T 
 
 | 
 
THE LIBRARY OF 
 
 REVEREND Harry M. NorTH 
 
 GRADUATE OF THE CLASS OF 1899 
 TRUSTEE 1919-1932 
 
 DUKE UNIVERSITY LIBRARY 
 DURHAM, N. C. 
 
UNUSED RAINBOWS 
 
Unused Rainbows 
 
 Prayer Meeting Talks 
 
 BY 
 
 FOUIS, ALBERT, BANKS, DD: 
 
 Author of ‘Christ and His Friends,” ‘‘The Unexpected 
 Christ,” etc., etc. 
 
 Fleming H. Revell Company 
 
 Chicago, New York @& Toronto 
 Publishers of Evangelical Literature 
 
 MCMI 
 
BY FLEMING 
 REVELL COMPA 
 
ae 
 
 CONTENTS 
 
 Unused Rainbows 
 
 The Healing of the Hills 
 
 How to Make a Bible Grow 
 
 The Black Pickle : 
 
 The Secret of a Light Heart . 
 The Lost Chord in Christian Life 
 Sugar-Coating the Ills of Life 
 The Comfort of the Hymns 
 
 The Happiness of Soul-Winning 
 Living One’s Religion 
 
 The Art of Inspiring Others by aR Ae Them 
 
 The Oil of Consideration 
 The Characteristics of Goodness 
 Making the Church Beautiful 
 The Christian’s Wings 
 Breathing Room for the Soul 
 Streams of Spiritual Life 
 The Lord’s Candles 
 
 The Things That Last 
 Seeing Things as They Are 
 How to Get Rid of Yourself 
 A Crown Full of Stars 
 
 Is Life Long or Short 
 
 Multiplication of Blessings through ‘btn 
 
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8 CONTENTS 
 
 Making Life Peaceful by Making it Important 
 
 A Life on Fire 
 The Difference between Sy apa atl Pity 
 The Harp-Strings of the Soul 
 
 In What Respect Can the Christian of To- aa Imitate 
 
 Jesus . : 
 The Value of Castles in the Air : 
 The Risen Life : 
 The Beauty of the Summer Fields 
 The Moods and Tenses of Every-day Life 
 The Blessings of Hard Work 
 The First Flush of Autumn 
 
 The Bad and the Good Kind of Sensitiveness . 
 
 Vacation Religion 
 
 Living Up to Our Visions 
 
 The Ups and Downs of Christian Life : 
 The Christian’s Three Homes 
 
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 ede 
 
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 There are still living among the islands of the 
 Penobscot Bay, on the coast of Maine, the de- 
 scendants of the early English and French voy- 
 ageurs who came to that land of pine trees more 
 than two hundred years ago. They area simple, 
 quiet folk, who earn a rather hard living by rais- 
 ing a few sheep, catching fish, and digging clams. 
 Their houses are built of the flat stones that are 
 found on the shore, laid up in mortar made from 
 burned clam-shells and beach-sand, and roofed 
 over with poles and matted masses of long sea- 
 weed. President Eliot of Harvard College, who 
 has studied these people on their native heath, 
 estimates that one of these Penobscot Bay her- 
 mits can support his island home, even when the 
 family is quite large, on a cash outlay of fifty dol- 
 lars a year. 
 
 In the past the acquiring of that fifty dollars 
 has not always been an easy nut for the islander 
 ’ to crack. But, as they say out West when the 
 railroad comes through a town, ‘‘a boom’’ has 
 
10 UNUSED RAINBOWS 
 
 struck the islands of the Penobscot. Within the 
 past three years evidences of prosperity have been 
 ,seen on every hand. The islanders have been 
 building larger houses, wearing better clothes and 
 more of them, and have generally been putting 
 on more of an air of civilization than they have 
 ever known before. It has not been the return 
 to the gold standard, the change in the tariff, or 
 any other of the changes known to politics, that 
 has brought this wave of prosperity to the Penob- 
 scot. No. All this sudden access of prosperity 
 is attributed to the gathering and sale of what is 
 known on the islands as ‘‘rainbow driftwood,’’ a 
 kind of fuel which not only gives out heat, but 
 which pleases the eye with colored flames, some- 
 times showing all the colors of the rainbow. 
 Indeed, this wonderful driftwood has not only 
 the rainbow to recommend it. In addition to the 
 color-tinted flames that beautify the fireplace, the 
 wood appears to be alive, and emits many splut- 
 tering and explosive sounds that seem to tell of 
 storms at sea. 
 
 The wood has been drifting about the Penob- 
 scot Bay and coming ashore on the islands off and 
 on for a dozen years or more, while the inhabit- 
 ants of the little stone houses with seaweed roofs 
 have been using it for fuel because it was easier 
 to pick up wood on the shore than it was to go 
 into the forest and cut it. They were entirely 
 ignorant of the zsthetic qualities which make 
 this wood the delight of a fashionable drawing- 
 
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 room on a winter evening. These hermit fisher- 
 men are not very romantic; their hard struggle 
 for the necessities of life makes them severely 
 practical, and they would have gone on frying 
 flounders, boiling tom-cods, and steaming clams 
 with wood worth twenty dollars a cord through 
 all time to come, no doubt, if some yachts from 
 New York had not happened to call at the islands 
 three years ago, and discovered how much beauty 
 and romantic novelty was going to waste in those 
 little Penobscot fireplaces. As soon as the fash- 
 ionable yachtsmen and their lady passengers saw 
 the spiral rainbows coiling around the black ket- 
 tles and heard the musical echoes of spent storms 
 among the heaps of glowing coals, they wanted 
 to capture some of them for their New York man- 
 sions, and they engaged all the wood they could 
 get, paying large prices for it. 
 
 The war with Spain came on and disturbed the 
 trade a good deal during 1898, but it has started 
 up with vigor since. The fishermen make a busi- 
 ness of collecting and drying the wood, and the 
 teturns have been so large that now they cook 
 their flounders and clams on splendid modern 
 stoves and ranges, much like those of the people 
 to whom they sell the wood. Most of this 
 precious fuel is slabs, blocks and edgings that 
 were dumped into the Penobscot River from 
 saw-mills a great many years ago. This drift_ 
 floated about-with the tides and currents until it. 
 became water-soaked and went to the bottom, 
 
12 UNUSED RAINBOWS 
 
 where it formed great bars that impeded naviga- 
 tion. For the last twenty years the government 
 has been dredging out the channel. That brings 
 this muddy wood up to the surface again, and 
 when it is dumped out into the salt water its 
 enlarged and extended wood cells become deposi- 
 tories for salts of soda and various combinations 
 of iodine and chlorine which give the rainbow 
 tints to its flames and the explosive utterances as 
 if in protest while burning. The great storms 
 that sometimes sweep across the bay cast this 
 ‘“‘rainbow’’ driftwood at the feet of the fishermen. 
 
 One cannot read of this rainbow wood without 
 remembering two other rainbows of far wider 
 blessing to the world. The first we hear of the 
 rainbow is away back on Mount Ararat, when 
 after their long voyage Noah and his family came 
 out of the ark and built their altar and worshiped 
 God. And the Lord entered into a covenant with 
 them, and promised that so long as the earth 
 remained he would never again destroy its in- 
 habitants with a flood, but that seedtime and har- 
 vest should follow each other until the end of 
 time. And when the Lord sought for some 
 appropriate sign that should always remind them 
 of this comforting promise, he selected the rain- 
 bow as the most appropriate and beautiful pledge. 
 And so he said to Noah and his children that 
 whenever the storm should come and the rain 
 beat down until their hearts would likely be 
 tremulous with fear after the flood they had 
 
UNUSED RAINBOWS ug 
 
 known, when the rain had passed and they saw 
 the rainbow spanning the sky they should remem- 
 
 ber that this was God’s pledge never a 
 send a deluge of wai of waters on the earth. 
 
 The New Testament also has its rainbow, and 
 a very beautiful and precious rainbow it is. We 
 are told about it in the book of Revelation. 
 When John saw the throne of God in his wonder- 
 ful vision, ‘‘there was a rainbow round about the 
 throne, in sight like unto an emerald.’’ What a 
 beautiful pledge of God’s mercy and love! We 
 need not fear to draw near to him in repentance 
 and confession of our sins since there is a rainbow 
 round about the throne, for that rainbow means 
 merey. : 
 
 On another occasion John saw a mighty angel 
 come down from heaven, clothed with a cloud, 
 ae face like the sun, his feet as pillars of fire, and 
 
 ‘a rainbow was upon his head.’’ Itis thus that 
 our r Saviour comes to us from heaven. “His face face 
 
 is like like _the sun, for he is ‘‘the Light of the 
 World”’: oS his feet “are” Tike pillars o of fire, and they 
 show us where to to walk. Through all the clouds 
 of our sins and troubles which he carries for us 
 the rainbow upon his head gives us hope and 
 courage, for it shcws us that God loves us and is 
 seeking to save us. 
 
 But how many people there are who treat this 
 heavenly rainbow as carelessly and indifferently 
 as the islanders of the Maine coast did their prec- 
 ious rainbow fuel! The rainbow about the head 
 
14 UNUSED RAINBOWS 
 
 of Jesus and the rainbow around the throne of 
 God which promise forgiveness and hope to them 
 are treated as though they did not exist, and they 
 go on living without comfort or cheer from the 
 heavenly rainbow. We must use the rainbows 
 God gives us if we are to get their blessing. 
 
THE HEALING OF THE HILLS 
 
 In the summer days there are many people 
 who, thinking of physical health and a rest of 
 mind and body rather than of that high spiritual 
 uplift which he no doubt meant, are using David's 
 words as they turn away from the rut and routine 
 of business to seek the needed refreshment. It 
 is with a sigh of thanksgiving as well asa deep 
 breath of hope that the tired man says, as he 
 checks his trunk for the high places of the north: 
 “TI will lift up mine eyes unto the hills, from 
 whence cometh my help.’’ The hill country has 
 healing in its deep fastnesses for the weary multi- 
 tudes of the city. 
 
 My baby, who has spent the four happy sum- 
 mers of his buoyant life on earth on a great hill- 
 crowned farm in New Hampshire, and who 
 thoroughly agrees with David, was being led in 
 his prayers the other night as usual by his 
 mother. When it came to the place where chil- 
 dren of many generations have said, ‘‘If I should 
 die before I wake,’’ he suddenly started up with 
 the inquiry: ‘‘Who dies us?’’ His mother was 
 rather startled, but replied as composedly as pos- 
 sible that that was a matter which the Lord took 
 care of. ‘‘Well,’’ said the impulsive youngster, 
 “if the Lord dies us, then I don’t love the Lord!”’ 
 
 15 
 
16 THE HEALING OF THE HILLS 
 
 Here was a very startling situation, but his 
 mother still held her ground and told him that 
 the Lord took us to a better place; that if we 
 were good when we died he met us and took us 
 to heaven. Instantly the persistent four-year-old 
 exclaimed: ‘‘Is heaven a farm?”’ 
 
 Now I confess that the boy may have inherited 
 some of that, for I cannot think of heaven with- 
 out something of the freedom and breeziness and 
 out-door feeling of the hills coming into my ideal 
 of it. 
 
 The hills are full of healing because it is there 
 that the woods grow in their fullness and perfec- 
 tion. Oh, the blessedness of the woods! The 
 woods are full of bird-nests. There the crows 
 hold their conventions; there the jay birds play 
 their sharp pranks; there the yellow hammer and 
 the woodpecker do their carpentering and exploit 
 their beauty; there the partridge rears her brood 
 and the fox lurks to make a meal of them. Deep 
 in the woods, where the spring seeps out at the 
 head of the little canyon, the ferns, rare and 
 delicate and fragrant, growin abundance. There 
 the mosses cover the rocks and all nature is sweet 
 and gentle. Even the trees are full of healing; 
 the pine and the balsam fir make the air redolent 
 with a perfume full of God’s own medicine for 
 tired men and weary women. 
 
 The woods are full of precious things of every 
 sort. Jonathan, David’s best friend, once found 
 a bee tree in the woods when he was nearly 
 
THE HEALING OF THE HILLS 1 
 
 starved, and filled himself with the sweet honey. 
 And the record says his eyes grew bright, though 
 they had been dull and lifeless until he found the 
 wild bees’ hive. The woods are full of berries— 
 blackberries and raspberries and huckleberries 
 —and if there be a breathing-place in little glades 
 among the forest the wild strawberries stand up 
 on a stem as long as your finger and grow red 
 and sweet in the summer sun. 
 
 Margaret Sangster sings of it well in her little 
 poem, ‘‘In the Heart of the Woods’’: 
 
 Such beautiful things in the heart of the woods! 
 Flowers and ferns and the soft green moss; 
 Such love of the birds in the solitudes, 
 Where the swift winds glance and the tree-tops toss; 
 Spaces of silence swept with song, 
 Which nobody hears but the God above; 
 Spaces where myriad creatures throng, 
 Sunning themselves in his guarding love. 
 
 Such safety and peace in the heart of the woods, 
 Far from the city’s dust and din, 
 Where passion nor hate of man intrudes, 
 Nor fashion now folly has entered im 
 Deeper than hunter’s trail hath gone 
 Glimmers the tarn where the wild deer drink; 
 And fearless and free comes the gentle fawn, 
 To peep at herself o’er the grassy brink. 
 
 Such pledge of love in the heart of the woods! 
 For the Maker of all things keeps the feast, ° 
 And over the tiny floweret broods 
 With care that for ages has never ceased, 
 
13 THE HEALING OF THE HILLS 
 
 If he cares for this, will he not for thee— 
 Thee, wherever thou art to-day? 
 
 Child of an infinite Father, see; 
 And safe in such gentlest keeping stay. 
 
 The hills have healing in them because it is 
 there the spring brooks are born. Nothing is 
 sweeter than the evolution of a little brook. 
 First, there is the wet, spongy place, where the 
 wild flags bloom, and the ferns are thick; anda 
 little farther down a few drops of water ooze out 
 from under a stone and drop down over another; 
 and a little farther on it begins to trickle and then 
 to gurgle and get asong in its heart, and the 
 birds and the squirrels and the cottontails and 
 the wild fawns drink at its side and thank God. 
 And soon it gets courage and burrows out for 
 itself deep holes under the dark rocks where the 
 trout hide, and then rushes forth over the great 
 boulders and splashes white in the sun, making a 
 sight so beautiful that the little dark water ouzel 
 dives into it for very delight. Thank God for 
 the brook that runs among the hills; the water is 
 sweet and clear and cool, and its whole career, 
 from the time it oozes out from under the rock at 
 the canyon head until it pours its courageous tide 
 into the mountain lake, is full of courage mingled 
 with beauty. 
 
 The hills have healing in them because they lift 
 themselves high up to catch the breath of the 
 clouds that do not come down into the low val- 
 leys, They get up close to God and speak to him 
 
THE HEALING OF THE HILLS 19 
 
 first, and ne gives them gifts to hold as trustees 
 for the wide plains that are far away. 
 
 We should learn lessons from the hills. The 
 closer we get to God and the more completely we 
 open our hearts to receive his rich blessings, not 
 only the happier we shall be ourselves, but the 
 more blessing and benefit we shall be to the 
 world. We ought to catch David’s spirit, and 
 seek our comfort and our strength from high 
 sources. Whenever men are sick or weak or in 
 trouble there is always a temptation to seek for, 
 help from sources that are beneath them. If a 
 man yields to that heislost. But sickness or pain 
 or trouble may be a blessing rare and precious if 
 thereby we are brought into closer fellowship 
 ‘with the high hills of God. 
 
HOW TO MAKE A BIBLE GROW 
 
 Did it ever occur to you that the Bible is a 
 different book for every earnest man or woman? 
 When you think of the Bible you think of your 
 Bible, not somebody else’s Bible. And that is 
 but natural, for it is the same way that we judge 
 our friends. Our friend is different to us than 
 he is to any one else, and in our thought of him 
 he is a different man, in many ways, than he is in 
 the mental portrait drawn by some other person 
 whose friendship with him is as close and intimate 
 as ourown. So the Bible is a personal book and 
 belongs to each of usin a peculiar way. One of 
 the special blessings of becoming a Christian in 
 youth is that it gives our Bible a good long period 
 to grow in beauty and blessing. 
 
 I was very much impressed, recently, in making 
 a pastoral call on a lady who had but a few weeks 
 before been greatly afflicted by the death of her 
 mother, by another phase of this growth and 
 development ina Bible. The mother, who had 
 gone away to heaven, had been a very devoted 
 Christian woman through a long life and had 
 dearly loved her Bible. The sorrowing daughter 
 brought me that precious book to examine. It 
 was an old-fashioned looking book, bound in the 
 thick leather so common a hundred years ago. 
 
 20 
 
HOW TO MAKE A BIBLE GROW 21 
 
 But thick and heavy as the binding had been, it 
 was pretty well worn through, and was frayed at 
 the edges from much use. And a great many 
 chapters showed the evidence of having been read 
 and re-read over and over again. 
 
 One very interesting characteristic of this Bible 
 was that a great many places were marked with 
 the occasion when they had been used to the dear 
 woman’s comfort. Here was one that was read 
 at the funeral of her child. Here was another 
 that had been her comforter when she was sick. 
 Here was still another that she had exulted in in 
 a time of great happiness. And so all through 
 the Bible were these little wayside shrines where 
 the good woman had paused in her pilgrimage to 
 worship God, oz to find the comfort or the inspira- 
 tion she needed on hard days, or to give expres- 
 sion to her joy and gratitude in times of 
 happiness and rejoicing. 
 
 I was greatly interested at hearing the daughter 
 tell how delighted she had been to find that many 
 of these passages which had been such a comfort 
 to her mother were now of the greatest possible 
 comfort to her, though she had never noticed 
 them with any particular interest until after the 
 great sorrow of her mother’s death came upon 
 her. And with tearful eyes she turned to me 
 and asked: ‘*‘Why is it that these verses which I 
 did not before care for seem so new and precious 
 to me now? Is it because my mother loved them 
 so, and I loved them on her account?’’ I told 
 
22 HOW TO MAKE A BIBLE GROW 
 
 her I thought there was a deeper reason for it. 
 .Her mother had found the comfort of these heav- 
 enly words in times when great sorrow and trial 
 had come to her own life, and had marked them 
 then, and the daughter now rejoices in them 
 because she has grown into the same experience. 
 She has grown up to her Bible. She had not 
 found them before because she had not specially 
 needed them, but now that she needs them they 
 are waiting there, running over with blessing and 
 comfort. 
 
