Professor David Smith tells of a great lesson that he learned, as a young minister, from his old teacher and friend, the eminent Professor A. B. Bruce.`He introduced me,' Professor Smith says, 'to my first charge; and that Sunday night, as we sat in my study, he said to me, "You will get no inspiration from your surroundings here; see that you seek it from your books."
I remembered his counsel, and I found it good. The years which I spent in that quiet parish proved very profitable. Many an evening I would come home sick of petty jealousies, and fretted by trivial narrownesses, and would get into my study; and, behold, I was in a large and wealthy place and in the fellowship of the immortals. My study was the most sacred and wonderful place on earth to me. It was my refuge and my sanctuary.'
My sanctuary, mark you! And it was probably with this reminiscence of his early ministerial days in mind that Professor Smith penned for us the following verses :
I bless You, Lord, that when my life
Is as a troubled sea,
I have, remote from its rough strife,
Harbours to shelter me.
I bless You for my home, where love
Her sweet song ever sings,
And Peace spreads, like a nesting dove,
Her gentle, brooding wings.
And for this chamber of desire,
Where my dear books abide,
My constant friends that never tire,
Teachers that never chide.
F W Boreham, ‘The Holly-Tree’, The Uttermost Star (London: The Epworth Press, 1919), 239-240.
Image: “My study was the most sacred and wonderful place on earth to me.”