he had lost his only son. He decided then and there to give his life to the study and treatment of children's diseases. He became a well-known specialist in that field. The records show that over seven thousand homes had felt the healing touch of his hand. He was attacked by an infection from the body of a sick child he had been treating. He was desperately ill, and a score of the best physicians in Greater New York were called in consultation with the hope of saving his life. Dozens of people offered their blood for transfusion. Women came to the hospital where he was sick and knelt on the pavement outside to pray for his recovery. One of them would whisper to another, "He saved my baby.' The answer would come back, “Mine too -cannot we do something to save him?" He passed away, and the last words upon his lips were words of sympathy for the children who were sick. "My little patients," he murmured. "what about them!" He too by his unselfish life of service had been saying, "Suffer the little children to come unto me." And he took them up in his arms and put his hands on them and healed them. He lived it-and that is the final test of religious faith. When we sense the fine quality of this quiet man whose name was James, we know full well why he was chosen for that inner circle of three. The Master felt stronger to do the will of Him that sent Him and to finish his work, because of the presence of this man of silence. When the tide in the harbor at New York is full and strong, the Hudson River feels it, we are told, clear up to Albany. If the Hudson were a swift, hurrying stream, it would not be so. But the current of that river is calm and tranquil. When the tide is flowing in from the mighty Atlantic, the river waits to receive that influx from the sea. So the life which learns to wait upon God for the renewal of its strength, knows the day of opportunity. It waits also in silent expectation for that influx from above which shall make it full and rich and glad. When the storm breaks, the lightning strikes the tallest trees, the church spires, and the highest buildings in the town. When that second storm of persecution broke upon the early church at Jerusalem, this outstanding figure of James, a leader among those who were called "Nazarenes' was marked for destruction. He was arrested and tried and condemned to death. "Herod the King killed James, the brother of John, with the sword." There is a legend recorded by Eusebius, one of the great church fathers, regarding the martyrdom of James. A well-known man had denounced him to the civil authorities as the ringleader in a pestilent sect. When James was brought up for trial, this man was there to testify against him. But he was so impressed with the prisoner's quiet courage, with his self-restraint in the presence of his enemies, and with his beautiful devotion to his Lord, that he was overwhelmed with remorse. He became a Christian himself and asked that he might be baptized by James before he suffered. The man was received into the fellowship of the little church. Then, having become a Christian, this man also was tried and condemned to die. When the two of them were being led out to the place of execution at the command of Herod, the man who had been a witness against James begged his forgiveness for the wrong he had done. Then the quiet man kissed him on both cheeks, after the manner of the East, and said to him in stately Latin, "Pax vobiscum!" "Peace be with you." The two men, the forgiven and the forgiving, passed out together into the the unseen world. "Blessed are the merciful, for they shall obtain mercy." |