 As I handed back the worn and soiled book I 
 said: ‘*That book must be a great treasure to you 
 these days!”’ ; 
 
 ‘‘Ah, yes,’’ was her answer, ‘‘a big fortune 
 would not buy that book from me. When I see 
 that, mother seems nearer to me than at any other 
 time. I see her again in her rocking chair by 
 the window with the Bible on her knees and the 
 old far-away look of heavenly peace on her face.”’ 
 
 I walked away from that home thinking how 
 many people there are who are losing beyond all 
 possibility of recovery by not planting out a 
 Bible in youth, so as to have it growing and blos- 
 soming and bearing its fruit through all the years 
 of life. 
 
 To make a Bible grow well it must be well 
 tended; you must dig about the roots; find out 
 the deep, hidden meanings that lie underneath 
 the surface; rejoice in the spiritual suggestions 
 that come only to those who dig for them, who 
 
HOW TO MAKE A BIBLE GROW 23 
 
 seek for them as a miner digs for gold. A Bible 
 to flourish must be well watered; watered with 
 tears of repentance as well as with the tears of 
 thanksgiving and gratitude. It must have lots of 
 sunshine and air; its pages must be turned fre- 
 quently and given a breathing chance in influenc- 
 ing and molding your life. When you are sad 
 you must goto it for solace; when you are glad 
 you must go to it for words of praise; when you 
 are earnest you must go to it for inspiration to do 
 daring deeds; when you are discouraged you 
 must go toit for the good cheer that will give 
 “songs in the night.’’ Air your Bible in this 
 way, and it will never get old or dry. It will 
 keep new and fresh, and out of such old pages as 
 the “‘Shepherd’s Psalm’’ or the ‘‘Twelfth of 
 Romans’”’ or the ‘‘ Thirteenth of First Corinthians’’ 
 or the ‘*Third of Revelation’’ there will spring up 
 new fountains of water that will make glad the 
 desert places of life and cause the roses to bloom 
 from out the parched ground of trial. 
 
THE BLACK PICKLE 
 
 I had the privilege, lately, in Newcastle, Pa., 
 to spend several hours in the largest tin-mill in 
 the world. Steel bars are brought in and rolled 
 into plates. When these have come to the proper 
 shape and thinness they are put through a pickle 
 which is called ‘‘the black pickle.’’ This pickle 
 is made of a very strong acid, which cleans off the 
 scales which have been formed on the plates dur- 
 ing the heating and rolling necessary to bring 
 them to the proper shape. After this pickling 
 process the plates are put into great annealing- 
 pans, and are run into a furnace where they are 
 kept ten or twelve hours atadull red heat. They 
 are then run through the rolls cold three or four 
 times, after which they are annealed again ata 
 lower temperature; and then they are given 
 what is called ‘‘the white pickle,’’ which is not so 
 strong as the first, and is intended to scour and 
 beautify the plates. They are then ready to 
 receive the plating of tin which fits them for their 
 commercial use. 
 
 As I watched this very interesting process, it 
 seemed to me that that was very much the way 
 in which God makes men and women into good 
 Christians. We have to go through many a roll- 
 
 24 
 
THE BLACK PICKLE 25 
 
 ing and crushing process, humiliating to our pride 
 and self-sufficiency, before we can be brought to 
 the proper shape in which God can use us. 
 Then, if there be scales and rough edges which 
 have come to us in the experience of life, God 
 often puts us into a pickle of discipline that 
 brings us out smarting, it may be, from the sharp 
 acid experiences through which we are compelled 
 to pass, but brings us out with many of the little 
 scales and meannesses of life taken away. Then 
 God has his annealing-pans where we are com- 
 pelled day by day to remain in the hard, steady 
 heat of constant toil under the heavy strain of 
 trial; but if we do not rebel against God's provi- 
 dence, and yield ourselves to it in a submissive 
 spirit, there will come a time when God will put 
 us through the white pickle, and we shall know 
 gentler experiences that are meant to beautify 
 us, and make our characters attractive and 
 gracious, and finally we shall come to be the per- 
 fect men and women that he wants us to be. 
 
 I picked up one of the tin plates that had just 
 come out through the rollers after its bath in the 
 boiling hot tin, and was astonished to see that I 
 could behold myself in it as in the best mirror. 
 So God cannot be satisfied with us until, through 
 the chastening and discipline of life, he brings us 
 to such a submissive and flexible and gracious 
 spirit that we bend ourselves with perfect readi- 
 ness to fulfill his purposes and our hearts are so 
 purified from all the black scales of self-indul- 
 
26 THE BLACK PICKLE 
 
 gence and pride and sinful desire that they are a 
 mirror to his blessed face and he sees his own 
 divine features reflected in our thoughts and 
 ambitions. 
 
THE SECRET OF A LIGHT HEART 
 
 I have no faith whatever in any quack remedies 
 for so curing the ills of life that one may be per- 
 mitted to live and work, fight life’s battles, and 
 at last meet the great enemy with a cheerful face 
 and a light heart. But there are certain great 
 causes which always produce certain results, and 
 it is well for us to be thoroughly intrenched in 
 the knowledge that may help us to be thus 
 equipped for the duties of life, for next to having 
 a pure heart there is nothing can come to us in 
 this world so good as a heart that is light and 
 glad, that goes bounding along the way, happy to 
 be alive and busy about its work. 
 
 The world is full of heavy-hearted people. We 
 meet men and women every day of whom when 
 we look into their eyes we know that their hearts 
 are like lead. Sometimes they are rich people 
 who have in abundance the things that men most 
 envy; but neither a soft-cushioned carriage with 
 thoroughbred horses nor a richly-caparisoned 
 yacht with fast-speeding sails is able to outfly the 
 enemies of gladness which load down the human 
 heart with burdens that the world has no power 
 to take away. 
 
 I am convinced that no message on this subject 
 is of any value unless it may apply to us all alike, 
 
 ‘ee 
 
28 THE SECRET OF A LIGHT HEART 
 
 rich or poor. It must be universal, and within 
 the reach of every one, to be of any great com- 
 fort. But there are some things that can always 
 be depended upon to lighten the heart of its load. 
 
 I think the first secret of a light heart is friend- 
 ship. Wecan never be quite in despair so long 
 as we are conscious that we have good, strong, 
 noble friends whose hearts are truetous. Itisa 
 great mistake to live in this world without culti- 
 vating friends. I do not mean doing it in any 
 commercial way in order that they may stand by 
 you when you need them; but I mean that our 
 hearts should come into sympathetic touch with 
 good people, so that we shall draw daily gladness 
 and sunshine from the knowledge of their sym- 
 pathy and appreciation. We must not forget that 
 the basis, or rather the nucleus, around which all 
 our great friendships must gather is our friendship 
 with Jesus. Jesus said to his disciples, and 
 through them tous: ‘‘I have called you friends.”’ 
 If we are living in a relation of friendship with 
 Jesus, then we have constantly one great window 
 of light into our hearts. 
 
 Another secret of alight heart closely akin to 
 friendship, and indeed,only another phase of it, is 
 in the consciousness that some people who know 
 you well think well of you and regard your work 
 with kindness. The action of such a conscious- 
 ness is very quick. Who of us has not risen in 
 the morning from an almost sleepless night, gone 
 through the breakfast without enthusiasm or 
 
THE SECRET OF A LIGHT HEART 29 
 
 appetite, and thought of the work of the day to 
 come with fear and trembling; but the postman 
 brought with him a remedy all but miraculous in 
 its effect? It was in the shape of a letter full of 
 thanksgiving and appreciation and breathing a 
 kind regard. How quickly it acted on the tired 
 nerves! The headache was swept away at once; 
 all the languidness was gone. Life was worth 
 living; your work was not a failure after all. 
 Somebody cared and admired, and so you went to 
 your work with a glad heart and faced the day 
 with music in your soul. 
 
 Now itis always possible for us to have that 
 kind of help to give us good cheer for the begin- 
 ning of the day. For if we live honestly toward 
 God, living up to our light, trying to please God 
 in everything, we shall certainly have the con- 
 sciousness that God, who knows us better than 
 any one else, is pleased with us. He knows that 
 our work is worth while; he knows us clear to 
 the core, and he smiles. Is it not true that much 
 of the unrest and disquietude of soul from which 
 we suffer comes from the feeling that, however 
 much other people may be pleased with us, God 
 is not pleased? There is only one way to lighten 
 your heart of that feeling, and that is ‘‘make it 
 up’’ with God. I have known friends to be at 
 outs because one had wronged the other, and all 
 joy and peace were gone, faces lowering, and 
 hearts heavy. Then I haveseen them afterwards 
 when frank apology and confession had been 
 
30 THE SECRET OF A LIGHT HEART 
 
 made, and the wrong-doer had been forgiven, and 
 faces were bright and shining; hearts were light 
 as a bird’s wing. We have wronged God, and 
 our hearts are heavy. The way to get them light 
 and happy is to frankly confess our sins and 
 receive forgiveness. 
 
 Another secret of a light heart is a conscious- 
 ness that we are helpful. I have always noticed 
 that it is more likely to be the person in a family 
 who is waited on and petted and spoiled by all 
 the others who is heavy-hearted, than the one 
 who carries most of the family burdens. Selfish- 
 ness never has any wings. Selfishness is like 
 heavy dough that will not rise, but sinks 
 together, soggy and sour. You might as well fill 
 a ball with lead to make it bounce as to fill your 
 heart and life with selfishness to make it cheerful 
 and happy. Jesus was happy, though he saw the 
 cross before him, because he saw how much he 
 would help and bless the world., So not one of 
 us will ever see a day so dark, or will ever know 
 a time when our hearts will be so depressed, but 
 that the consciousness that we are helping some- 
 body, and that our work is making it brighter and 
 happier for another, will bring a ray of cheerful 
 sunshine home to us and make life bearable. 
 
 Finally, a certain secret for a light heart lies in 
 the assurance that this is God’s world and not the 
 devil’s, and that though we cannot see how it 
 may be coming out for the best, God does see; 
 and though we do not behold it, there is a bright 
 
THE SECRET OF A LIGHT HEART 31 
 
 side to any present difficulty, and ere long the 
 bright side will turn itself toward us, and God 
 will make us know that all things are working 
 together for our good. 
 
 Count them over again for your soul’s comfort, 
 these secrets of a light heart: Friendship, appre- 
 ciation, consciousness of being helpful, and 
 God’s guidance. Now any one of these could 
 keep us from despair, but every one of us may 
 have them all. You may have them just as 
 surely in the narrow path of the wage-earner as 
 if your income were counted by millions. You 
 may have them in the kitchen or the foundry as 
 certainly as in the parlor or the counting-room. 
 They are within your reach because you are men 
 and women, children of God; and they are doors 
 which God sets before you, and which no man or 
 woman other than yourself can shut. 
 
THE LOST CHORD IN CHRISTIAN 
 LIFE 
 
 There is no more vigorous statement in the 
 Bible than the statement of the Lord in the third 
 chapter of Revelation concerning his distaste for 
 a lukewarm Christian life. How sharp and clear- 
 cut is the declaration: ‘‘So, then, because thou 
 art lukewarm, and neither cold nor hot, I will 
 spue thee out of my mouth.’’ The trouble with 
 these people was that the heat had gone out of 
 their religion. It was not entirely frozen up, but 
 there would have been more hope of obtaining 
 service from them, perhaps, if they had never 
 been heated with religious fervor than there was 
 after they had fallen into that lukewarm condition. 
 
 There is a certain pungency that belongs to 
 some things, and if you take that away, although 
 it may look very much the same, it is absolutely 
 worthless. It is like the salt which, having lost 
 its savor, is good for nothing, and can only be 
 cast out on the waste heap. It is like the yeast 
 that had lost its power to leaven; it is as useless 
 as a piece of earth or stone. It is like a seed 
 when the undiscoverable and indescribable prin- 
 ciple of life is gone; itis useless. So there isa 
 something between hot water and lukewarm 
 water that, having disappeared, takes away all 
 
 32 
 
THE LOST CHORD 33 
 
 the value with it. Really hot water produces 
 steam, but lukewarm water produces nothing but 
 disgust. These people had lost the power to 
 boil; they had lost their steam in religious life. _ 
 There was no rush of spiritual emotion; there 
 was no glow of inspiration; there was no effer- 
 vescence of religious feeling; there was no 
 bounding of enthusiastic joy. 
 
 It is not always easy to explain the difference 
 between two Christians, one of whom is luke- 
 warm and the other steaming with spiritual life; 
 but we all recognize the difference at once. The 
 one depresses us spiritually, and the other arouses 
 us. When wecome in contact with a Christian 
 personality whose enthusiasm is always in a glow 
 it brightens and sparkles and runs over into our 
 own natures. It thaws us; it warms us when we 
 come near to it. When people are in that condi- 
 tion they respond readily to the influence of the 
 Spirit of God. Philip, the evangelist of the early 
 Christianity, was a man of that type. An impres- 
 sion from the Spirit of God sent him into the 
 desert; another impression from God’s Spirit 
 sent him climbing into the chariot beside the 
 eunuch, where his overflowing Christian faith 
 won the man’s heart to Christ. 
 
 Now, the engineer, when he finds that his steam 
 has gone down, and the water is lukewarm in the 
 boiler, knows that only one thing can save him, 
 and that is a new fire under the furnace. And so 
 when a Christian finds himself in a lukewarm 
 
34 THE LOST CHORD 
 
 spirit—a spirit which is distasteful to his Lord— 
 the thing for him to do at once is to fire up. The 
 reading of the Bible and prayer will help, but 
 many people die down into lukewarmness for lack 
 of exercising their abilities for the Lord. 
 
 Harriet Beecher Stowe’s daughter relates an 
 occurrence which took place soon after the re- 
 moval of the family from Cincinnati to Bruns- 
 wick, Me. On a cold day, when the ice had 
 formed over a little pond near their new home, 
 Mrs. Stowe called the children to go with her. 
 Then, full of enthusiastic memories of her child- 
 hood days in Litchfield, Conn., she herself ran 
 and slid on the ice, but on looking back saw that 
 the children had not followed. They were hud- 
 dled in a little group on the bank. Then for the 
 first time it occurred to her that this was their 
 first experience with ice, and she hurried back to 
 them, exclaiming: ‘‘Well, I feel as helpless asa 
 hen who has hatched ducks.”’ 
 
 We can all imagine how soon a little experience 
 taught those children that their feet were adapted 
 to slide on the ice and awoke their dormant 
 enthusiasm. So there is in every human heart 
 the capacity for the enthusiastic love and service 
 of Jesus Christ. But as the child must learn the 
 intoxicating delight of feeling the gliding ice 
 under his feet and the breath of the wind on his 
 cheek in order to enjoy the skating, so to put our 
 religion at the boiling point we must thrust our- 
 selves into the midst of the fight, we must take 
 
THE LOST CHORD 35 
 
 hold upon whatever service offers, and give our- 
 selves up to it with devotion. As we work, the 
 enthusiasm, the gladness, will come. 
 
 Let no one undervalue the importance of this 
 vital breath of Christian life. It is very little we 
 can do without it. And we are not only helpless 
 ourselves withcut it, but we lower the temper- 
 ature of the people around us who would make 
 steam if we did not drag them down by our luke- 
 warm condition. Let us sing with Charles 
 
 Wesley: 
 Oh, that in me the sacred fire 
 Might now begin to glow, 
 Burn up the dross of base desire 
 And make the mountains flow. 
 
SUGAR-COATING THE ILLS OF LIFE 
 
 I suppose there are few people even among the 
 most faithful and loyal Christians who have not 
 at some time in their lives wondered at that 
 strong and vital declaration of Paul: ‘All 
 things work together for good to them that love 
 God.’’ While all who go forward faithfully to do 
 their duty, walking by faith where they cannot 
 walk by sight, come at last to rejoice in the truth 
 of that promise, I think it is very wise for us 
 sometimes to bring before our thought the sim- 
 ple and understandable ways by which God 
 brings the promise into realization in the ordi- 
 nary life illustrated in the experience of all of us. 
 It will surely take away the bitter taste of the ills 
 we have to endure to feel that we are getting 
 more than value received for the endurance. 
 
 One of the common ills which most of us have 
 to meet is the poverty and narrowness of our 
 means. There are comparatively few people in 
 the world who are not compelled to hold daily 
 counsel with themselves in order to devise ways 
 and means by which they may keep their ex- 
 penses within their income. But this poverty has 
 many blessings. It does much for every one who 
 accepts the situation cheerfully. First, it makes 
 us self-reliant. We are self-supporting. There 
 
 36 
 
SUGAR-COATING THE ILLS OF LIFE 37 
 
 is in that thought a great joy. It adds to our 
 self-respect. It enlarges our manhood or our 
 womanhood to feel that we are giving an honest 
 return for our living. Second, it inspires in us 
 loyalty and fidelity of character. We cannot go 
 star-gazing; we cannot be careless or indifferent. 
 We must fulfill our obligations. That isa great 
 safeguard to character. Third, it binds families 
 together in a bond of fellowship far stronger and 
 more sacred than that ordinarily known among 
 people who do not have to co-operate in their toil 
 in order to bring the needed comforts and bless- 
 ings of domestic life. No man can measure how 
 much happiness that adds to the world. Fourth, 
 it gives a sympathy with other workers that noth- 
 ing else can give. It is ‘‘a fellow feeling that 
 makes us wondrous kind.” And, finally, though 
 I might add many other blessings to the number, 
 it has a tendency to keep usin a spirit of humility, 
 and keenly alive to a sense of dependence upon 
 God, which is the proper and only wise attitude 
 for any man or woman. Riches often cause 
 people to feel that they can get along without the 
 Lord, and thus bring them to destruction. If it 
 is our poverty and our toil that keep us close to 
 God, then how thankful we ought to be for their 
 medicine and discipline. 
 
