The Benson signal., 1917-04-07

damask gave Joy alike to the appre-
ciative eye and the touching hand,
where countless silver cleaned, where
glass sparkled like the diamonds that
it approached in value, and where the
daintiest china Of France supported
| fish, flesh and fowl Of two continents
and two seas. 1t has been my honor,
now and again, to sit at the tables of
the great, where men of intellect and
| fame and women of intellect and
| charm have made an hour unfOrget-
! able and have taught one more than
whole university of mere classroOms
could do. 1t has been my profit to sit
at banquets where hundreds sat about
| the tables and listened to the words of
heroes, heroes Of war and heroes Of
| peace, captains Of sOldiery and cap
tains of industry, and felt the while
they listened, that they were in touch
with the men and the forces that move
the world. 1t has been my benefit to
sit at meat in the homes of the hum
BILE, in log cabins and huts, dining off
metal plates and plain fare, and there
to learn that not circumstances, but
characters make men and women. 1t
has been my delight to sit about the
table of the grass, in forests and will
dernesses, the campfire at hand and
| the Viands won from stream or forest
only by gun or rod. But when con-
+ template the circumstances of that
morning meal beside the lake of Cali
lee and realize the realities that were
there present-things, emotions, sights,
that surpass words to describe-I know
that 1 had rather have been one Of
those men that ate the bread the Lord
baked, the fish his hands caught and
cooked for them, that saw what they
saw and heard what they heard, than
to have attended any other banquet
that wealth ever bought or meal that
the friends Of ones bosom prepared
for friendships tribute!
"Why so? Tell me, who were there
Tell me whom that group consisted Of !"
ooh, a group OF coarse fishermen,
tagged out by nights work,
listening to a chance rabbi who is
getting breakfast for them while he
talks" Yes; you can make that an
swer if you have succeeded in wiping
Easter day out Of your calendar.
Who were there? ooh, let's see,
wasn't that the time when Jesus met
his disciples and the miracle of the
great draft of fishes occurred"
It was; and that is about the way
the average churchgoer (shall l have
to say the average Christian?) would
answer.
Who was there? Listen! Men were
there that had seen the man in their
midst die in pain on the hOrrid cross
of a Roman criminal execution, had
witnessed his writings of agony, had
seen the sweat Of blood, had heard
from those very lips at which their
eyes now gazed as if enchanted the
last scream as the body sank lifeless
in the nail-suspended collapse of death.
Men sat there who had taken that
body down in tears and dismay and in
the shock of disillusioned hopes had
buried it and gone away feeling as if
their universe had tumbled in wreck
about their heads, murmuring to Que
another as they went: "And this is the
end of him whom we hoped that it
had been he that should have redeemed
Israeli" And that man sat there be-
fore them alive! Alive? He had
caught fish and made fire and baked
bread and helped them to make one
of the great hauls of their fishermen's
experience, and now while they sat
stunned, amazed, astounded, incapable
almost of realizing what had occurred
incapable, as they afterward wrote,
of speaking a syllable Of inquiry-he