Rule Of The Road

RULE OF THE ROAD ANNE BYRD PAYSON THE ABINGDON PRESS NEW YORK CINCINNATI CHICAGO CONTENTS PAGE PROLOGUE ....... 7 APPROACH . . . . . . .11 APPEAL ........ 75 A RECORD OF THE INCOMPLETE . . . 207 PROLOGUE THE writing of Follow the Road was in loyalty to a suggestion of Dr. E. Stanley Jones and an expression of gratitude to him for what he had shown me. I had no premonition that it would evoke sympathy or extend the vision of its readers as ifeany of them have been kind enough to say that it has. If it has done nothing else for me, it has put plainly before me the unequaled opportunities of official Christianity, no matter what its featured idea or chosen title. I cannot claim perfect sight or a ringside seat at the clashes between human error and the armies of light, but what I see from where I see it, leads me to believe that the defeatist tone of clergymen and the very few religious peri odicals I have read all of which carried defeatist itemsare apologies for the attrition of human qualities in holy men and the presence among some of them of intellectual inertia and sectarian bias. Who wants to go to churches whose clergymen assure one they are out of fashion Who can grasp the reality of ever-present mercy when the officially religious say that God is in eclipse The greatest opportunity to extend the knowledge and love of God that this world has ever seen is in the hands of 7 8 RULE OF THE ROAD American churches of every sort, and my New Years resolution was never to go to churches that treacherously belittle Christ and the devotion of his followers by emphasizing mans frailty, and fail ing to put forth Christs power. Churches should be houses of hope. I know it is easier to speakagainst things than for them. The heat of indignation aids eloquence, but if we really endorse Christianitys philosophic content, we should realize that whoso speaketh against man mistrusts his Maker. I might say in passing that in the summer, at a summer resort, in a church that was crowded to suffocation on a brilliant day, I heard that well to-do people had forgotten God. There followed a painstaking enumeration of atheistic theses of the last century four of which have been completely offset by modern scientific opinion. So long as sermons take up so much time in Sunday services, I think they should contain, and I would love to have, some affirmation of Gods love to us and of ours to his Son. If only those who realize that Christ is, would let their treasure shine among those who need its light, instead of like a dog with a bone burying it in a sect of like-minded worshipers, where its ray is merged in a carefully shaded illumination, what a spread of joy this world would see Every man needs to worship, but he needs the PROLOGUE 9 sense of Gods presence to lift him to the height of reverent obeisance. Scolding and depressive ex position cannot do that. Christs kingdom is the mind. Who can gainsay it It is not of this earth, it is of our spirits, and those who have become my friends through Fol low the Road have trusted me with the histories of their development of Christ-centered character. Their circumstances, the windings of their lives, their care of Christ culture, are put down here in part only and with full permission, as an outcome of and an incentive to fair-minded experiment with a fundamental promise Do my will and you shall know of my doctrine. My experience isnt verywide the life I live today is still very new, but I look over the Chris tians of the church and those in the world that Ive met through my little book and I find them the most interesting people Ive known. They are alert, amazed at their own kinds kindness often, wrenched with pain at human suffering and grateful for the gladness of other people. Like others, who are instinctively well-mannered, they do not dwell on what it costs to be Christian, but they have the price of it in the book of remembrance. Some of us have paid so little for it...