 Sickness and pain suggest another of life’s ills 
 which often seems mysterious to us, and from 
 which we naturally desire to be relieved. But as 
 some one has said, ‘‘A man’s sick bed is often 
 
38 SUGAR-COATING THE ILLS OF LIFE 
 
 God’s flower bed.’’ The suffering of the body 
 not infrequently is the cause of the enriching and 
 beautifying of the spirit. There are many plants 
 that have to be crushed to bring out their fra- 
 grance, and there are many souls which never grow 
 into sweetness and never give forth the perfume 
 of the Christian graces until their weakness and 
 pain bring them into humility before the Lord. 
 Failure in our plans and purposes, whether of 
 a business or social nature, is often a bitter and a 
 severe trial for a proud soul. Perhaps some one 
 is saying, ‘‘Surely there is no way of sugar-coat- 
 ing a failure so that it may seem bearable.’’ But 
 there is a very wise and genuine way of doing it. 
 All it requires is that we shall properly appreciate 
 the purpose of our living here. We are not in 
 the world to win a fortune for somebody to 
 quarrel over after we are dead. Nor are we here 
 to make a brief display before men and women 
 whose earthly lives are as frailasourown. But 
 rather we are here to build up characters that 
 shall be enduring. And everything we undertake 
 to do with an honest, true purpose, and to which 
 we devote ourselves with a manly or womanly 
 spirit, leaves its deposit in character. Our busi- 
 ness venture may succeed or fail; our benevolent 
 purposes may win applause or they may bring on 
 us asneer; but that has nothing whatever to do 
 with the great result which God is seeking in us— 
 the building up of a good, strong, pure man or 
 woman. So it is often that one man’s failures 
 
SUGAR-COATING THE ILLS OF LIFE 39 
 
 are infinitely more precious and glorious in the 
 eyes of God than another man’s successes. Do 
 you think there is no relief in that? There is 
 infinite comfort and relief init. If we have done 
 our best, honestly and faithfully, performing 
 what seemed to us to be our duty, then we have 
 no reason to have the blues or be depressed 
 though we have apparently failed. We may 
 have failed, but God has not failed in building up 
 in us the character which he loves. 
 
 But there are tenderer ills and sorrows which 
 get still closer into our heart’s citadel than those 
 Ihave mentioned. For instance, the loss of the 
 friendship or love of those in whose appreciation 
 we have sunned ourselves and whose sympathy 
 has added so much to life’s sweetness and happi- 
 ness. Through some misunderstanding, it may 
 be, or it may be through a better understanding, 
 our idol has turned to clay; or the drift of time, 
 like the sweep of the current, has separated us, 
 and is ever more and more separating us from 
 the friendship which has meant so much in the 
 past. Can there be any good in that? Yes, in- 
 deed, there can be much good init. Friendship 
 and love are divine gifts and are never given to 
 true souls in vain. No honest man or pure 
 woman has ever yet given the heart in a sincere 
 friendship or in genuine love without being made 
 larger and nobler and more splendid in his or her 
 nature. The friend may be lost; but that en- 
 largement of soul, that widening of the mental 
 
40 SUGAR-COATING THE ILLS OF LIFE 
 
 and spiritual horizon, that deepening of sym- 
 pathy, is not lost, and never can be lost. And so 
 it is true that thousands of men and women who 
 have lost their dearest friends and the fondest 
 loves of life, and have gone on alone without 
 them, have thanked God, even through their 
 tears, for the enriching of the soul by the blessed 
 gift of a great friendship or an unselfish love. 
 
 Others there are whose friends have taken 
 wings and flown away to that realm from which 
 no traveler returns. We went with them as far 
 as we could, like Paul’s friends who went with 
 him to the ship when he set sail from Miletus. 
 We went down to the very valley of shadows and 
 on to the brink of the river with our loved ones. 
 There we could only say our prayer for them and 
 bid them farewell. But, thank God, we “‘sorrow 
 not as others which have no hope,”’ for we shall see 
 them again and clasp hands with them in eternal 
 reunion. Heaven will not make them forget us, 
 and what is left of earth will not make us forget 
 them. Love isso vital a plant that death itself is 
 not a winter long enough or cold enough to kill 
 it or torobitof itspower to blossom. And so we 
 may think of our dear ones whom we have ‘loved 
 long since and lost awhile’’ as only gone before 
 us, and whose presence and fellowship shall seem 
 all the more precious to us in heaven because of 
 this absence. 
 
 And so of all of life’s ills and sorrows it is easy 
 to show the ‘“‘silver lining ’’ within the clouds. 
 
SUGAR-COATING THE ILLS OF LIFE 41 
 
 And though there may be ever and anon perplex- 
 ing experiences too deep for our line to fathom, 
 if we go onward with faith we shall not long be 
 kept in doubt of God’s meaning. Soon our 
 hearts will rejoice in the consciousness of God’s 
 wisdom and mercy and in the evidence of his 
 goodness that will teach us that Paul never said a 
 truer thing than when he laid it down as a law of 
 universal application that ‘‘all things work to- 
 gether for good to them that love God.’’ 
 
THE COMFORT OF THE HYMNS 
 
 I am sorry for the man or the woman who has 
 not so absorbed the great Christian hymns that 
 they have become part and parcel of the heart’s 
 life. Nothing else save the Bible has such power 
 to give cheer and courage and support in all the 
 emergencies of life. The Christian religion is a 
 singing religion; it makes music in the heart and 
 it easily adapts itself to music. We do not always 
 want the same hymns, but the sweet singers of 
 Israel have poured forth from their deepest souls 
 such a variety of themes that we may all find 
 expression in them for our feelings and for every 
 emotion that the winds of life awaken in our 
 hearts. 
 
 There are times when our exultant souls are 
 ready to sing with Charles Wesley: 
 
 O for a thousand tongues, to sing 
 My great Redeemer’s praise; 
 The glories of my God and King, 
 
 The triumphs of his grace! 
 
 There are other days when the faith needs 
 steadying, when we are in the midst of trial, and 
 have to walk by faith and not by sight. Then 
 we need George Keith’s old ‘‘Portuguese Hymn’’ 
 on which to plant our feet: 
 
 42 
 
THE COMFORT OF THE HYMNS 43 
 
 How firm a foundation, ye saints of the Lord, 
 Is laid for your faith in his excellent word! 
 What more can he say than to you he hath said, 
 To you, who for refuge to Jesus have fled? 
 
 There are occasions when the heart dwells in 
 the land of pathos and tears are not far away; 
 when the spirit is set to a minor key. How 
 sweet then it is to sing with William Cullen 
 Bryant: 
 
 Deem not that they are blest alone 
 Whose days a peaceful tenor keep; 
 The anointed Son of God makes known 
 
 A blessing for the eyes that weep. 
 
 Or, with Oliver Wendell Holmes, to the same 
 tune of Dwight: 
 
 Oh, Love divine, that stooped to share 
 Our sharpest pang, our bitterest tear! 
 
 On thee we cast each earth-born care; 
 We smile at pain while thou art near. 
 
 There are hours when memory rises to the 
 throne, and we recall the gladness of our hearts 
 when first we knew the Lord; the first happy day 
 of our conversion comes back tous. Perhaps it 
 is the conversion of some one else whose glad 
 testimony brings back with sweet tenderness the 
 memory of our own, and then there are no words 
 for us like those of Philip Doddridge, to the tune 
 of Rockingham: 
 
 O happy day that fixed my choice 
 On thee, my Saviour and my God! 
 
 Well may this glowing heart rejoice, 
 And tell its raptures all abroad. 
 
44 THE COMFORT OF THE HYMNS 
 
 There are still other experiences that make life 
 seem narrow and hard to us; days when the mis- 
 understanding of friends, the unjust and cruel 
 criticism of enemies, trouble us and seem to shut 
 us into a lonely little world of ourown. Ah! in 
 such an hour how the heart takes wing in Faber’s 
 sweet hymn: 
 
 There’s a wideness in God’s mercy, 
 Like the wideness of the sea; 
 
 There’s a kindness in his justice, 
 Which is more than liberty. 
 
 By the time we have reached the third verse the 
 heart begins to lose its bitterness, the healing 
 balm of the message begins to have its effect, and 
 we revel in the melody of the precious lines: 
 
 For the love of God is broader 
 Than the measure of man’s mind; 
 And the heart of the Eternal 
 Is most wonderfully kind. 
 
 There are days when the fight is on us, and we 
 must take up our weapons and go to the front and 
 stand on the firing line, and do our duty bravely 
 as soldiers:of Jesus Christ. At such a time when 
 the devil tempts us to think we are harshly 
 treated, and the soldier spirit is getting low in 
 our thoughts, how some of the grand old battle 
 songs of the church revive our fainting spirits! 
 How many a half-fainting soldier has been in- 
 spired with that glorious bugle blast of Isaac 
 Watts: 
 
THE COMFORT OF THE HYMNS 45 
 
 Am I a soldier of the cross, 
 A follower of the Lamb, 
 
 And shall I fear to own his cause, 
 Or blush to speak his name? 
 
 No matter how hard the battle, nor how weary 
 we have been with the long march, by the time 
 we sing that hymn through to the martial strain 
 of old Arlington we are ready to shout before we 
 are done: 
 
 Thy saints in all this glorious war 
 Shall conquer though they die; 
 
 They see the triumph from afar, 
 By faith they bring it nigh. 
 
 No place in life is so dark that the great hymn 
 writers have not been there before us and left 
 songs to comfort us. Does fortune and health 
 and strength seem to fade, still we may sing with 
 Mrs. Bonar: 
 
 Fade, fade, each earthly joy; 
 Jesus is mine. 
 Break every tender tie; 
 Jesus is mine. 
 Dark is the wilderness, 
 Earth has no resting-place, 
 Jesus alone can bless; 
 Jesus is mine, 
 
 Have our friends gone away into the future, 
 whither we cannot go with them? And do we 
 follow on with trembling steps, uncertain of the 
 path? How the words of Newman comfort us: 
 
46 THE COMFORT OF THE HYMNS 
 
 Lead, kindiy Light, amid the encircling gloom, 
 Lead thou me on! 
 The night is dark, and I am far from home; 
 Lead thou me on! 
 Keep thou my feet; I do not ask to see 
 The distant scene; one sfep enough for me. 
 And as we sing the holy light falls round us, and 
 our mellowed hearts gain courage to trust God as 
 We Say: 
 So long thy power hath blest me, sure it still 
 Will lead me on, 
 O’er moor and fen, o’er crag and torrent, till 
 The night is gone, 
 And with the morn those angel faces smile 
 Which I have loved long since, and lost awhile. 
 
 And so there is not a day that passes over our 
 heads but some sweet hymn, like ‘‘Rock of Ages, 
 Cleft for Me,’’ or ‘‘Jesus, Lover of My Soul,’’ or 
 ‘‘Nearer, My God, to Thee,’’ feeds our hearts 
 with the bread of life. 
 
 Let us learn the hymns, commit them to 
 memory, treasure them up, and they will grow 
 more precious to us as the years go on. And 
 after a while, when we have ceased to sing on 
 earth, the longing of our hearts, which we have 
 sung so many times, will be gratified: 
 
 Oh, that with yonder sacred throng 
 We at his feet may fall! 
 
 We'll join the everlasting song, 
 And crown him Lord of all. 
 
THE HAPPINESS OF SOUL-WINNING 
 
 The writer of the book of Hebrews makes a 
 very striking statement concerning Moses when 
 he accounts for the refusal of the great law-giver 
 to accept a position as a courtier in Egypt, a 
 place of high honor and wealth as the son of 
 Pharaoh’s daughter, and his deliberate choice to 
 suffer affliction with the poor and despised He- 
 brews, as being because he ‘‘had respect unto the 
 recompense of the reward.’’ Moses expected to 
 get more happiness, more joy and peace, more 
 splendid results, by enduring the present poverty 
 of his people in Egypt and insuring his peace 
 with God and his future joy and triumph. And 
 Moses got his reward. What a splendid reward 
 it was! No doubt, at the time, many a joke was 
 made, and many a sneering comment went from 
 lip to lip among the young nobles and hangers-on 
 around the court of Pharaoh, concerning ‘‘that 
 young fool Moses,’’ who had thrown away sucha 
 brilliant career to cast his lot among a company of 
 slaves. But when Moses followed the pillar of 
 fire through the Red Sea, and stood victorious on 
 the other side, while those same young lordlings 
 were washed up dead on the shore, the sneer had 
 lost its point. Moses’ life widened and enlarged 
 from the very day he made that noble choice, and 
 
 47 
 
48 HAPPINESS OF SOUL-WINNING 
 
 God rewarded him richly in this world, and he 
 has been having his reward in heaven for thou- 
 sands of years. 
 
 So it is all right to look on the. reward side of — 
 Christian work. Even Christ followed on the 
 path toward the cross ‘“‘for the joy that was set 
 before him.’’ Let us look fora moment at the 
 several kinds of happiness which come to those 
 who devote themselves to winning souls to Christ. 
 
 First, there is the happiness of noble work. 
 There is a joy in the exercise of one’s gifts. 
 There is a joy in simply exerting one’s powers. 
 This is true of mere animal life. The hunter or 
 the fisherman will work hard all day long in pur- 
 suit of game from the mere joy that comes from 
 action and from triumphing over difficulties. 
 The soul-winner has that kind of joy in its high- 
 est form. He has the joy of using his noblest 
 powers in the pursuit of those whom, if he succeed 
 in winning them, he will not hurt or destroy, but 
 bless in the highest possible degree. The 
 hunter must kill in order to have the sweets of 
 victory, but the soul-winner has the higher joy 
 of making alive. If those who are full of lethargy 
 and negligence in Christian circles could experi- 
 ence for a little while the thrilling gladness of 
 winning a soul from sin and bringing it as a trophy 
 to the feet of Jesus, they would realize how taste- 
 less is an idle life compared with the life of a 
 soul-winner. 
 
 Another kind of joy comes from the sense of 
 
HAPPINESS OF SOUL-WINNING $49 
 
 knowing that we are right. This is the joy that 
 nerves the arm of the reformer who fights against 
 odds and yet whose soul is filled with peace 
 because he is sure he is doing his duty and is 
 pleasing God. The men and women who are 
 giving their hearts up to winning other souls from 
 paths of sin and turning them to righteousness 
 never doubt that they are pleasing God. They 
 know that he who loved lost sinners sufficiently 
 to come down to earth, putting aside all the glory 
 of heaven and giving himself up to a life of pov- 
 erty and suffering, finally dying the cruel death 
 on the cross that he might save them, will be 
 pleased through and through when his disciples 
 seek to win these ransomed souls from the mire 
 of sin and bring them as jewels for his crown. 
 That isa kind of joy in which there can be no 
 sting of bitterness or regret. Some joys are 
 mingled with sorrow, but the joy that comes from 
 knowing that you are pleasing God, that you are 
 making happy the heart of Jesus by winning your 
 fellow-men toa better life, isa joy that has no 
 shadow on it. 
 
 Another happiness comes to us from making 
 other people happy. That, indeed, is one of the 
 greatest sources of happiness in the world, and 
 no one ever has it with sweeter fullness than the 
 soul-winner. The deepest joy you can ever give 
 - to man or woman is to bring to their ears in such 
 an attractive way that they will listen to it the 
 good news of salvation in Jesus Christ. It will 
 
50 HAPPINESS OF SOUL-WINNING 
 
 not only make them happy, but it will make them 
 springs of happiness that will goon starting up 
 other sources of happiness in other hearts every- 
 where they go. 
 
 Happiness also comes from the gratitude and 
 appreciation of those whom we have helped. 
 One of the sweetest human thoughts that the 
 heart of man is capable of knowing is the con- 
 sciousness that he is appreciated, that people are 
 grateful because he has made their lives sweeter 
 and richer. The soul-winner knows that joy. 
 For if you win a man to Christ, you not only 
 cause him to love Jesus, but forever after there 
 must bea kindly place in his heart toward you, 
 the cause of this sunburst of joy that has come to 
 him. 
 
 Then there is the joy of feeling that we have 
 treasures laid up that can be drawn upon for hap- 
 piness in what otherwise would be lonely and 
 sorrowful times. The soul-winner has that joy. 
 Memory’s storehouses are filled with treasures, 
 reminiscences that recall sweetest victories in 
 winning tempted and tried and sinning men and 
 women to know Christ as their Saviour and 
 friend. It has been my privilege to know a good 
 many soul-winners after they were old and feeble, 
 and were drawing near the end of their journey, 
 and I know that such memories were a constant 
 source of joy—a joy that neither sickness nor 
 poverty nor old age could take away from them. 
 
 And these treasures will not lose their value in 
 
HAPPINESS OF SOUL-WINNING 51 
 
 eternity. Our temporal treasures, such as money 
 and fame, we must leave behind when we die, 
 and go empty-handed, the pauper and the mil- 
 lionaire alike, into eternity. But the peculiar 
 treasures of the soul-winner grow brighter in the 
 sunshine of immortality, and we shall there know 
 such joy as we cannot now appreciate or under- 
 stand, in the reward that God shall give us for 
 winning souls, 
 
LIVING ONE’S RELIGION 
 
 Gustave Doré, the great French artist, was 
 .once traveling in foreign lands. Through some 
 accident he had lost his passport. When he came 
 to pass through the custom house of another 
 country, and his passport was demanded, he told 
 the custom officer that he had lost it, but assured 
 him that he was Doré, the artist. 
 
 The custom house officer did not believe him, 
 and said, mockingly, ‘‘Oh, yes, we have a good 
 many like you! You are Doré, are you?”’ 
 
 SP eSen 
 
 “Very well, then; take this pencil and paper’’ 
 —and he handed these to him as he spoke—‘‘and 
 prove it.”’ 
 
 ‘“‘All right,’’ said Doré. And with an amused 
 smile playing on his face he took the pencil and 
 began to make a neat little sketch of a company 
 of peasants on the wharf, with their piles of bag- 
 gage, and the children playing about them. 
 
 The custom officer looked on with astonishment 
 for a few moments, as the life-like creation grew 
 under the pencil, and then said: ‘‘That will do, 
 sir. You are Doré, forno man but Doré could 
 do that.’’ 
 
 That is the way we are to prove our Chris- 
 tianity. We must carry our passport in our every- 
 
 52 
 
LIVING ONE’S RELIGION 53 
 
 day conduct. A Christian spirit which shows 
 itself in smiling face and kindly words and right 
 conduct is the best introduction one can have. 
 Sometimes it is a protection better than any 
 armor. 
 
 Many years ago a distinguished physician of 
 Philadelphia left his house one morning, and was 
 hurrying down the street, when he noticed a 
 peculiar and ferocious-looking man whose gaze 
 was fastened upon him. Being one of the most 
 kind and polite of men, he smiled gently, raised 
 his hat, and passed on, when suddenly he heard a 
 shot. Turning, he found that the stranger had 
 just left his home with the insane purpose of kill- 
 ing the first man he met. He was the first man, 
 but his kind face and benign smile had thrown 
 the man off his guard, and the next passer-by had 
 caught the bullet intended for him. That smile 
 and bow saved his life. 
 
