Page 274 - Neglected Arabia Vol 2

18 NiiCUiCTliP AKA It 1.1

I had heard of him as anyone had. hut he meant nothing at all to me per­
sonally. After the lecture, Mr. Kiley suggested that we go up and MpeaU
to him. On finding that 1 was from Iraq. Mr. Crane asked me to dine
with him the next day. lint finding that 1 was leaving at noon he still
insisted that I should lake break fast with him. The rest all followed in
natural sequence. Then and there it was arranged that 1 should meet him
in Baghdad and accompany him down the (lull*. From that time on things
followed each other inexorably. Link after link of circumstance was
forged which dragged us irresistibly lu the fatal day when the Imllet
snulied out Henry I'ilkerl's life If I had arrived at the hotel m New
York a half hour later, if I had persisted in my refusal to go to the I'ni-
versity, if, if, if—hut it seemed that all of us were hound by the cruel
chain of circumstance to the tragic consummation. Do l believe that?
Does any one of us believe that? We emphatically do not. 'That was the
old pagan idea. That was the motif running through all the old Creek
tragedies: You might squirm, you might wriggle, you might: resist, but
sooner or later the gods got you. That is rank determinism, ho|>eless,
helpless, despairing determinism, if I lielieved that l would take my New
Testament and lling it into the sea. Christ never thaught us to believe
in or trust such a Father. That there is a plan in Cod’s dealings with us
we cannot doubt, that He orders the details of our lives we must believe,
but we also lndieve that deeper, far deeper than the sequences of human
logic is the Divine logic. It is the logic of love, of love which defies all
the categories of human thought. Such was the logic of Christ when He :•
taught us to turn the other cheek, to go the second mile; by which, when
standing under the shadow of the Cross, lie could say, "l have overcome r
the world.” That was absurd, ridiculous, contradictory, and yet eternally
true. All human suffering, all human pain, every human tear and sigh are
but the expression of the cross which is eternally in the heart of Cod.
and which can l>e and should be most conspicuously exhibited in the lives
of His children. It was the logicalness of just that which Henry Bilkert
grasped when he flung back to us his message just as he was stepping
over the threshold, "Tell my wife everything is all right.” It is when we
believe that, that we can suffer and weep, nay, and die, too, fur then we
are closest to the very heart of Cod.
1. 'flu: second thing which has emerged in my thinking :h of prime
importance is this: That death is Out an incident in our work.
In no sense is death for us a terminus ad quern. Many saw Henry
Bilkert in their dreams, many, I mean of the Arabs, and all their dreams
coincided in this feature, that he was sitting in a beautiful garden, radiantly
happy and surrounded by a host of the poor and oppressed to whom he
had loved to minister. Of course he is living on. and of course he is work­
ing for the Moslems as he never worked before, and of course we shall all
do likewise. It has vastly strengthened my faith to believe thi>. I no
longer feel discouraged at the apparent paucity of results, for I believe
now that every prayer, every honest effort, every sigh, every tear, is trans­
formed through the cross into an emergency which will yet reach the
Moslem’s soul, if not here, then surely hereafter.
3. The third result which I covet for all of us is that this tragic cir­
cumstance shall draw us together as never before. When I asked Mrs.