your own ears, for you will be very self-conscious, and very much alive to the keenness of the critical home audience. This will vex you, in spite of the fact that you know you ought not to care about yourself or the impression you make upon people, but ought to be thinking only of saying something to do good, to help some one, or you ought merely to bear a simple, earnest testi- mony. The fact is, you will care very much. You will be most anxious that your father and the girls, all your young friends, and especi- ally Mattie, shall see what a speaker you have become. You will recall those breathless audiences you had out in the world, their tears, and their smiles, as your eloquence led them on: and here at home, the only possible thing you can think of, when you get on your feet, is a halting recital of your travels, and a few scraps of your faith and repentance sermons which formed the backbone of your preaching in England. Ah, laddie, I could smile if I were not weeping. Your young friends — ah, those dear young people! — how they laugh at your And even Roy, the very best mis- zeal.

sionary the — ward ever turned out he who was near you in the field, in your first three months and his last — even Roy will turn to you with a gay laugh, when you begin to exhort him, as he says, with a twinkle in his eyes: "Why, Dan, old boy, you've got 'em bad, haven't you? Hold on, though, go easy. Be careful who you bump up against. You'll

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get your faith shaken loose with the jars you will get. Let off

steam on me, if you must, or fill up your old mother; she'll stand you off. Mothers always do, and think their good-for-nothing boys are heroes, you know. But be careful of the boys, Dannie boy. Don't preach at them, you know, or they may fire back at you. Go easy, go easy. I was just the same after I came home. But you'll soon get over it. We all do. So long!" And he will leave you in a dazed and humiliated condition. Then, too, if you say anything to the boys on the street about their swearing, they will swear at you, and adjure you to "cut it out," or they will all severally turn on you and rend you, if they can. While even the bishop, good and noble as he is, will not feel half your joy, as you grip his pcor, rheumatic fingers, and he may fail to respond in detail when you assure him that now you are home you want to keep the harness on. Things have an unpleasant way of going in the opposite direc- tion to our ardent desires. And you are not apt to find an ex- ception to this rule. You will find, when you come home, every place of labor and responsibility in the ward filled full to overflowing. All the places in the Mutual, the quorums every one of them, the home missionary list, and even the Sunday School, with its ever- hungry maw for teachers and first assistants, all are full and com- plete to a man. Even the teachers' quorum, that usual needy and sparsely filled battle field for spiritual strength, has but recently been put into excellent running order, and there isn't the tiniest place that I can see in all the ward for you to fill. Except your own place— but of that later. They do say that if the bishop had taken a little more notice of Roy, when he first came home, and had put him on the home mission, things might have gone different with the young man. But I knew better. Roy lacked — one essential to manhood, always strength of character. It is true that some weak characters, if constantly shielded, and pro- tected from the rough blasts of temptation, may] live out a whole life of innocence and peace. But I often wonder if such souls will not fall even in heaven when such temptations as Lucifer's rebellion in the morning of creation are offered. The soul of man is absolutely alone in its life, its experiences, and its death. People and places make no differences. We live

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alone, we die alone. Such companionship as we have is quite independent of speech or propinquity. And therefore alone, some- time, somewhere, we will fight out the battle for ourselves. And almost surely, that battle is fought out by the young man who goes out upon a mission, its crowning engagement being the first year after his return home. Why is this? The chief reason is that, like Christ's disciples, you have basked as it were in the direct rays of the sun of righteous- ness while on your mission. Physical or temporal concerns have b^en entirely set aside for the spiritual things of the kingdom. Then, on your return home, you are once more face to face with the triple interests of life. Instead of your long, easy morning devotions, followed by a Bible study meeting, and then the day de- voted to teaching, cottage meetings, gospel conversations and out- door preaching, you will wake up in the morning full at once with the knowledge of a heavy day's labor; you will say a short prayer, eat a hurried breakf ast,and find to your dismay that your good father is, at times, too hurried or worried to attend to family prayers in the morning. But you are hurried and worried, too, for your father's business, into which he will take you on your return, is growing rapidly, and you will be so anxious to help him on in his success, with your new ideas and modern methods, that you can hardly eat or sleep. Of course, if I sit down and ask you calmly why all this hurry and worry, you would tell me, after a moment's puzzled thought, that it was all to get father and me a better home, to give the girls higher education, and to make enough to give your own self a start in life. And I can see all this coming. Life is triple. There are mental, physical and spiritual fac- ulties to develop and grow within us. Our bodies are concerned with the physical, our minds with the mental, and our souls with the spiritual. The appetites for physical gratification are so strong within us that they are likely to crowd out all the spiritual and even the mental. This is, and always has been, the struggle for humanity. Every page of the scriptures is full of that battle of the spirit against the flesh. In these days it assumes the guise of natural things — education, comfortable homes, beautiful surround- ings. Surely these cannot conceal temptation and allurement. Ah, but they do, my son, they do!