 The Lord takes care of the weakest things 
 which stand boldly to do their duty in their own 
 place. Paul declares that there is a kind of wise 
 simplicity which outwits the devil: ‘‘I would have 
 you wise unto that which is good, and simple con- 
 cerning evil. And the God of peace shall bruise 
 Satan under your feet shortly.”’ The best way 
 to overcome the evil one is to frankly stand by 
 the right, using the common sense the Lord has 
 given us, but living in the spirit of harmlessness 
 taught us by our Saviour. 
 
 A herd of five thousand beeves were toiling 
 
54 LIVING ONE’S RELIGION 
 
 over a lonely trail from New Mexico to Kansas, 
 leaving behind them, across the plains and val- 
 leys, a swath as bare as if it had been swept by 
 the fiery breath of a simoom. Suddenly the 
 leader of the herd, a huge steer, started back in 
 terror, gave vent to a snort of warning, moved to 
 the right and passed on. Those immediately in 
 his rear turned to the right or left, and their 
 example was followed by each long-horned pil- 
 grim as he reached the dreaded spot. When the 
 entire herd had passed, a wide, trampled track lay 
 behind, but near the middle of this dusty space 
 stood a luxuriant island of grass, three feet in 
 diameter. A herdsman rode up to the spot and 
 dismounted, expecting to find a rattlesnake, a 
 creature of which cattle as well as horses have a 
 well-founded dread. Instead of a serpent, how- 
 ever, the grass tuft contained only a harmless 
 killdeer plover covering her nest, while her wings 
 were kept in constant and violent motion. Seen 
 indistinctly through the grass, she had evidently 
 been mistaken by the steer for a rattlesnake. 
 She did not take flight even at the approach of 
 the cowboy, but valiantly pecked at his boot as he 
 gently pushed her to one side to find that the 
 nest contained four unfledged killdeers. In the 
 story of the little bird you have illustrated the 
 wisdom of the serpent and the harmlessness of 
 the dove which Jesus recommends to all those 
 who follow him. 
 
 We cannot carry that sort of credentials in our 
 
LIVING ONE’S RELIGION 55 
 
 lives, however, unless we have real goodness in 
 our hearts. The Saviour says that out of the 
 abundance of the heart the mouth speaks. The 
 spring on the hillside gushes out, pouring forth 
 the kind of water that is in the secret reservoir in 
 the hill behind it; so, to have good conversation 
 and good deeds coming out to view all the while, 
 there must be a good heart back of them. The 
 clean, frank, open heart—that it is, which, shin- 
 ing in the countenance, speaking in our words, 
 and living in simple deeds, will tell for the truth. 
 
 “‘John,’’ said an artist to a Chinaman who was 
 unwillingly acting as a model, ‘“‘smile. If you 
 don’t look pleasant I’ll not pay you.”’ 
 
 ““"No use,’’ grumbled the washerman. “If 
 Chinaman feelee ugly all the time, he lookee 
 ugly.’’ Which is as true of everybody else in the 
 world as of John Chinaman. 
 
 But if our hearts are open to heaven’s influence 
 and we are really rejoicing in fellowship with 
 Christ, we shall find cause for singing under all 
 circumstances. A friend was one day walking in 
 one of the worst parts of London, where every- 
 thing was as dirty and hopeless as one could 
 imagine, when he was startled by a bird’s song— 
 the clearest, happiest bird note. He looked to 
 see from whence it could come, and saw in a 
 small cage hanging by a poor window an impris- 
 oned English skylark. ‘The cage was small—just 
 a few bits of wood nailed together—but within 
 the cage there was a little patch of green sod, cut 
 
56 LIVING ONE’S RELIGION 
 
 from some meadow. And amid the sod, with 
 wings lifted as if for flight, the brown bird was 
 standing with head turned toward the sun, sing- 
 ing its heart out in joyous rapture amid all the 
 dust and squalor around. So God gives his 
 dearer singers ‘‘songs in the night.”’ 
 
THE ART OF INSPIRING OTHERS BY 
 APPRECIATING THEM 
 
 Jesus Christ evidently believed that the way to 
 get the best work out of a man was to make him 
 think well of himself. What wonderful thoughts 
 and hopes and ambitions must have been inspired 
 in the hearts of his disciples as they listened to 
 that Sermon on the Mount, when he applied to 
 them, common, ordinary fishermen and tax-col- 
 lectors though they were, such strange and beau- 
 tiful phrases as, ‘‘Ye are the salt of the earth,’’ 
 and, “‘Ye are the light of the world.’’ It is 
 impossible that these men could have listened to 
 such words and not have thought better of them- 
 selves. If Christ, who was their ideal of every- 
 thing that was good and noble and wise, saw in 
 them something so splendid as all that, then it 
 was surely worth while to be careful how they 
 lived and what they did. 
 
 We ought to learn that great lesson that the 
 way to get the people to do their best is to appre- 
 ciate at its full value the good which they have 
 already accomplished and the possibilities for 
 good which we seein them. This is illustrated 
 everywhere. The employer who appreciates the 
 work that is done for him and makes his employés 
 feel all the while that he looks on them with an 
 
 57 
 
58 THE ART OF INSPIRING OTHERS 
 
 appreciative eye, will always secure larger results 
 than the man who is forever grumbling and 
 harshly criticising his workers. 
 
 The same is true in our social fellowship. If 
 we appreciate our neighbors and seek to magnify 
 their kindness we inspire and encourage them to 
 still greater deeds of the same sort. Often good 
 deeds are frozen before they get into definite 
 form by the coldly critical attitude of others 
 toward the man who would like to do his best. 
 
 Mr. Hall Caine, the novelist, recently related 
 the story of a school boy in his definition of his 
 neighbor. He was asked: 
 
 *‘Who is your neighbor, Johnny?”’ 
 
 ‘*Please, sir, the man who lives next door.’’ 
 
 ‘‘And what is your duty to your neighbor?”’ 
 
 ‘*Please, sir, to keep my eye on him.”’ 
 
 There are a great many grown-up people who 
 have that same idea concerning neighborly fel- 
 lowship, and whenever you get a society in which 
 every one is a detective, looking out for some 
 wrong-doing on the part of his neighbor, every 
 man keeping his eye on his fellow, not with lov- 
 ing appreciation in order that he may rejoice in 
 his good deeds or may help him to something 
 better, but that he may outwit him and check- 
 mate him, then you have a little hell on earth. 
 
 Appreciation is the atmosphere in which the 
 best deeds of life must always grow. Little chil- 
 dren never develop beautifully in any other atmos- 
 phere. One of the saddest things in the world is 
 
THE ART OF INSPIRING OTHERS 59 
 
 to see a little child repressed and discouraged and 
 stunted because at every effort to put forth its 
 budding powers it is met by harsh criticism. On 
 the other hand, what miracles can be wrought 
 with wise appreciation to warm the heart of child- 
 hood! 
 
 Christian life grows and thrives in the same 
 sort of atmosphere. The young convert who has 
 just broken away from evil habits and from bad 
 associations and come out on the side of Jesus 
 Christ and righteousness, needs more than any 
 other human being the gentle and considerate 
 appreciation of Christians who have been longer 
 on the way. I have known some people who 
 were not very wise or eloquent or rich, who could 
 not do any great astonishing things for the Lord, 
 yet their influence in the church was as ‘‘oint- 
 ment poured forth’’ because they had appreciative 
 natures that rejoiced ina good deed when they 
 saw it, and they were always looking for that sort 
 of thing, and so every new convert and every 
 weak soul making an honest effort to do right 
 found in them a sympathy and appreciation that 
 was like a summer shower pouring its refreshing 
 streams about the roots of a dry and thirsty plant. 
 
 Now it is certainly a very interesting and com- 
 forting thing when we can find a beautiful and 
 helpful grace that is within the reach of every 
 one of us, and this is such anone. The poorest 
 speaker can appreciate and welcome the gift of 
 graceful and helpful speech in another. The 
 
60 THE ART OF INSPIRING OTHERS 
 
 man who cannot sing can let his happiness be 
 known in another’s music, and the knowledge 
 that the song has given happiness will inspire the 
 singer to nobler melody on the next occasion. 
 And so you may go the whole round of our daily 
 life and you will find that from morning to night 
 you are constantly meeting with opportunities 
 where a word or a look of appreciation will soothe 
 a wounded heart, heal a chafed spirit and inspire 
 a discouraged soul to a new effort to do his best. 
 
 It is far more precious and helpful to save 
 people from their defects by pointing out the 
 nobility which is possible to them than by forever 
 holding their defects before their eyes. Christ 
 could easily have found fault with these disciples, 
 and could have discouraged them so they never 
 could have lifted their heads again; but when he 
 inspired them by telling them they were ‘‘the 
 light of the world,’’ and ‘‘the salt of the earth,’’ 
 do you suppose for a moment that their weak- 
 nesses, their errors and their sins had ever before 
 looked so mean to them? So if you want to 
 inspire people to do their best don’t talk to them 
 forever about their failures, but help them to see 
 the beautiful, splendid life which is possible to 
 them in Jesus Christ. 
 
 And in so doing we shall also inspire ourselves. 
 No man can help another to climb upward with- 
 out lifting his own nature to a loftier altitude. 
 
THE OIL OF CONSIDERATION 
 
 I am constrained to believe that carelessness 
 and lack of proper consideration are responsible 
 for a large part of the sin and sorrow of the 
 world. I think there are comparatively few 
 people who deliberately sit down and make up 
 their mind with malice aforethought to do either 
 a wicked or unholy deed toward God, or a malic- 
 ious and misery-spreading act toward their fellow- 
 men. But the great majority of sins both toward 
 God and man come because we have yielded our- 
 selves to a bad current; we are caught in the 
 drift and are swept along without giving the 
 proper consideration to our deeds. This by no 
 means relieves us of the responsibility in the 
 matter, for we are responsible for the current in 
 which we place ourselves; but it explains why so 
 many people who have many good impulses and 
 are often conscious of good purposes are never- 
 theless the doers of evil deeds that cause great 
 sorrow. Much of the rough grinding of the 
 wheels of life upon each other would cease their 
 painful grating if we would but pour on them a 
 little of the oil of consideration. 
 
 The Psalmist found, what we have often found, 
 that it is very easy for us, living in the midst of 
 all the wonderful works of God, to become 
 
 61 
 
62 THE OIL OF CONSIDERATION 
 
 thoughtless about him, so that we look on the 
 beautiful scenery of nature and accept the good 
 gifts of Providence without either reverence or 
 gratitude. But when David was led to consider 
 the heavens, and to think separately about the 
 moon and the stars, and reflect upon their great- 
 ness and beauty, and to meditate on the wisdom, | 
 goodness and love of the God who made them and 
 fitted them with such care for man’s need, then 
 his reverence and adoration were aroused, and he 
 wondered and worshiped. Consideration brought 
 him to his knees, and I am sure we have experi- 
 enced the same; it is only when we are thought- 
 less and unreflecting that we are irreverent or 
 ungrateful. When we give ourselves to reason- 
 able consideration we bow down humbly before 
 the Lord and worship him with all our hearts. 
 
 In the same way the Saviour aroused the confi- 
 dence and faith of the disciples in God’s provi- 
 dential care. He called them to consider how 
 God clothed the flowers and the beautiful 
 plants of the field, and to reflect that if God would 
 take such care about the coloring of a lily how 
 much more certain was his care about his children 
 whom he had so richly endowed. Strange that 
 any of us should ever allow ourselves to become 
 depressed and doubting in spirit with this abun- 
 dant evidence of God’s care for the smallest 
 creatures all about us! It is certainly because 
 we do not consider; when we consider God’s care 
 of the flowers and of the birds, his care over 
 
THE OIL OF CONSIDERATION 63 
 
 little things as well as great, our hearts are led to 
 rest in his arms and find peace. 
 
 The writer of the letter to the Hebrews finds in 
 consideration a cure for carelessness concern- 
 ing our influence over others. ‘‘Let us consider 
 one another,’’ he says, ‘‘to provoke unto love and 
 to good works.'’ That is, if we are careless we 
 are likely to fall into the error of thinking that 
 our life is without influence, or that we can afford 
 to be indifferent in regard to others, and that 
 whether we influence them for good or notisa 
 small matter; but when once we consider we are 
 shown the falsity of such a position. When we 
 consider our neighbors and the people about us, 
 and see their needs, and how easily they are 
 swept by every wind of influence from the out- 
 side; when we note how easy it is to hurt people 
 or to help them; how contagious are good deeds 
 as well as bad, we see that it is a matter of the 
 greatest importance not for ourselves only but for 
 our brethren that we shall live the very best pos- 
 sible lives that God’s grace may help us to live. 
 It is a great encouragement to self-denial and to 
 earnest effort to feel that our lives are a constant 
 inspiration, arousing high ambitions in those who 
 know us. 
 
 Another reason for considerateness is expressed 
 by Paul in the sixth chapter of his letter to the 
 Galatians. There he encourages us to arouse our 
 sympathy and generosity toward those who have 
 been overtaken in a fault by considering our own 
 
64 THE OIL OF CONSIDERATION 
 
 selves. That is, if we will stop and consider we 
 shall remember how easy it is to fall into tempta- 
 tion, and shall have a fellow feeling for our 
 brother. There is no place where lack of con- 
 sideration works more harm than in the harsh- 
 ness which it causes, many times, on the part of 
 good people toward those who have fallen into 
 sin. How considerate Jesus was. He never 
 condoned sin, he never made sin seem a small 
 thing; on the other hand, sin never seemed so 
 horrible as when Jesus speaks of it. But how 
 tenderly, with what considerateness and sympathy, 
 does he deal with the sinner in trying to heal him 
 of his sin. The very first element in the compo- 
 sition of a good soul-winner must be this element 
 of considerateness. We must get so into sym- 
 pathy with Christ's attitude towards men that we 
 shall be able to put ourselves in their place or we 
 can never have for them the sympathy which will 
 attract them to Christ. It is said that in the 
 fashioning of fine vases nothing can take the 
 place of the human hand. The vase much 
 receive the delicate, soft, skillful touch of the 
 human hand to get its final shape of beauty; no 
 machinery, no hard mechanicalness, can do it. 
 So in bringing back a poor sinner to Christ, in 
 binding up his broken and marred life so that it 
 may grow again into strength and beauty, there 
 is nothing in this world fine enough save the 
 sympathetic and loving hand of the brother or 
 sister who is impelled by a heart full of tender 
 considerateness. 
 
THE CHARACTERISTICS OF 
 GOODNESS 
 
 Luke in his description of Barnabas has set this 
 seal upon him, that he was ‘‘a good man.’’ I 
 think it is interesting to notice some of the 
 things that constitute a good man according to 
 Luke’s idea. In the first place, he isa man of 
 faith. Luke follows up the phrase, ‘‘a good 
 man,’’ by saying that Barnabas is ‘‘full of faith.’’ 
 You never can trust the reliability of any man’s 
 goodness unless his goodness is built on prin- 
 ciple. Principle is the rock on which the house 
 of character is built, and if a man is good and yet 
 has no good solid principles of faith, he is good 
 simply because as yet he has not been put under 
 severe temptation. The house built on the sand 
 is as solid and as safe as the one built on the rock 
 so long as the sun shines and the winds are still. 
 But when the winds blow and the rains beat 
 down and the floods come, the house built on the 
 sand goes to pieces and is washed away, while 
 the one built on the rock stands as safe and 
 secure as in good weather. So we cannot depend 
 on anybody’s goodness unless it has its source in 
 a heart full of faith in God, which is a guarantee 
 for permanent integrity and righteousness. If 
 your goodness comes simply because you have 
 
 65 
 
\ 
 
 66 CHARACTERISTICS OF GOODNESS 
 
 good impulses, and have inherited a pleasant, 
 cheerful disposition, you will be astonished some 
 of these days when the storm beats on you to see 
 how quick it will disappear. Goodness, to last, 
 must be riveted down, like a lighthouse built on 
 a storm-swept ledge, into the bedrock of a great 
 faith. 
 
 Another characteristic of goodness, according 
 to Luke, is that a good man has a very keen 
 sense of the presence of God. ‘‘Full of the Holy 
 Ghost’’ is his way of saying it. To have thata 
 man must be a prayerful man; he must open his 
 heart to the Lord with such reverence and child- 
 like love that God will take up his abode in his 
 heart, and that will insure his goodness. There 
 is never any assurance of a man’s goodness if he 
 is godless. But if he lives in the constant con- 
 sciousness of God’s presence, then we feel that 
 his goodness can be relied upon as being a stable 
 and certain quantity. 
 
 Another quality of Barnabas’ goodness was 
 that he was an appreciative man. He saw good- 
 ness in other people, and when he saw it, it made 
 him happy. It is a great window in the character 
 of Barnabas when we are told that when he went 
 to Antioch and saw the great revival that was 
 going on there and the multitudes of people who 
 were being converted, it made him glad, and that 
 instead of throwing a wet blanket over the meet- 
 ing by a superior critical attitude, he joined in 
 with them in the happiest spirit, and ‘‘exhorted 
 
CHARACTERISTICS OF GOODNESS 67 
 
 them all, that with purpose of heart they would 
 cleave unto the Lord.’’ Christ tells us that when 
 a sinner is converted on earth the angels in 
 heaven rejoice about it, and Luke gives it as one 
 of the characteristics of goodness in Barnabas 
 that he was glad and happy when he saw people 
 being converted. 
 
 Let us never be deceived into imagining that it 
 is any sign of goodness in us that we are all the 
 time seeing the bad spots in people, and that 
 everybody we meet seems to be inferior to our- 
 selves in holiness. Be very much alarmed about 
 yourself when you find yourself in that condition. 
 You may be sure there is something wrong. But 
 rejoice when you find yourself unusually sensitive 
 and alert to detect goodness in others, and to 
 appreciate a disposition on the part of your neigh- 
 bors to praise God and serve him. A good man 
 longs to see the world converted. He hates 
 wickedness because it grieves God and hurts 
 men. And when he finds good being done, no 
 matter who is doing it, or who is going to get the 
 credit for it, he rejoices. 
 
