Page 272 - Neglected Arabia Vol 2

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MEMORIAL SERVICE TO REV. H. A. BILKERT

Bahrein, November 15th, 1929
l
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Address by Rev. John Van Ess

E are met this evening to hold a memorial service for our friend
and colleague, Henry Bilkert. If you .should ask anyone wliai is
W the function of a memorial service, he would prohabl\ answer:
i The function of a memorial service is to help u> to reineiuher
t
: die person for whom we hold the service. Hut how incongruous then would I
I |.e diis service, tor who can ever forget Henry Bilkert ? Who can forget
i dial buoyant, eager, earnest, willing, friendly man we called Bilkert: ( >r,
again, the function of such a service might be to perpetuate his memory,
dial is, to praise him. Those of us who knew him best knew ton that is
just what he would not want us to do. Such a man, who lived so utterly *
outside of himself, who cared absolutely nothing at all for such things,
lo whom human praise was not a thing to be sought or cherished. I think i
we would be violating his memory by praising him. It was my privilege
to be associated with him very closely for three years, to penetrate perhaps
more closely than anyone else into the hidden springs uf his thought life,
and to come closest to his springs of action. And in the last months it
was my sad and sacred privilege, too. to go down with .Mrs. Bilkert into
t Mich depths of grief as I had never sounded before, and. may I sa\. to
rise with her to such heights of spiritual experience as I had never ex­
plored before. And now to praise either of them would be utterly and
entirely incongruous. You cannot praise such things, just as vuu cannot
and do iiul praise a sacrament. The memory of our friendship and a^su
ciatiou is a real and solemn sacrament.
! What I think Mr. and Mrs. Bilkert both would like us to do this ve­
iling is rather to appraise. As Mr. Jagoe said in his address at the funeral.
••This cannot leave us where it found us." The question is. Where are
we now after these months of thought and prayer and soul searching ex-
perience. To me, three things have emerged and stand out prominently in
my thinking:
I. God docs not work according lo the ca/njtirics of Jinnuni lm/ic.
Listen to this: In the spring of 1920 1 was in the East doing deputation
work. On the last day of March I reached my home in the Allerton I Intel
.a about 3 o’clock in the afternoon. It was a cold, rainy, blustering day.
I had come in all wet and tired, and was planning to take a rest, and then
to pack up preparatory to leaving for Chicago the next day. Suddenly the
telephone on my table rang. It was Mr. Riley speaking, lie was at
t Columbia University and asked me to come to International Mouse for
supper and afterwards to attend a lecture by Rosita Eorbes. I protested
that 1 had just come in tired and not at all well and that I had much to do.
But he insisted and at last I yielded. It happened that Rosita Eorlxrs had
Utu taken ill and to supplement the lecture they had brought in Mr. C rane.
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