Rensselaer Republican, Volume 21, Number 46, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 18 July 1889 — Face-to-Face Work. [ARTICLE]

Face-to-Face Work.

He who would help the poor must work among them and not at them. Art may admit of dilettanteism, that is, of following it for amusement and not with a serious purpose; but philanthrophy demands persistent, personal work from those who are more interested in men, women and children than they are in humanity. When Edward Irving began his labors as Dr. Chalmers’ assistant, among the poor of Glasgow, be girded himself for face-to-face, hand-to-hand work. He entered a poor man’s home, as he would have gone into an oriental palace, with the apostolic benediction, “Peace be to this house.” He laid his hand upon the heads of the children, and pronounced the ancient benediction, “The Lord bless thee and keep thee.” Then with the heartiness of a neighbor he entered into the concerns of the household, listened to the narrative of hardships and partook of the miserable cheer, having first asked over it as stately a blessing as if it were a feast. Once on his way to a meeting of the presbytery, he walked, while the other ministers went in carriages. The “brethren,” on overtaking Irving, greeted him with laughter and jokes, for on his stalwart shoulders he bore a peddler’s pack, while by his side walked a poor, tired Irishman. Irving was indignant at the brethren’s laughter. He was simply “bearing another’s burden,” and so—fulfilling the law of Christ,. Irving’s interest in persons prompted him to devise guileless wiles for winning them. An infidel shoemaker, a born worker, used to turn his back when Irving visited the house, and ’never acknowledged his presence save by an occasional humph oi criticism on some remark of tho visitor to the trembling wife. One day Irving sat down by the shoemaker’s bench, took up a piece of patent leather, then a recent invention, and made several remarks upon it. “What do ye ken about leather?” asked the shoemaker, without raising his eyes. Irving, a tanner’s son, answered by so talking that the cobbler slackened work and listened. Irving described a process of making shoes by machinery. The man suspended work altogether, lifted his eyes and exclaimed. kind o’ fellow! Do you preach?" On the following Sunday the cobbler was at church. Tho next day Irving meet him in ono of the most frequented streets of Glasgow, hailed a9 a friend, laid his hand upon the cobbler’s shirt-sleeve, and walked with him until their ways parted. Tho shoemaker was won. He bought him a suit of Sunday “blacks,” went habitually to church, and to the criticism of his comrades, answered: “He’s a Sensible man, yon. He kens about leather!" Irving’s cordiality. 9een to be personal and not merely official, had conquered the sullen man.—Ex.