 A still further characteristic of the goodness of 
 Barnabas was that he was a kind and gracious 
 man. So true was this that he was called the 
 ‘*Son of Consolation.’’ We ought to be so truly 
 good that we shall draw people to us, and to 
 Christ because of us, on account of the magnetism 
 of the Christlike kindliness that is revealed in our 
 conduct, 
 
68 CHARACTERISTICS OF GOODNESS 
 
 A story is told of Thomas Jefferson that on one 
 occasion he was riding in company with two 
 young men, when they came to a creek so swollen 
 by a shower that the water was up to the sides of 
 the horses. As they came to the stream they saw 
 a countryman standing on the bank carrying a 
 saddle on his shoulders. This man looked ear- 
 nestly at the young men as they rode into the 
 stream, but said nothing. As Mr. Jefferson came 
 along the stranger asked if he could not be 
 allowed to mount up behind, and thus be carried 
 across. The President of the United States 
 reined his horse up to a stone and the man 
 mounted. When across he expressed his thanks 
 and walked away. Several men who had wit- 
 nessed the incident asked: ‘‘What made you let 
 the young men pass, and why did you ask the old 
 gentleman?”’ 
 
 “‘Wal, if you want to know, I'll tell you. I 
 reckon a man carries ‘yes’ and ‘no’ in his face. 
 The young chaps’ faces said ‘No,’ the old un’s 
 (wes ale 
 
 “It isn’t every one,’’ said one of the party, 
 ‘‘who would have asked the President of the 
 United States for a ride.’’ 
 
 ‘‘What! You don’t mean to say that was 
 Thomas Jefferson, do you? Wal, he’s a fine fel- 
 low, anyway. What will Polly say, when I tell 
 her I have rid behind President Jefferson? She'll 
 say I voted for the right man.”’ 
 
 We want to live with such goodness of heart 
 
CHARACTERISTICS OF GOODNESS 69 
 
 and graciousness of spirit that our countenances 
 and the daily influence of our conversation and 
 life will welcome men to Christ. We can only do 
 that by living the Christ life, and keeping our 
 heart’s welcome for him. If he dwellin us his 
 presence will be known in the gracious benev- 
 olence of spirit which clothes us about as with 
 a garment, 
 
MAKING THE CHURCH BEAUTIFUL 
 
 I have been reading a story of a man who 
 attempted a very original way of adding to the 
 beauty and attractiveness of the town in which 
 he lived. He had a farm on the outskirts of a 
 little village, and he took great pride in the vil- 
 lage and in the roads about it. Whenever he 
 could spare a day, or an afternoon, from the work 
 of his farm, he would drive away in search of 
 some flower or shrub which did not grow at his 
 home, and these beautiful things he transplanted 
 to some favorable spot along the highway or in 
 the woods or meadows of hisown town. He con- 
 tinued to do this for many years, and by these 
 little holiday pilgrimages this one man increased 
 the flora of his native community by over a hun- 
 dred varieties. From being rather a barren town 
 ‘at first, itcameto have a greater variety of flower- 
 ing shrubs and bulbs and trees than perhaps any 
 other town in the State. 
 
 Now the special significance of the story of this 
 man lies in the fact that he did not take all these 
 beautiful things and plant them out on his own 
 farm; there would have been no illustration in 
 that of any value, for there are plenty of people 
 who are greedy for beautiful things if they may 
 kcep them selfishly in their own lives; but this 
 
 7O 
 
MAKING THE CHURCH BEAUTIFUL 71 
 
 man took the whole neighborhood into his view, 
 and sought and labored to make the entire com- 
 munity a delightfully beautiful place of residence. 
 
 Is there not a message in this for usin our rela- 
 tion to the Christian church? I think we do not 
 lay enough emphasis in our thinking upon the 
 great necessity of making the church attractive 
 in order that it may be effective in winning men 
 to Christ and in building them up into a holy 
 manhood and womanhood. 
 
 We can all understand that, other things being 
 equal, a man who is hunting for a place to buy a 
 farm and settle down to bring up his family would 
 be attracted by a town which had the reputation 
 of having the largest variety of flowering plants 
 and trees in the country. It would make a beau- 
 tiful place in which to live. The same principle 
 works in relation to the church. If the church is 
 attractive because it is a garden where the spirit- 
 ual graces abound and because they are cultivated 
 with rare fidelity, not only will those who are not 
 Christians be attracted to it, but it will have the 
 power to charm and fascinate and thus hold those 
 who have already been induced to settle in it. 
 And it will have the power to bless them and 
 strengthen them, and will keep their loyal love 
 and devotion. 
 
 A good question for each of us to ask of our- 
 selves is, ‘‘What can I do to make the church 
 more beautiful?’ 
 
 There are several things that the average per- 
 
72 MAKING THE CHURCH BEAUTIFUL 
 
 son can do to add to the beauty and blessedness 
 of achurch. First, you can be good. The man 
 who keeps his own life clean and honest helps a 
 great deal to make attractive the church to which 
 he belongs; the power of simple unadulterated 
 goodness can never be overmeasured. 
 
 Second, you can be brotherly. We all have 
 social needs. To attempt to shut ourselves up 
 within ourselves is to dwarf and stunt the growth 
 of our better natures. Many people in the cities 
 are constantly put under temptations to evil be- 
 cause they do not have the kind brotherly fellow- 
 ship which they need among good people. Any 
 one that will cultivate a disposition to be social 
 and gracious, and will honestly try to make 
 friends with the people who come to the church, 
 and will seek to make the people who seem lonely 
 and stiff and formal have a good time and feel at 
 home, will set blooming a wonderfully fragrant 
 tree in the beauty-garden of the church. 
 
 There is another thing we can do, and it is 
 within the reach of every one. We can be cheer- 
 ful. I don’t believe there is one man ina hun- 
 dred, to put it mildly, who appreciates at its full 
 the value of cheerfulness to the people who have 
 to deal with us. There is no place where cheerful- 
 ness is at a higher premium than in the church. 
 People come to church usually after several days’ 
 intermission of toil and struggle, and are often- 
 times weary and bruised at heart. Whether they 
 know it or not, they need to be cheered up. 
 
MAKING THE CHURCH BEAUTIFUL 73 
 
 They need that somebody shall ‘‘speak a word in 
 season to him that is weary.’’ When one isin 
 that condition, just to look in the face of some one 
 who is cheerful and happy-spirited, and to receive 
 a kindly word and a hearty hand-shake, is to put 
 new courage into a half-discouraged heart and 
 make life seem worth living again. A very few 
 such people who work at it all the time can make 
 any church in a large city so attractive that it will 
 be packed with people sniffing their sweet per- 
 fume. 
 
 One other thing is within the reach of every 
 one, rich or poor, scholarly or ignorant, popular 
 or unknown, and that is charity in the treatment 
 of others. I am not speaking now of the giving 
 of money; I am speaking of the charitable spirit 
 in discussing other people. Any person who 
 invariably compels the tongue to speak charitably 
 helps marvelously to make the church attractive 
 and beautiful. The world is such a cold, critical, 
 suspicious, uncharitable place that if you let it 
 get abroad that in a certain church there is an 
 atmosphere of kindness and brotherly love and 
 cheerful graciousness and charitable consideration 
 of the infirmities and weaknesses of others, that 
 church will not be able to hold the people who 
 are wanting to move into that kind of a climate. 
 
THE CHRISTIAN’S WINGS 
 
 The devil never deceives men and women more 
 completely than when he makes them believe that 
 the Christian life is dwarfed and cramped and 
 
 arrow. How he must grin in hideous irony 
 when he sees young men and women turn away 
 from Christ because they want to live a joyous, 
 buoyant and happy life. It is the Christian life 
 that has wings and not that of the worldling or 
 the sensualist. 
 
 Christianity ministers to faith and hope, and 
 they are the strong wings of the human soul. 
 Carlyle says: ‘‘Belief is great, life-giving. The 
 history of a nation becomes fruitful, soul-elevat- 
 ing, great, as soon as it believes. A man lives by 
 believing something, not by debating and. argu- 
 ing about many things.’’ The Christian who 
 waits upon the Lord becomes strong in the great 
 wing of faith. The other wing of hope beats in 
 harmony with it. Blue, depressed, desponding 
 people are always frail and uncertain reeds on 
 which to lean. Paul says, ‘‘We are saved b 
 hope.’” Hope buoys up the soul and encourages 
 it to daring deeds. Given the pinions of hope 
 and faith, and the soul mounts up in trustfulness 
 to fly on the path of duty indicated by the will of 
 God. 
 
 74 
 
THE CHRISTIAN’S WINGS 75 
 
 Mr. Moody was standing with a dear friend at 
 his garden gate one evening, when two little chil- 
 dren came by. As they approached Mr. Moody’s 
 friend said to him: ‘‘Watch the difference in 
 those two boys.’’ Taking one of them in his 
 arms he stood him on the gate-post, and stepping 
 back he folded his arms and called to the little 
 fellow to jump. In an instant the boy sprang 
 toward him and was caughtin his arms. Then 
 turning to the second boy he tried the same ex- 
 periment. But in the second case it was differ- 
 ent. The child trembled and refused to move. 
 The man held out his arms and tried to induce 
 the child to trust to his strength, but nothing 
 could move him. At last he had to lift him 
 down from the post and let him go. 
 
 *““What makes such a difference in the two?’’ 
 Mr. Moody asked. 
 
 His friend smiled and said: ‘‘The first is my 
 own boy and knows me; but the other is a 
 stranger’s child whom I have never seen before.’’ 
 
 There was all the difference. The man was 
 equally able to prevent both boys from falling, 
 but the difference was in the boys themselves. 
 The first had faith and hope in his father’s ability 
 and kindness and acted upon them, while the 
 second had no such pinions and would not risk 
 himself. If we wait upon the Lord and com- 
 mune with him daily we shall have strong wings 
 that will not fear to dare the upper atmosphere. 
 Christianity develops the spiritual vision so 
 
76 THE CHRISTIAN’S WINGS 
 
 that like the eagle we may look in the face of the 
 sun. 
 A gentleman who was traveling through the 
 
 coal-mining region in Pennsylvania noticed one 
 Sunday a large field full of\\mules, and inquired 
 of a boy what use was made of so many mules. 
 
 The answer was: ‘‘These are the mules that work 
 
 all the week down in the mine; but on Sunday 
 they have to come up to the light or else in a 
 
 little while they go blind.’’ Sin blinds men and 
 «women, and there are many who-go-with—biurred 
 
 and_ marred eyesight, seeing only dimly, because 
 
 they do not wait upon the Lord in regular wor- 
 ship. Keep the eyes bent on worldly things long 
 enough and steadily enough, and you will lose 
 the power to see the visions of the sky. Fellow- 
 ship with God gives us the wings to mount up 
 above petty meanness and selfishness which would 
 otherwise tempt and overcome us. 
 
 The story is told of two merchants between 
 whom there was great rivalry. One was con- 
 verted. He went to his minister and said: “*I am 
 still jealous of that man, and I do not know how 
 to overcome it.’’ 
 
 “‘Well,’’ said the wise preacher, “if a man 
 comes into your store to buy goods, and you can- 
 not supply him, just send him over to your neigh- 
 bor.’’ 
 
 He said he wouldn’t like to do that. 
 
 “‘Well,’’ the minister said, ‘‘you do it, and you 
 will kill your jealousy.’’ 
 
THE CHRISTIAN’S WINGS 77 
 
 The man was in earnest about his religion, and 
 so finally said he would; and when a customer 
 came into his store for goods which he did not 
 have he would tell him to go across the street to 
 his neighbor. Good deeds are as contagious as 
 bad ones, and by and by the other merchant 
 began to send his customers over to this man’s 
 store, and the breach was healed. Jesus Christ 
 
 lifts his followers above meanness by creating for 
 
 pele 
 goal 
 
 them wings to rise above it into the holier atmos-_ 
 
 phere of the heavenly world, 
 
 But there are many Christians who do not fly. 
 They are old enough to fly; they have been cared 
 for and fed well enough; but they have not 
 learned how to exercise their wings. Many of 
 
 these people are having an unhappy time, because 
 poe foes when she rome that_her binds are 
 large and strong enough to use their wings. The 
 young eagles don’t like it at first, and they cry 
 and flutter and have palpitation of the heart; but 
 when they are thrust out and trust the air they 
 soon find what their wings are made for. So God 
 does not give us faith and hope with which to sit 
 on the nest, he does not mean that we shall 
 always be fat weaklings having dainties carried 
 to us by the pulpit; he means that we shall soar 
 abroad on errands of mercy and helpfulness. 
 
 When _ the young eagle submits he is soon_ 
 
 rejoicing in the happiness and glory of flight, and 
 looks down with disdain upon the forest and the 
 
78 THE CHRISTIAN’S WINGS 
 
 valleys and even the mountain tops, exulting in 
 his new-found power. So when the timid Chris- 
 tian submits to God, and ventures all upon his 
 
 ‘promises, he is soon rejoicing in the new Sense Of 
 ctory of the Christian life. 
 
BREATHING ROOM FOR THE SOUL 
 
 There is something very suggestive in the 
 thanksgiving which David returns to God for 
 bringing him into a large place. He had been 
 beset by enemies and had been compelled, per- 
 haps, to hide away in a cave and keep in narrow 
 quarters. Andso when his enemies were over- 
 thrown and he was permitted to go out at will on 
 the mountain or in the valley, to go freely in the 
 open fields or in the town, to breathe the air of 
 liberty with none to make him afraid, he would 
 because of his past experience have a new sense 
 of appreciation of the largeness of an unfettered, 
 uncramped life. 
 
 I saw a man recently who after living for many 
 years in the heart of the city had moved out into 
 the suburbs where he had a little ground about, 
 with a chance for a garden and a few apple trees, 
 and I asked him why he liked being out there so 
 much better, and he replied: ‘‘Oh, I have a 
 chance to turn round and to breathe.’’ 
 
 The soul as well as the body needs breathing 
 room. And to give ita chance to breathe well 
 we must not crowd it too closely with worldly 
 things that can never furnish an atmosphere for 
 it. The supreme folly of the rich man described 
 by Jesus, whom God named ‘‘Fool,’’ was that he 
 
 79 
 
80 BREATHING ROOM FOR THE SOUL 
 
 undertook to feed his soul on the kind of goods 
 which he could stow away in his barn. Many 
 people are making the same mistake now. They 
 crowd their lives so full of work and pleasure 
 which appeal only to the temporary life that they 
 smother the soul to death. 
 
 There are some simple things which help to 
 give breathing room to the soul. One of them is 
 Bible-reading. The best soul atmosphere in the 
 world is that which clings about the Word of 
 God. Wehave a great deal to say now about con- 
 densed foods. And we have exhibitions occasion- 
 ally showing the marvelous power of liquid air. 
 There is more condensed spiritual atmosphere, if 
 I may so speak, in the Word of God than any- 
 where else in the world. There are breezes 
 stored up in the Psalms which a man may feel on 
 the inner brow if he gives himself up to them for 
 but afew moments. The water of life springs 
 fresh and cool and inspiring from many a moun- 
 tain range of Bible prophecy. The fragrance of 
 wild flowers, the charm of water lilies, may be 
 breathed from the sayings of Jesus, and from the 
 incidents of loving self-sacrifice and transformed 
 living which one finds in the stories of early 
 Christianity in the New Testament. If one will 
 give a certain amount of time every day to rever- 
 ent reading of the Bible the soul will have a 
 chance to breathe. 
 
 Prayer is another source of spiritual atmos- 
 phere. Quiet contemplation of the divine exist- 
 
BREATHING ROOM FOR THE SOUL 81 
 
 ence, of God’s nearness, of his loving care, the 
 breathing out to him thanksgiving for past 
 mercies and present joys, and the expression of 
 the longings and desires of one’s inner self, is 
 soul-breathing. Especially is this true of secret 
 prayer. To go alone into the closet and shut the 
 door, separating one’s self from troublesome 
 thoughts of money and perplexing problems of 
 expediency in daily living, and turning to God 
 seeking his guidance, opening the heart and pour- 
 ing out its confidence in loving trust to the Divine 
 Friend, is for the soul’s breathing like going out 
 of some smoky city, where the air hangs low with 
 fumes of oil and the dust of traffic, into the open 
 country where the breath of the fields and the 
 woods sweetens the clear atmosphere through 
 which the eyes look up to the stars. 
 
 Another way through which the soul finds 
 breathing room isin doing good to others. Jesus 
 kept his soul wholesome and sweet during his 
 earthly pilgrimage not only by much prayer and 
 communion with God but by going about doing 
 good. Day by day he had the satisfaction of 
 knowing that his deeds were blessing others, and 
 so his soul breathed constantly this atmosphere of 
 helpfulness and blessing. 
 
 No man can have a wholesome, healthy, happy 
 spiritual nature unless he gives the soul breath- 
 ing room in unselfishly doing good deeds to his 
 fellow-men. Many a man who has been selfish 
 and fretful, unhappy, spiritually diseased, has had 
 
82 BREATHING ROOM FOR THE SOUL 
 
 his life transformed into joyous spiritual health 
 by being led into fellowship with Christ while 
 bringing blessings to others. 
 
 Dr. Arthur Brooke points out how well Dick- 
 ens pictures this in his Christmas Carol. At the 
 beginning of the story we have a portrait of 
 Scrooge, a tight-fisted man, hard as a grindstone, 
 sharp as a flint from which no steel had ever 
 struck out generous fire, secret and self-con- 
 tained, and solitary as an oyster. Nobody ever 
 stopped him in the street to say with happy look, 
 ‘‘How are you?’’ Even the beggar never im- 
 plored him for alms; no child ever looked up in 
 his face to ask him the time of day. He was 
 rich, but dismal, morose and blue. He had never 
 done good to any one. He had planned and 
 toiled only for himself; but he was visited by 
 three ghosts—the ghost of the past, the ghost of 
 the present, and the ghost of the future—and they 
 taught him a lesson. He became a good friend, 
 a good employer, and a good man, and opened 
 his heart and his purse to others. His soul began 
 to breathe, and happiness and beauty blossomed 
 in the life that had been desolate and barren. I 
 commend to you these three storehouses of con- 
 densed spiritual atmosphere, open to all—prayer, 
 Bible-reading and unselfish service for your fellow- 
 men. 
 
STREAMS OF SPIRITUAL LIFE 
 
 Many beautiful and sweet suggestions are found 
 in the prophecy of Isaiah concerning the influence 
 which Christianity is to have upon the hearts and 
 lives of men. It is to open the eyes of the blind, 
 to unstop the ears of the deaf, to make the lame 
 man leap for gladness and strength, and cause 
 the tongue of the dumb to sing songs of grateful 
 joy. It suggests that Christianity is a hopeful 
 religion, encouraging the fearful heart to be 
 strong. Its business is to strengthen feeble 
 knees, and to lift up weak hands. The followers 
 of Jesus Christ have planted rose gardens in many 
 a desert, and every year thousands multiplied 
 beyond number are added to the army of faithful 
 ones who keep step to the heavenly music on that 
 highway of holiness where the unclean do not 
 pass, where no lion shall ever come, and upon 
 which no ravenous beasts shall ever walk. 
 
