was the _Claim of Monopoly_. 'Call upon _Me_ in the day of
trouble, and _I_ will deliver thee.' It suggests the utter absence of
alternatives, of selection, of picking and choosing. In the straits of
the soul, the issues are wonderfully simple. There is none other Name
given under heaven among men whereby we must be saved. It is _this_
Companion--or solitude; _this_ Deliverer--or captivity; _this_
Saviour--or none.

4. It was the _Absence of Technicality_. '_Call!_'--that is all. '_Call
upon Me in the day of trouble, and I will deliver thee, and thou shalt
glorify Me!_' _Call!_--as a little child calls for his mother.
_Call!_--as a drowning man calls for help. _Call!_--as a frenzied woman
calls wildly for succor. There are great emergencies in which we do not
fastidiously choose our words. It is not the mind but the heart that, at
such moments, gives to the tongue its noblest eloquence. The prayer that
moves Omnipotence to pity, and summons all the hosts of heaven to help,
is not the prayer of nicely rounded periods--Faultily faultless, icily
regular, splendidly null--but the prayer of passionate entreaty. It is a
_call_--a call such as a doctor receives at dead of night; a call such
as the fireman receives when all the alarms are clanging; a call such as
the ships receive in mid-ocean, when, hurtling through the darkness and
the void, there comes the wireless message, 'S.O.S.' '_Call upon Me in
the day of trouble, and I will deliver thee, and thou shalt glorify
Me._' Had the text demanded a tinge of technicality it would have been
useless to Robinson Crusoe; it would have mocked the simple soul of poor
Mary Avenel. But a call! Robinson Crusoe can call! Mary Avenel can call!
Anybody can call! Wherefore, '_call_,' says the text, '_just call, and
He will deliver_!'

IV

But I need not have resorted to fiction for a testimony to the value and
efficacy of the text--striking and significant as that testimony is. I
need have summoned neither Daniel Defoe nor Sir Walter Scott. I could
have dispensed with both Robinson Crusoe and Mary Avenel. I could have
called a King and Queen to bear all the witness that I wanted.

King Edward the Seventh!

And Queen Alexandra!

For Robinson Crusoe's text is King Edward's text; and Mary Avenel's text
is Queen Alexandra's text. There are men and women still living who
remember those dark and dreadful days of December, 1871, when it seemed
as if the life of King Edward--then Prince of