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Circumstances are but another name for providences. And people and conditions are sometimes, nay, often, allowed to assume an indifferent or a hostile attitude, and this to test our testimony and our character. You will come home with a burning zeal to continue your labors in the ministry, and you are very apt to find that no one seems to need, or even desire, the slightest effort of the kind on your part. Does this mean that there is no need for your labors and mine in the sweet ministry ofChrist? Does it mean that there is no place for you or me in that great eternal scheme? Nay, my son, nay. The field is always white for the harvest, and the laborers are And there is a place always few. for every man just as big and as great as is the man who is to fill that place. The fighting is not done by the officers, but by the soldiers. The best officer is the one who has fought his way up from the ranks. We are all soldiers, but we are not all fitted to be officers, till we have proved our mettle, learned discipline and obedience, and demonstrated our ability to lead others by our power to lead ourselves captive to the Spirit of God. Enthusiasm is beautiful, godlike and glorious, but unless it is tempered with judgment and common sense, as we call it (Solomon termed it un- we are derstanding), most apt to be led astray. Keep your head among the stars if you will, but guard your feet lest they stumble on the earth. Neglect neither the phys- ical, mental, nor spiritual, if you would be truly great. I have never seen an abnormally spiritual enthusiast who was not physically lazy and even prone to shirk every disagreeable daily duty. It is as vitally important for the over-spiritual being to discipline himself into hard daily labor, as it is for the over- prac- tical man to force himself to kneel in daily prayer.

Learn to adjust life values. Give every duty its proper share of your time and attention. Now, in the morning of your life, pull out of their hiding places each duty and desire. Examine each and put them in proper places and adjust them in proper relations to each other. Don't desire to preach and pray all the time, to work all the time, nor to play all the time. Divide up your life's energies with justice to each. Then, don't expect anybody to push you along; not even the

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bishop. He has a hundred young men to look after; but, no mat- ter, if he had a thousand, he will always see you, if you have the courage to act, the patience to wait, and the integrity to endure. Courage, no matter how your companions may laugh at your "fa- naticism;" patience, no matter how long men and circumstances may make you wait; and integrity, to both work and wait, know- ing that God is your friend, and that you will be his. Can my son understand and see? These are some of the trials that await you. Besides all this, I fear that Mattie is not for you, for I hear that she is engaged to a friend of yours. So, you see, there will be sorrows to meet. But there will be joys. The bishop needs you, your friends need you, your family needs you, and I, I can hardly live without you. We all need you, but you must stand your test. Your home is here, your parents love and honor you, and your sisters adore you. They both say they will be your sweethearts. Every hour of the day we are talking of you and planning for your home-coming. The flowers seem to bloom, the birds to sing, and the streams to flow with gladness at your near approach. I don't think any of us

will sleep the last night before your arrival; and I can't see at all how I shall endure the long, long few hours before that train will puff in, bringing my son home to his mother's arms. Every line of this letter is weighed down with gratitude and love; gratitude that I should be permitted to be the mother of such a noble boy, and love unspeakable for him forever. God speed your homeward way. Your Mother. Salt Lake City, Utah.

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