 But I maintain that in it all there is nothing 
 quite so sweet or refreshing as the suggestion that 
 Christ in us will cause living waters to spring up 
 in the parched and desert places of the earth: 
 ‘In the wilderness shall waters break out, and 
 streams in the desert.’’ I have been thinking 
 particularly about this for the last few days, 
 while I have ‘been living up among the moun- 
 
 83 
 
84 STREAMS OF SPIRITUAL LIFE 
 
 tains, fishing in mountain lakes and wandering 
 beside the rushing brooks that even in the dry 
 and barren summer draw from reservoirs full 
 enough to keep up the music in their hearts. I 
 have been reclining on couches of moss; sniffing 
 the air perfumed with balsam; gathering ferns by 
 the edge of the brooks in the deep canyons, and 
 have been impressed again, as I have been a 
 thousand times before, with the charm of running 
 water. 
 
 The stream of water is always alive, ever 
 freshly fed, ever busy on its race from the moun- 
 tain where it was born to the wide sea where its 
 master purpose is to find fulfillment. Ido not 
 wonder that the Bible is full of brooks and 
 streams of running water. It was by the brook 
 Eshcol that the spies found the luscious grapes 
 they brought back to Moses. It was out of a 
 brook that David took the five smooth stones with 
 which he went forth to fight Goliath. And hon- 
 est-hearted men have been getting power out of 
 brooks ever since. It was beside the brook Besor 
 that David in later years uttered his famous 
 declaration that those that tarried by the stuff 
 should be as honorably rewarded as those that 
 went forth to battle. Clear-eyed vision is born 
 beside the running brooks. It was by the brook 
 Cherith that God hid Elijah and gave orders to 
 the ravens to feed him. When Moses would 
 describe the goodness of God in bringing his 
 people into the land of Canaan he can say nothing 
 
STREAMS OF SPIRITUAL LIFE 85 
 
 better than this: ‘‘For the Lord thy God bringeth 
 thee into a good land, a land of brooks of water, 
 of fountains and depths that spring out of valleys 
 and hills.’"”, When David would voice the deep 
 - hunger of his soul for the noblest spiritual com- 
 munion, he cannot express it better than to say: 
 ‘‘As the hart panteth after the water brooks, so 
 panteth my soul after thee, O God. My soul 
 thirsteth for God, for the living God: when shall 
 I come and appear before God?’’ It was a brook 
 that inspired the Psalmist in the sweetest of all 
 his Psalms, where he thinks of the ‘‘green pas- 
 tures,’’ and the “‘still waters’’ by which the Good 
 Shepherd should lead his sheep. It isa stream 
 of running water, a river of life, that John de- 
 scribes as the glory of the new city which was to 
 be the final abode of glorified humanity. 
 
 The hymn-writers of the church have often 
 been inspired by the same vision. It tuned the 
 lyre of Isaac Watts when he sang: 
 
 “Sweet fields beyond the swelling flood 
 Stand dressed in living green: 
 So to the Jews old Canaan stood, 
 While Jordan rolled between.”’ 
 And many other hymns are graced by the pleas- 
 ing imagery of flowing water, as in the lines: 
 “Streams of mercy, never ceasing;’’ ‘‘Soul- 
 refreshing streams;’’ “‘By cool Siloam’s shady 
 rill;’’ ‘‘When peace like a river;’’ ‘‘Where 
 streams of living water flow.’’ All these show 
 that the spiritual imagination is charmed and 
 
86 STREAMS OF SPIRITUAL LIFE 
 
 refreshed by the beautiful symbols of brooks and 
 running water. 
 
 What a testimony it is to God’s conception of 
 us, that he should choose such a figure to illus- 
 trate the influence of a good man or a good 
 woman in this world. The sincere Christian life 
 is to be like a brook of running water—it is to be 
 refreshing, getting its waters ever new and pure 
 from the great reservoirs in the heart of God; it 
 is to be a beautiful life because adorned by the 
 loveliness of the Christian spirit; it is to be a joy- 
 ous life, musical with appreciation and gratitude 
 for the goodness of God; it is to be a useful life, 
 ever earnestly pursuing its course, led onward by 
 divine gravitation, trusting the God who leads it, 
 turning every wayside mill-wheel it may, slaking 
 the thirst of every fainting one it can, refreshing 
 the soul of every one who comes within its reach, 
 yet never staying with any of these to stagnate, 
 but gathering added courage, pressing ever on- 
 ward toward the greater sea of effort and achieve- 
 ment to which God is guiding it. 
 
 The brook is ever growing. It gathers springs 
 from the wayside to swell its tide. Andso your 
 life and mine should grow and enlarge. We 
 should be nobler, stronger, happier, lovelier men 
 and women this year than we were last year. 
 As the brook grows, so you and I must grow, and 
 thus fulfill the purpose of the good God who gives 
 us our life and rejoices in its beauty and service. 
 
THE LORD’S CANDLES 
 
 In the eighteenth Psalm, David recites some of 
 the great distresses and trials through which he 
 has passed. He tells of the deep darkness of the 
 storm that was only illuminated by God’s light- 
 ning; tells how God plucked him out of the dark- 
 ness and not only lighted the sky with his 
 lightnings but lighted a candle in David’s own 
 heart, a candle of faith and hope and assurance, 
 that scattered the darkness about him. 
 
 This suggests a very helpful idea. God means 
 that each of shall give forth light in our own 
 sphere. There is a sense in which we are to add 
 to the light of Christianity and civilization in the 
 world. When I wasa boy and lived ona farm 
 on the frontier, we used to go to church in an old 
 log schoolhouse in the woods. Evening meetings 
 in those days were always announced to begin 
 “at early candle-light.’’ There were not even oil 
 lamps in the old schoolhouse; but there was an 
 unwritten rule that each family attending the 
 service should bring at least one candle. The 
 first man who arrived lighted his candle and put 
 it up in one of the wooden candlesticks or set it 
 on the window sill fastened at the base in a little 
 tallow drip—dripping the tallow hot and then 
 steadying the candle in it before it cooled. And 
 
 87 
 
88 THE LORD'S CANDLES 
 
 so every man who came in lighted his candle, and 
 as the congregation grew the light grew. If 
 there was a small congregation there was a very 
 dim light, and if there was a large congregation 
 the place was illuminated by the light of many 
 candles. Now the whole church is like that in so 
 much as our added light is helping to illuminate 
 the world. 
 
 But there is a peculiar sense in which each one 
 of us is a candle of the Lord and should shine 
 forth in our influence and give our testimony for 
 him. Here comes in our individuality. Every 
 man who is a Christian, although his candle is 
 lighted at Christ’s fire and is an addition to the 
 light of Christian influence in the world, will yet 
 shine with a light and beauty peculiar to him- 
 self. Though we are all the candles of the Lord 
 the truth still remains that we are the Lord’s 
 individual candles and he does not mean that we 
 shall all shine in exactly the same way. Each of 
 us should seek to give our whole selves to God with 
 such obedience that we shall be able to flame 
 forth a perfect testimony for him. 
 
 Some people are very much disturbed because 
 there are so many different phases of religious 
 belief among Christians, and think that Chris- 
 tianity would be greatly enhanced in its power if 
 we could bring everybody into one church and 
 only have one kind, or type, of religious life. 
 But I do not so read God’s revelation of himself 
 in the Bible, in nature, or in human affairs. And 
 
THE LORD’S CANDLES 89 
 
 while all bitterness of partisanship or sectarianism 
 should be put behind us, I think the types of 
 teligious light which we see in the diversity of 
 the Episcopalian, the Presbyterian, the Baptist, 
 the Quaker and the Methodist, only adds to the 
 beauty and glory of the illumination which each 
 are helping to make in the world. 
 
 What a high honor it is that God has given us 
 the privilege of being individually a light for 
 him in the midst of the world’s darkness. Phil- 
 lips Brooks, in a great sermon on that saying in 
 Proverbs, ‘‘The spirit of man is the candle of the 
 Lord,’’ recalls the fact that in certain lands for 
 certain holy ceremonies they prepare the candles 
 with most anxious care. The very bees which 
 distill the wax are sacred. They range in gar- 
 dens planted with sweet flowers for their use 
 alone. The wax is gathered by consecrated 
 hands, the shaping of the candles is a holy task, 
 performed in holy places to the sound of hymns 
 and in the atmosphere of prayers. All this is 
 done because the candles are to burn in the most 
 lofty ceremonies on most sacred days. With 
 what care must the man or the woman be made 
 whose spirit is to be the candle of the Lord! It 
 is the spirit of our lives which God is to kindle 
 with himself. The body is valuable only for the 
 protection and the education which the soul gains 
 by it. And the power by which our spirits may 
 become the Lord’s candles is obedience. There- 
 fore obedience to God must be the great privilege 
 
go THE LORD'S CANDLES 
 
 and desire of our lives, and this not a hard and 
 forced obedience, but a ready, loving, spontaneous 
 obedience like that which a happy, trusting child 
 gives to an adored father or mother. We must 
 give such obedience to God as the candle gives 
 to the flame. At the touch of the fire the candle 
 melts and feeds the flame with its own self. So 
 we must give ourselves to feed the flames of love 
 and hope and faith which testify to the goodness 
 of God, and which light up the dark world to know 
 and rejoice in the light of God in the face of Jesus 
 Christ. 
 
THE THINGS THAT LAST 
 
 So many things come only to go, and are so 
 quick in the transition, that it is good for us fre- 
 quently to take stock of the things that endure. 
 For even in this transitory world there are some 
 things that last. One of these isa kind deed. It 
 may seem to pass in a moment, but really it 
 never passes. It is like our memory of the 
 flowers we plucked in childhood. The flowers 
 died the same day, but the memory of their 
 fragrance and of our delight in them and of the 
 happiness they brought to the innocent heart of 
 childhood is a part of our very being, and will be 
 treasured forever on the wallof the soul. A kind 
 deed is like that. Doone areal kindness and you 
 may know, whatever waves of sorrow come after, 
 that the effect of that kind deed will not be lost. 
 Few of us, indeed none of us, are fully able to 
 measure the value of kindness. 
 
 I remember a time in my young ministry when 
 I was in deep trial and fighting against odds, I 
 was ina little church, an old worn-out building 
 that would seat, possibly, two hundred people, on 
 the banks of the Columbia River. President 
 Hayes and his wife were making a tour of the 
 West. They came to the town where I was 
 preaching to stay over Sunday. I was young and 
 
 gt 
 
92 THE THINGS THAT LAST 
 
 unknown as a preacher, and they came to the 
 church not because of me but because they were 
 members of the denomination and liked to wor- 
 ship with their own church. And so, with only 
 an hour’s notice, there came into that dingy little 
 church the President of the United States and his 
 wife, Gen. O. O. Howard, and many other uni- 
 formed officers. I preached the sermon—a plain, 
 simple, Gospel sermon, such as my sermons 
 always have been and are yet—the one which I 
 had prepared for my own people, with all the 
 earnestness of my heart. 
 
 That afternoon a letter was brought to me from 
 General Howard, saying that the President and 
 Mrs. Hayes desired to see me after the evening 
 service, at the General’s residence, where the 
 Presidential party were guests. And when my 
 sermon was through in the evening a carriage 
 waited to take me tothem. I shall never forget 
 the kind words which the President and his wife 
 said to me about the sermon, and the service, and 
 about the possibilities there were for mein my 
 ministry. Nothing could exceed the kindness 
 and tact with which they both carried out their 
 evident purpose of not only giving me a delight- 
 ful hour but of inspiring me with a new enthusiasm 
 and a lofty ambition in my work. And a few 
 weeks later I received from Washington a letter 
 from Lucy Webb Hayes, enclosing photographs of 
 the President and herself, and a further declara- 
 tion of their pleasant memory of the Sunday 
 
THE THINGS THAT LAST 93 
 
 morning service in the little church, and of their 
 faith that they would hear of my success. Com- 
 ing as it did, at a time of severe trial and dis- 
 couragement, the kindness of that good woman 
 was like a cordial to my spirit, and gave me 
 courage to believe that there was grander and 
 nobler work for me to do. 
 
 Never fail to doa kindness when you havea 
 chance. Long after you have gone home to 
 heaven the people who have been comforted and 
 whose lives have been sweetened will be passing 
 on the inspiration you gave them in kindness to 
 others. 
 
 Another thing that lastsis service. Selfishness 
 with all its pleasures and ambitions is short- 
 lived, and no man looking back over his life 
 selects the hours when he had his own way as the 
 hours when he was particularly glad or joyous. 
 No; itis the times when we served some one that 
 last in our own heart as a treasure. I have 
 known many famous men and women who have 
 made a great success of life, but when I have 
 come close enough to them to get into their 
 hearts a little, I have found that the memories 
 which are sweetest and those which they most 
 gladly recall are the memories of humble or 
 unknown or unpopular periods in their lives, 
 when they have carried the cross without 
 even a glimpse of the crown of glory which 
 was to come to them in the future. Service 
 lasts because it brings us into fellowship with 
 
94 THE THINGS THAT LAST 
 
 Christ, who is the great Servant of humanity. 
 Christ chose to come to this world and be 
 among us as a serving man, and you and I 
 must not be above our Lord. If we want per- 
 manent happiness we must cultivate the habit of 
 service, so that in whatever position we may be 
 placed we shall be sure to make it better for all 
 whom we can help. 
 
 Another thing that lasts is a fellowship with 
 Jesus Christ as our Saviour and Friend. Other 
 friends may sometimes misunderstand us, and for 
 a time the joy of their fellowship be lost; but 
 Christ will never misunderstand. If our hearts 
 are true to him he will always know it, even 
 though appearances are against us. He will 
 stand by us when we are poor just as truly as 
 when we are rich. He will be just as cheerful 
 and encouraging when we are sick as he will be 
 good company when we are well and strong. We 
 shall never outgrow him; we shall never get 
 beyond him; he will always stand up before us 
 higher than ourselves, yet bending to us in infi- 
 nite sympathy and love, and always leading us 
 onward. Our friendship with Jesus will get 
 sweeter as we get older. This is true of very 
 few things. I have known very few people who 
 enjoyed the physical happiness of living as much 
 when they were old as when they were young. 
 It is a rare thing for a man to care as much about 
 books in old age as in his youth. I think few 
 people enjoy money as much in later years as 
 
THE THINGS THAT LAST 95 
 
 . they do in the earlier years of life. To the old 
 man or the aged woman many things in life have 
 shown their emptiness and the hook has been 
 found in many of the baits that lead men and 
 women onward. But it is undoubtedly true that 
 the friendship of Jesus Christ, the inspiration of 
 his presence, the certainty of his divine sym- 
 pathy, the comfort of his love, always get sweeter 
 as we get older. No disease is able to destroy 
 the appetite of the soul for spiritual delight. I 
 have known a great many old Christians, and 
 their increasing joy in Christ, their mellowing of 
 heart, their growing tenderness of spirit, their 
 keener realization of the personality of Jesus, and 
 their hopeful expectation of soon being with him 
 are among the most beautiful things I have ever 
 known. Yes, the friendship of Jesus is one of the 
 things that last. 
 
SEEING THINGS AS THEY ARE 
 
 No doubt the young man who was private sec- 
 retary to Elisha considered himself as clear- 
 headed and common-sense a person as there was 
 in the country. As arule he had to be eyes for 
 Elisha. It was his duty to look after his master, 
 and he had to see things not only for his own pro- 
 tection but for the protection of the prophet. 
 And so on that morning which has long since 
 passed into history he got up a little earlier than 
 Elisha and went out to look around and see how 
 the weather was, and if there was any news stir- 
 ring that would be of interest to the great man 
 whom he served. And to his astonishment he 
 found that in the night, while he and his master 
 had slept, the Syrians had surrounded the city 
 with a great army, and so far as he could see 
 there was no possible escape for them. One 
 would suppose that if he had been with Elisha 
 very long he would have known better than to be 
 so down-hearted about it; would have understood 
 that God never deserted his servants and would 
 find some way of taking care of his prophet. But 
 he was very much discouraged and hurried back, 
 exclaiming as he went into the house and told 
 the story of the besieging army, ‘‘Alas, my mas- 
 ter! How shall we do?’ The young man must 
 
 96 
 
SEEING THINGS AS THEY ARE 97 
 
 have been much surprised at the way Elisha took 
 his news, for that good man did not seem to be in 
 the least excited, but said assuringly to his servant, 
 ‘*Fear not; for they that be with us are more than 
 they that be with them.”’ 
 
 Now I suppose we have only a small outline or 
 condensation of the conversation that took place 
 here. There must have been a good deal said 
 between these remarks and what happened later. 
 I imagine the young man replied something like 
 this: “‘O my dear master, you are surely deceived 
 this time; for I myself saw the war horses and 
 the chariots and the great companies of soldiers 
 on every side. Before coming back to tell you I 
 looked every way to see if there was a chance for 
 us to escape, and they have not left a single place 
 unguarded. The town of Dothan is entirely 
 surrounded and we are hemmed in as though we 
 were an army entrenched in a fortress. And, 
 master, you are entirely mistaken if you think 
 these cowardly village folks will be of any value 
 to stand by us against those trained soldiers. 
 They are scared out of their wits now. Every 
 man { saw in the street was white and trembling 
 with fear, and already they are beginning to talk 
 about the advisability of taking you out to the 
 Syrians and giving you up and begging that the 
 town be let alone. Surely, master, you don't 
 mean it when you say that there are more on our 
 side than there are on theirs? You might just 
 as well be undeceived at once, for there isn’t 
 
98 SEEING THINGS AS THEY ARE 
 
 anybody on our side but just us two unarmed 
 men.”’ 
 
 And then with a smile on his face Elisha says: 
 **Well, let us have our morning prayers.”’ 
 
 I imagine the secretary thought Elisha was 
 extremely foolish to take the time to pray when, 
 according to his judgment, running would have 
 been more in order; but they kneeled down 
 together and Elisha prayed, and this was his 
 prayer: ‘‘Lord, I pray thee, open his eyes, that 
 he may see.”’ 
 
 He then took the young fellow by the arm and 
 walked him out into the street and told him to | 
 look. ‘‘And the Lord opened the eyes of the 
 young man; and he saw; and, behold, the moun- 
 tain was full of horses and chariots of fire round 
 about Elisha.”’ 
 
 You see, the young man did see, but he didn’t 
 see things as they were. He saw the hosts of the 
 enemy, but he did not descry the hosts of the 
 Lord that were camped inside the enemy around 
 the man of God. 
 
 A great many people to-day are like that young 
 fellow. They have wonderful eyesight for seeing 
 the enemy. If there isa trouble or difficulty of 
 any sort looming up in the distance, real or 
 imaginary, you may depend on them to take it 
 in. Troubles don’t even have to be real for some 
 people to see them. They can see ghosts and 
 hobgoblins and all sorts of weird giants that are 
 full of threatening, but they do not see the hosts 
 
SEEING THINGS AS THEY ARE  g9 
 
 of God that are sent to take care of those who do 
 right and trust in the Lord. 
 
 I fear that many of us who call ourselves Chris- 
 tians and who are striving to be worthy of that 
 name have yet our mornings at Dothan when the 
 enemy looks large and dangerous and the friends 
 are unseen. But it should not be so, for God has 
 filled his Book with precious promises which 
 assure us that the danger is never so near as the 
 defence. Take this: ‘‘All things work together 
 for good to them that love God.’’ What enemy 
 is going to get in between that and the man or 
 woman who goes quietly along loving the Lord? 
 Or take this: ‘‘My God shall supply all your 
 need, according to his riches in glory by Christ 
 Jesus.’’ What army of the devilcan get inside 
 that cordon of God's artillery? The fact is that 
 the sincere Christian, however humble, may rest 
 assured that whenever it looks as though evil 
 would overcome him, though he is honestly and 
 prayerfully doing the best he can, he is not see- 
 ing things as they are. Just as true as it was 
 with Elisha at Dothan is it true now that the 
 Christian’s friends are more than his enemies. 
 God did not love Elisha any more than he loves 
 you. And he has promised to take care of those 
 who trust him and love him and honestly serve 
 him. Let us not run from the foe. but resist him 
 in God’s name; and pray the Lord to give us 
 better eyes, that we may behold the great spirit- 
 ual armies which fight for us. 
 
HOW TO GET RID OF YOURSELF 
 
 Christ proposes to give a man rest of soul by 
 getting him out of himseif and causing him to 
 forget himself in some new service. Nothing is 
 more wearing or a more fruitful source of unhap- 
 piness in the long run than to be self-centered. 
 If our thoughts and plans, our hopes and fears, 
 our ideals and ambitions, all center in our own 
 personal success, and in adding to our own per- 
 sonal comfort and happiness, there must come 
 many a day of infinite self-disgust and weariness 
 when life does not seem to be worth living. | 
 Those people who are yawning themselves out of 
 life because they have found everything they have 
 tried to be a failure, are doing it because they 
 have not learned that there is anything better to 
 do than to take care of themselves. Poverty and 
 riches have little to do with the case. You will 
 find just as many well-to-do as you will find poor 
 people for whom life has lost its spice and en- 
 thusiasm. It isnot a question of capital but of 
 character. 
 
 Now Christ’s way to freshen life and fill it with 
 hope and courage is to draw us out of our own 
 yoke of sorrows and trials and get us into a new 
 yoke, a new harness, and thus interest us in new 
 
 burdens. And he declares that in so doing the 
 100 
 
HOW TO GET RID OF YOURSELF tor 
 
 yoke will seem easier, the burden lighter, and we 
 shall find rest unto our souls. 
 
 Of course we know what Christ’s yoke is. 
 When he was here on earth in the flesh, all the 
 troubles and needs of the blind and the deaf, of 
 the hungry and the lame, of the lepers and the 
 fever-stricken, all the sorrows of men, from a 
 withered hand to a demoniac possession, inter- 
 ested him, aroused his sympathy and became a 
 part of his burden and yoke. Christ yoked 
 himself to all the sorrows of mankind. Wher- 
 ever a man was found who had trouble, whether 
 a man anxious about his sick boy or a mother 
 following her son to the tomb, or smaller matters 
 —as where men had fished all night and had 
 caught nothing—Christ entered into the case with 
 sympathy and helpfulness and added it to his 
 burden. And if we are to take up Christ’s burden 
 and wear his yoke, we must be yoked with the 
 sorrows and troubles of men, and a part of our 
 burden will be to try to lift the world up toward 
 God and to help every sad heart toward the light. 
 
 Yet, thank God, that is only half the case. 
 Christ’s yoke is easy and his burden is light be- 
 cause, while he is yoked with the sorrows and 
 troubles of men and women on the one hand, heis 
 for that very reason yoked on the other side with all 
 the wisdom and power and blessedness of Almighty 
 God. That is what makes the burden light and 
 the yoke easy. Many a man who works in the 
 foundry or the shop for long hours goes through 
 
102 HOW TO GET RID OF YOURSELF 
 
 the whole day with a light heart because of his 
 yoke—fellowship with a loving wife and children 
 at home. On the one hand he is yoked to long 
 hours and hard work, but on the other his yoke 
 takes hold of love and gentleness and thankful 
 appreciation, and that makes his yoke easy and 
 his burden light. So when for Christ’s sake we 
 share with our weaker brother and add his bur- 
 den to our own shoulders, the doubled burden is 
 made lighter because it brings us into happy fel- 
 lowship with our divine Lord. 
 
 As we come into fellowship with Jesus, and are 
 yoked with him in burden-bearing and in labors 
 of love, he opens to us the secrets of God’s tender 
 care over those who love and serve him. In this 
 way we get rid of our doubts and fears concern- 
 ing God’s providential care overus. Noone who 
 knows God as Christ does, who looks up into the 
 Heavenly Father’s face with that perfect spirit of 
 childhood, can doubt that God intends good for 
 his children and is able to bring it about. 
 
 Christ’s perfect confidence in God comes out in 
 the illustrations which he uses to show us the 
 completeness of God's care. One day it is the 
 lilies to which he points, asking his friends to 
 mark how they grow and with what beauty they 
 are clothed, and drawing the assuring lesson that 
 the God who paints the lily with such resplendent 
 colors will not forget the children made in his 
 own image and likeness. Another day he points 
 to the sparrow—a little cheap thing, two sold for 
 
HOW TO GET RID OF YOURSELF 103 
 
 a farthing and five for two farthings, and yet not 
 one of them forgotten by God. And if he cares 
 for the little bird he surely will not forget his 
 children. 
 
 What a precious thing it is to have that kind of 
 a faith in God! And you can only obtain it by 
 getting rid of yourself in a working fellowship 
 with Jesus Christ. If you will go into partnerhip 
 with the Saviour and seek every day to bring 
 blessings to somebody, feeling as he does that 
 every man youcan help is your neighbor and that 
 everything that hurts your brother is your own 
 personal enemy, thus putting your shoulders in 
 close touch with Jesus underneath all the burdens 
 of humanity, you will be brought into such a 
 relation to God that the spiritual and the super- 
 natural will appear real to you. 
 
 In the greatest emergencies of Christ’s burden 
 bearing, in his temptation in the wilderness, and 
 in the agony of the Garden of Gethsemane, 
 angels came and comforted him; and angels will 
 come to you and soothe you when you need them 
 if you are wearing Christ’s yoke and bearing his 
 burden. 
 
A CROWN FULL OF STARS 
 
 The kings and queens of the world, as well as 
 their subjects, have always vied with each other 
 in having the finest crown. Many of these 
 crowns are decked with precious stones of great 
 beauty and briiliancy and of enormous value. 
 The crown of Russia is at present said to be the 
 richest in diamonds. There are three crowns in 
 the Imperial treasury entirely composed of these 
 precious stones. That of Ivan contains eight 
 hundred and eighty-one diamonds. The crown 
 of the famous Peter the Great contains eight 
 hundred and forty-seven of the same brilliant 
 jewels. But the dazzling crown of Catherine II 
 surpasses them all in that it blazes forth with the 
 light of two thousand five hundred and thirty-six 
 marvelous diamonds. One of the most remark- 
 able of these diamonds is the “‘Orloff,’’ now set in 
 the top of the Imperial scepter, and on this 
 account sometimes called ‘‘The Scepter Dia- 
 mond.”’ 
 
 Our Heavenly Father, whose kindness is be- 
 yond all our thought, compares to precious jewels 
 all those who yield their hearts to him. The 
 prophet Malachi says that the Lord keeps a 
 book of remembrance, and in that book he writes 
 down the names of those who fear him and think 
 
 104 
 
A CROWN FULL OF STARS 105 
 
 upon hisname. ‘‘And they shall be mine, saith 
 the Lord of hosts, in that day when I make up 
 my jewels; and I will spare them, as a man 
 spareth his own son that serveth him.”’ 
 
 What a delightful suggestion is contained in 
 that figure! If we could imagine a diamond hav- 
 ing Teasoning powers we could easily believe 
 that it would be filled with joy and rapture to be 
 put in the crown of some great and good king, 
 some splendid personage who ruled with wisdom 
 over his people and was beloved by them. But 
 the God of heaven and earth declares that the 
 humblest man or woman or child who thinks 
 upon his name and seeks him shall be cherished 
 as one of his jewels. 
 
 An immortal soul, then, is a brilliant jewel, a 
 diadem in the crown of the Lord. If that be 
 true, we can understand how the Lord appre- 
 ciates the work of those who give themselves 
 with self-sacrifice to snatch these priceless gems 
 from the dirt and mire of sin and bring them to 
 shine in his crown. There is some suggestion of 
 what he thinks about it in the book of Daniel 
 where it is said: ‘‘And they that be wise shall 
 shine as the brightness of the firmament; and 
 they that turn many to righteousness, as the stars 
 forever and ever.”’ 
 
 There is a chapter in the book of Revelation 
 which begins with the verse: ‘“‘And there ap- 
 peared a great wonder in heaven: a woman 
 clothed with the sun, and the moon under her 
 
106 A CROWN FULL OF STARS 
 
 feet, and upon her head a crown of twelve stars.”’ 
 I have heard of a family of twelve children 
 whose mother was a sincere Christian. The 
 father died while many of the children were yet 
 small, but the mother worked hard and kept the 
 family together, and one by one through her 
 tears and prayers and her devoted Christian life 
 she won all twelve of them as jewels for her 
 Lord. And when she died they were all twelve 
 in the church—happy, earnest Christians. I 
 don’t wonder that that family of children, now 
 grown to be men and women, asked the minister 
 to take that sun-clothed and star-crowned woman 
 in Revelation as a text for his sermon. How she 
 will rejoice in those twelve stars in her crown 
 through eternal years in heaven. 
 
 I presume a great many of us have already 
 made up our mind that it is not to be our fate to 
 be extraordinarily rich or famous in this world, 
 and some of us have come to know by our obser- 
 vation at least that there are a great many limita- 
 tions to such happiness anyway. But it is 
 possible for every one of us to add some stars for 
 the Lord’s crown and at the same time to get 
 some stars for our own. 
 
 Paul, in his letter to the Thessalonians, whom he 
 himself had won to Christ, says: ‘‘For what is 
 our hope, or joy, or crown of rejoicing? Are 
 not even ye in the presence of our Lord Jesus 
 Christ at his coming? For ye are our glory and 
 joy.’’ Paul understood that his crown was made 
 
A CROWN FULL OF STARS 107 
 
 constantly brighter by every soul which he won 
 to the Lord. To win one soul from sin is a great 
 thing to do. To make one life brighter, to in- 
 sure the happiness of one heart, to cause the 
 clouds that shut in one immortal soul to disperse, 
 so that the sunshine of hope and courage shines 
 through, is a great thing to do; so great a thing 
 that it is beyond our power to estimate it at its 
 full value. The Scriptures declare that he who 
 converts a sinner from the error of his ways 
 saves a soul from death and hides a multitude of 
 sins. We think it a great thing to save life, and 
 men who do it are held in remembrance. Yet 
 that is only the life of the body. But to savea 
 soul from the darkness of despair and fill it with 
 light in this world and all worlds is a glorious 
 privilege. 
 
 Many fail to become soul-winners because they 
 wait for some conspicuous opportunity and do 
 not appreciate the privilege of reaching some 
 humble person that is near by. Great soul-win- 
 ners always count every soul that can be influ- 
 enced as a shining star to be won. It is said that 
 after the conversion of Dwight L. Moody, and 
 his acceptance as a member of the church, his 
 Sunday-school teacher said about him that it was 
 very unlikely the young fellow would ever be 
 very useful, and when the young convert wanted 
 to take part in prayer meeting it was suggested 
 to him that he could best serve the Lord in 
 silence. But young Moody was not to be dis- 
 
108 A CROWN FULL OF STARS 
 
 couraged, and set to work to do the first thing he 
 could to honor Christ. He rented four pews in 
 the church and kept them filled with men and - 
 boys. Then he asked if he might become a Sun- 
 day-school teacher, and was told that he might if 
 he would bring in his own scholars. Next Sun- 
 day he marched in at the head of eighteen ragged 
 boys whom he had collected during the week. 
 That was the beginning of the work of the might- 
 iest soul-winner this world has seen since the 
 days of Paul. And yet there are many of us 
 who could do that much. And the doing that 
 would show us how to do more, and both our 
 happiness and our usefulness would be multi- 
 plied. Every one of us may go to heaven if we 
 will with a crown of rejoicing that shall be full of 
 stars. 
 
IS LIFE LONG OR SHORT 
 
 A wonderful statement is made in the ninetieth 
 Psalm, where Moses says of God: ‘‘A thousand 
 years in thy sight are but as yesterday when it is 
 past, and as a watch in the night.’’ Who has not 
 at some time wondered how that could possibly 
 be so—wondered why things could look so very 
 different to God than they do tous? We usually 
 explain it by saying that God, who has existed 
 from all eternity, and who has a clear view of the 
 immortal years, regards lightly these brief meas- 
 ures of time which seem so long to us. But is 
 there not another answer and a better one? Is it 
 not rather that God is so busy with the great 
 work of the universe, his attention is so con- 
 stantly taken up with the interesting problems 
 connected with carrying on this world and ten 
 thousand other worlds like it, that time flies away 
 on rapid wing? 
 
 However this may be, it is certainly true with 
 us that we may always make life seem long by 
 making it empty, and we may always make it too 
 short by filling it full of earnest and important 
 work. The people who find time so long that 
 they want to ‘‘kill’’ it are the people who have 
 not learned to interest themselves in the vital life 
 of the world. Instead of wanting to kill time, 
 
 10g 
 
110 IS LIFE LONG OR SHORT 
 
 people who are living earnestly often wish they 
 could multiply the hours of each day or else 
 multiply their own capacity for work. The 
 reason life seems so much longer to children than 
 it does to grown-up people is that the childish 
 mind has not come to grapple with a great 
 variety of interests, anda little mill often finds 
 itself running empty. To those who do not fol- 
 low Paul’s example and when they become men 
 and women put away childish things, life will 
 still seem long after they are grown. 
 
 All this is important because none of us will do 
 our best work so long as we feel that there is 
 abundance of time and no call for arousing our- 
 selves to our best efforts. Human nature works 
 best under the whip of necessity, and if we feel 
 that we have more time than we need to do our 
 work then there is not much likelihood that we 
 shall get it done. The mind is quickened and 
 made alert when the pressure of immediate neces- 
 sity is put upon it. Nothing can be more fatal to 
 successful evangelistic work, the doing our duty 
 in winning people to Christ, than the feeling on 
 our part that “‘there is time enough yet.” 
 Multitudes have failed of their best opportunities 
 because of that. If every one of us were really 
 and earnestly awake to the fear that this present 
 winter was the last opportunity we would ever 
 have to win those who are not Christians to 
 accept Jesus Christ as their Saviour, the result 
 would be marvelous in our exertions; and yet it 
 
IS LIFE LONG OR SHORT III 
 
 is no doubt true of some of us (and who can pick 
 them out?) that this is the last chance. 
 
 When Mr. Moody was a young boy, before he 
 was a Christian, he was ina field one day with a 
 man who was hoeing. The man was weeping, 
 and he told Moody a strange story, which he 
 never forgot. He said that when he left home 
 his mother gave him this text: “‘Seek first the 
 kingdom of God.” But he paid no heed to it. 
 He said that when he was settled in life, and his 
 ambition to get money was gratified, it would be 
 time enough to seek the kingdom of God. He 
 went from one village to another and found noth- 
 ing to do. When Sunday came he went into a 
 village church, and what was his great surprise to 
 hear the minister give out the text, ‘‘Seek first 
 the kingdom of God.’’ The text went to the bot- 
 tom of his heart. He went away from that 
 town, and at the end of a week went into another 
 church, and heard the minister give out the same 
 text, ‘‘Seek first the kingdom of God.’’ He felt 
 sure this time that it was the prayers of his 
 mother, but he said calmly and deliberately: 
 ““No; I will first get wealthy.’’ He went on, and 
 did not go into a church fora few months; but 
 the first place of worship he went into he heard a 
 third minister preaching a sermon from the same 
 text. He tried to stifle his feeling, to get the 
 sermon out of his mind, and resolved that he 
 would keep away from church altogether, and for 
 a few years did keep out of God’s house. His 
 
112 IS LIFE LONG OR SHORT 
 
 mother died, and the text kept coming up in his 
 mind, and he said: ‘‘I will try to become a Chris- 
 tian.’’ The tears rolled down his cheek as he 
 continued: ‘‘I could not; no sermon ever 
 touched me; my heart is as hard as that stone’””— 
 pointing to one in the field. 
 
 Moody could not understand what it was all 
 about. at the time, but after he went to Boston 
 and was converted, the first thought that came to 
 him was about this man. When he got back he 
 asked him mother: ‘‘Is Mr. L living in such 
 a place?”’ 
 
 ‘*Didn’t I write to you about him?’’ she asked. 
 ““They have taken him to an insane asylum, and 
 to every one who goes there he points his finger 
 upward and tells him to ‘‘Seek first the kingdom 
 of God.”’ 
 
 The next time Moody went home the mother 
 told him the man was in her house, and he went 
 to see him. He found him in a rocking-chair 
 with a vacant idiotic look upon his face. When 
 he saw Moody he pointed to him and said, 
 ‘“Young man, seek first the kingdom of God.’’ 
 Reason was gone, but the text was there. 
 
 Let us not make the fatal mistake of this man. 
 The time is short; let us arouse ourselves to 
 appreciate it, and throw our whole souls into the 
 work of laying up treasures in heaven, where no 
 moth can corrupt and where no thief can break 
 through or steal, 
 
MULTIPLICATION OF BLESSINGS 
 THROUGH SHARING 
 
 God has made us for human fellowship, and we 
 are starved and dwarfed in every way when we 
 live selfish lives. Nobody is so poorly taken care 
 of as the man who shuts his sympathies away 
 from his fellows and devotes himself entirely to 
 looking out for himself. It is just as sure as the 
 law of gravitation that if we divide with others 
 God’s good gifts to us we multiply instead of 
 diminishing our blessings. A wonderful illus- 
 tration of this fact is found in the story of the 
 
 widow woman who took Elijah to board. Elijah y 
 
 had been camping out for awhile by the brook 
 /Cherith, and the ravens had been bringing him 
 food, two meals a day, and he had had good 
 spring-water from the brook; but there was a 
 drought in the land, and so God sent him to 
 \Zarephath, where he was to call at the house of a 
 widow woman and find his place of entertain- 
 ment. He found her out gathering up sticks to 
 make a fire, and he asked her for a drink of 
 water, and as she started to go and get it he 
 stopped her and begged her to bring him a piece 
 of bread with the water. The woman answered, 
 “‘As the Lord thy God liveth, I have not a cake, 
 but an handful of meal in a barrel, and a little oil 
 II3 
 
114 BLESSINGS THROUGH SHARING 
 
 in a cruse: and, behold, I am gathering two 
 sticks, that I may go in and dress it for me and 
 my son, that we may eat it, and die.”” But 
 Elijah assured the poor woman that if she would 
 divide what she had with him the Lord who had 
 sent him would see to it that her food did not 
 give out until the famine was over. And the 
 good woman believed him and divided her last 
 meal, and though Elijah boarded there for a long 
 time, they had plenty to eat, ‘“‘and the barrel of 
 meal wasted not, neither did the cruse of oil fail, 
 according to the word of the Lord, which he 
 spake by Elijah.’’ And not only did the woman 
 have plenty to eat for herself and child; but 
 afterwards, when her little boy sickened, Elijah 
 saved him from death. 
 
 This old story reveals a law of God which 
 girdles the earth. When we hold any blessing 
 that comes to us as given not for ourselves only 
 but for our brethren as well, God multiplies it so 
 that in blessing others we ourselves receive still 
 greater blessings. Unselfishness is an invulner- 
 able armor in any world which belongs to God 
 
 In the Roman army there was a law that no 
 one should approach the Emperor’s tent by night 
 under penalty of death. One night a soldier was 
 found near the royal tent, vearing in his hand a 
 petition which he wished to present. He was at 
 once sentenced to die. But the Emperor, hear- 
 ing voices without, asked what the trouble was, 
 and learning that a soldier had invaded the for- 
 
BLESSINGS THROUGH SHARING 115 
 
 bidden grounds to bring a petition to him, gave 
 this command: “If the petition be for himself, 
 let him die; but if it is for another, spare his 
 life.’’ It was found that it was a plea for two 
 fellow soldiers who had fallen asleep at their 
 posts. God is still more gracious, for when we 
 come to him with petitions for others he will also 
 hear our request for ourselves. ¥ It was when Job, 
 forgetting his own great losses and troubles, 
 besought God in behalf of his friends, that God 
 turned his own captivity and brought joy again 
 into his heart and life. 
 
 There is no department of human service where 
 one may see more remarkable illustrations of this 
 great truth than in the efforts of Christians to 
 share their experiences with those who do not 
 know Christ and the joy of his salvation. No 
 Christian ever yet sought out some poor hungry 
 sinner and brought him to the heavenly feast 
 who did not find the Bread of Life more delicious 
 than before to his own taste. 
 
 \v By sharing what we have with others we give a 
 practical exhibition of our trust and confidence in 
 God. We show that we are not afraid to trust 
 God to give us more blessings. We often pray 
 God to do for others what he has already given 
 us the means to do in his name. One of the 
 requisites of real prayer is our willingness to 
 enter into fellowship with the Lord in bringing 
 about the results which we desire. There is no 
 teal genuineness to any prayer for the help of a 
 
116 BLESSINGS THROUGH SHARING 
 
 needy neighbor when the one who prays it has 
 abundant means to relieve his neighbor’s distress 
 and yet will not doit. So there is no real genu- 
 ineness in your prayer for the conversion of your 
 friend, or for the saving of some lost sinner, when 
 you yourself are unwilling to speak to him or 
 bring to him by your own testimony the knowl- 
 
 edge of Christ’s great love. 
 \V I have heard of a man who prayed fervently 
 every morning in his family prayers for the poor 
 in the community; but he was never known to 
 give anything to the poor. One morning, at the 
 conclusion of the family worship, when the usual 
 prayer had been offered up for the poor and 
 destitute, his little boy said: ‘‘Father, I wish I 
 had your corn-crib.” ‘‘Why, my son?’’ replied 
 the father. ‘‘Why, because then I would answer 
 your prayer myself.’’ That little story is sus- 
 ceptible in application both to temporal and 
 spiritual matters. Many of you are praying to 
 God to save sinners; you are asking him for the 
 outpouring of the Holy Spirit in the church serv- 
 ices, and on the efforts which the pastor and 
 others are making for a revival; but at the same 
 time you are personally acquainted with a dozen 
 or it may be a score or more of people who are 
 not Christians, and yet you let week after week 
 go by and do not say a word to them about 
 Jesus. 
 
 Let each one of us co-operate with God and we 
 shall see wonderful days of salvation. Share 
 
BLESSINGS THROUGH SHARING 117 
 
 what spiritual blessings God has already given 
 you with your unconverted neighbors, and you 
 will find that ‘‘the barrel of meal shall not waste, 
 neither shall the cruse of oil fail.’’ 
 
MAKING LIFE PEACEFUL BY MAK- 
 ING IT IMPORTANT 
 
 The message of the fifty-fifth chapter of Isaiah 
 is that.true peace is to be had only through har- 
 mony with the great Heart of the universe. 
 There is a bread which does not satisfy; there is 
 a water which does not slake the thirst. The 
 reason is that the human Heart is too great to 
 satisfy its hunger on the things that perish; the 
 longing of the soul is too deep to slake its thirst 
 at the streams of earth’s pleasures. There isa 
 music which charms for a time, but which never 
 gives abiding peace. To catch the strains which 
 satisfy, one must incline the ear and listen to 
 heaven’s anthems of immortality. 
 
 This message is full of hope, for it tells of the 
 God who has mercy and whose ways of pardoning 
 are generous and abundant. His thoughts are 
 higher than our thoughts. His ways are nobler 
 than our ways. His purposes run deep through 
 all the round of the year. Rain and snow, frost 
 and heat, sunshine and shadow all work together 
 to fulfill the deep purpose which he has to 
 beautify and make fertile the earth as a garden in 
 which his children are to grow. His purpose 
 may seem to be thwarted by some great storm, 
 by a season of bitter cold, or by days and nights 
 
 118 
 
MAKING LIFE PEACEFUL 119 
 
 of drought. But it is only seeming; his purposes 
 are not thwarted; in the end he gives ‘‘seed to 
 the sower and bread to the eater.’’ 
 
 Now we are assured through all these figures 
 and illustrations that if our purposes are only 
 great enough, if we catch the spirit that abides 
 underneath all transient things in God’s world, 
 then we shall have a deep, abiding peace that the 
 transitory trials and sorrows of life will not be 
 able to disturb. We may be shut about in our 
 way like travelers who are snowbound for a day 
 and a night, or even a week of days and nights; 
 but we shall not fret or worry if our purposes are 
 in harmony with God’s and our confidence rests 
 sure in him. In that case we shall have no doubt 
 that when the snow and ice of difficulty melt 
 away we shall go out with joy and be led forth 
 with peace; the mountains and the hills shall 
 break forth before us into singing, and all the 
 trees of the field shall clap their hands. Instead 
 of the thorns of to-day the fragrant balsam fir 
 shall spring up about us to-morrow. Instead of 
 the briers and the brambles of the present, in the 
 long run the myrtle shall rejoice our eyes. 
 
 You can always make life fretful and full of 
 worry by making it narrow and shallow. If your 
 purposes are small, then of course you must 
 worry about details, and little things must either 
 give you what pleasure you have or your annoy- 
 ance. Make your purposes great, make your life 
 important by devotion to high ends, and you can 
 
120 MAKING LIFE PEACEFUL 
 
 afford to bear with self-composure the temporary 
 annoyances of life. It is the shallow stream that 
 chafes most at the rocks and boulders which 
 impede its path. Some one sings: 
 
 Deep the stream and silent— 
 Scarce I hear its flow— 
 
 What a noise its current 
 Made a few days ago! 
 
 Round the stones it fretted 
 On its shallow way— 
 Babbling in vexation 
 Over each delay. 
 
 Came the heavy rainfall, 
 Swelled the river’s might. 
 Now its stony troubles 
 Are unheeded quite. 
 
 So, when our complaining 
 Tells of constant strife 
 
 With some moveless hindrance 
 In our path of life, 
 
 What we need is only 
 Fullness of our own— 
 
 If the current deepen 
 Never mind the stone! 
 
 Let the fuller nature 
 Flow its mass above, 
 
 Cover it with pity, 
 Cover it with love. 
 
A LIFE ON FIRE 
 
 In Paul’s first letter to the Corinthians, in the 
 ninth chapter, he sets forth with great clearness 
 the difference between a prudent, careful Chris- 
 tian life, where a man seeks only to come within 
 the requirements of the letter of God’s com- 
 mands, and that of one who is so grateful to God 
 for the innumerable mercies bestowed upon him 
 that he is never satisfied with the return he can 
 make but is ever aglow with desire to do more to 
 show his love for Christ. 
 
 Paul uses some very striking illustrations to 
 bear testimony to his own fidelity and loyalty to 
 Christ. He calls attention to the fact that he has 
 as good a right to have a wife or to take a sister 
 about with him on his travels as any of the other 
 of the apostles, but he gladly denies himself the 
 comforts and privileges which other men have 
 that he may carry the Gospel the farther and be 
 the more effective as an evangelist. He calls 
 attention to the fact that he would have a perfect 
 Tight to expect a salary for the work which he 
 performs. He asserts that the man who plants a 
 vineyard has a right to eat the fruit of it, and 
 that the man who herds the flock has a right to 
 live on the milk. Heis sure that the God who 
 would not let them muzzle the ox that was used 
 
 I2I 
 
122 A LIFE ON FIRE 
 
 to tread the corn would guarantee to him the 
 right to a salary as a minister; but so great is his 
 devotion to the cause of Christ that, believing as 
 he does that in establishing the infant church he 
 must make the people to whom he goes feel that 
 he has no interest in them but their salvation, he 
 denies himself the comfort of being supported by 
 them. Soearnest is he about it that he exclaims: 
 “It were better for me to die, than that any man 
 should make my glorying void.’” And then for 
 fear somebody would think that it was simply a 
 proud boast of his own self-sacrifice and goodness 
 he continues: ‘‘For though I preach the gospel, I 
 have nothing to glory of: for necessity is laid 
 upon me; yea, woe is unto me, if I preach not the 
 gospel!’’ And therefore, feeling that he is so 
 greatly indebted to Christ that everything he can 
 do is a small return for the love of Jesus to him, 
 he says: ‘‘For though I be free from all men, yet 
 have I made myself servant unto all, that I might 
 gain the more.’’ 
 
 Somehow I feel that there are many of us who 
 need to get more of that spirit. I think .we are 
 altogether too independent and proud in our atti- 
 tude toward our church work. If it goes just to 
 suit us we are allright; but when we think we 
 are not shown proper consideration, or matters 
 are conducted in a way that does not meet with 
 our approval, we are often too ready to feel that 
 we are at liberty to throw up our church duties 
 and do as we please. But has a father the right 
 
A LIFE ON FIRE 123 
 
 to abandon his duties as a father because he 
 sometimes has to give up his plans and wishes in 
 the conduct of household affairs? Has a mother 
 a right to repudiate her duties of motherhood, and 
 fail to fulfill her obligations to her children, 
 because they have sometimes to be performed 
 under perplexing conditions? Has a citizen the 
 right to consider himself released from all obliga- 
 tions as acitizen to the government which pro- 
 tects his person and property because, forsooth, 
 the party which he opposed was elected to power? 
 If not, then the Christian certainly isnot at liberty 
 to consider himself free from his obligations to 
 Chri st and humanity because the conditions under 
 which he is called upon to perform his Christian 
 duties are for the time being trying to his patience 
 and, it may be, humiliating to his self-esteem. 
 
 The cure for all this is to have Paul’s spirit. 
 Paul was able easily to endure things which 
 would otherwise have been impossible to him 
 because his soul was aflame with devotion to and 
 love for Christ. He was willing to deny himself 
 anything in the world that stood in the way of his 
 being a successful evangelist of the Lord Jesus. 
 How strongly this comes out in his declaration 
 that, ‘‘To the weak became I as weak, that I 
 might gain the weak: I am made all things to all 
 men, that I might by all means save some.’’ 
 “‘And this,’’ he says to these Corinthians, ‘‘I do 
 for the gospel’s sake, that I might be partaker 
 thereof with you.”’ 
 
124 A LIFE ON FIRE 
 
 Brethren, is not this the spirit we need—a 
 spirit that will put us into sympathy and fellow- 
 ship with those who have severe limitations, who 
 are held back by many restraints, and who must 
 fail utterly unless their brothers and sisters in 
 the church will have charity for them and be 
 patient withthem? We cannot have the patience 
 we ought to have unless our love for Christ is so 
 great, and our love for those who are trying to 
 be Christians is so earnest and true, that we will 
 overlook a great many things that we would 
 otherwise severely criticise. What a difference 
 there is between a life that is negative—doing 
 only what one thinks he cannot get along without 
 and still keep up his fair name in the church—and 
 a life that is thrown with a full heart into loving 
 service of God and man! Paul expresses it in 
 another place perhaps better than any one else 
 ever has when he says, ‘‘The love of Christ con- 
 straineth me.’”’ 
 
 If we are not already on fire, let us pray God to 
 kindle our souls to a white heat. Charles Wesley 
 had the right idea when he sang: 
 
 Jesus, thine all-victorious love 
 Shed in my heart abroad; 
 
 Then shall my feet no longer rove, 
 Rooted and fixed in God. 
 
 O that in me the sacred fire 
 Might now begin to glow, 
 
 Burn up the dross of base desire 
 And make the mountains flow! 
 
THE DIFFERENCE BETWEEN SYM- 
 PATHY AND PITY 
 
 These two words are often confused in the 
 public thought. People many times have pity 
 aroused at the sight of suffering when they have 
 no sympathy whatever with the sufferer. Sym- 
 pathy has for its foundation stone genuine respect 
 for a person simply because of his humanity; 
 while pity need have no respect at all, but is 
 stirred in an emotional way at the sight of any 
 unusual discomfort or sorrow. Sympathy gives 
 us the power to put ourselves in our brother’s 
 place. We think how we would feel if we were 
 in the same position. We look through our own 
 eyes from his standpoint. One may do a great 
 many kind deeds through pity; but pity is only 
 ‘ copper, where sympathy, issuing in brotherhood 
 and fellowship, is gold. 
 
 Christ often showed pity toward men, but his 
 pity issued from his sympathy. If a man was 
 hungry he fed him, but as a brother in need, 
 never as a hungry animal. If a man was sick of 
 palsy, or was a leper, or was blind, he healed 
 him; but not to get rid of his appeals or because 
 his misery annoyed him. He ever saw the man 
 back of the misfortune, and healed his body only 
 as an approach toward the restoration of his man- 
 
 125 
 
126 SYMPATHY AND PITY 
 
 hood. He asked a drink of water of the woman 
 of Samaria, but his real drink that evening was 
 to turn the woman to righteousness. 
 
 Paul shows us very clearly his idea of the dis- 
 tinction between pity and sympathy in the thir- 
 teenth chapter of his first letter to the Corinthians, 
 when he says that a man might, through pity, 
 bestow all his goods to feed the poor and yet get 
 no credit whatever for it in heaven because it 
 lacked the loving sympathy which alone gives 
 true value to deeds of charity. 
 
 Never, perhaps, does goodness count for so 
 much as when it expresses itself insympathy. A 
 human heart is always hungry for sympathy. If 
 it cannot have the highest quality, it will feed on 
 the lowest. 
 
 A rich man was walking out with his little boy 
 one evening, and in passing the cottage of a Ger- 
 man laborer the boy’s attention was attracted toa 
 very commonplace little dog at the gate, and he 
 wanted his father to buy it. Just then the owner 
 of the dog came home from work, and was met 
 by the dog with every demonstration of joy. 
 The rich man said to the owner: ‘‘My little boy 
 has taken a fancy to your dog, and I will buy 
 him. What do you want for him?” 
 
 ‘“*T can’t sell dat dog,’’ said the German. 
 
 ‘*Look here,’’ said the man of wealth, ‘“‘that is 
 a poor dog, just acommon cur; but as my boy 
 wants him, I will give you ten dollars for him.”’ 
 
 ‘“Yaas,’’ said the German, ‘‘I knows he is a 
 
SYMPATHY AND PITY 127 
 
 very poor dog, and he ain't wort’ almost nottin’, 
 but dere is von leetle ding mit dat dog vat I 
 can’t sell—I can’t sell de vag of his tail ven I 
 comes home at night.’’ 
 
 Laugh as you will, there is deep pathos in that 
 old German’s idea. To know that somebody 
 looks after us in longing when we go away; to 
 know that some heart is more joyous, though it 
 be only a dog’s, when we come home; to know 
 that there is sympathy somewhere for us, is one 
 of the great necessities of life. 
 
 An intimate friend of John Ruskin says he was 
 once at dinner with that great man when, as they 
 were enjoying a rhubarb tart, the visitor hap- 
 pened to say that it was the first he had tasted 
 that season, and remarked how delicious it was, 
 Ringing for one of his servants, Ruskin said: 
 “Please tell Jackson I want him.’’ When he 
 came into the room his master said: ‘‘Jackson, Iam 
 very pleased to tell you that your first pulling of 
 rhubarb is quite a success; and my friend here, who 
 has had some pie made of it, says it is delicious.’’ 
 
 After the dinner was over a servant came in 
 bringing a number of lighted candles. The win- 
 dows being shaded by the overhanging trees 
 above, the room was almost dark, even before the 
 sun had gone down. After placing the candles, 
 as she was leaving the room she said: ‘‘Please, 
 sir, there is a beautiful sunset sky just now over 
 the Old Man.’’ 
 
 The professor rose from his chair and said: 
 
128 SYMPATHY AND PITY 
 
 ‘“Thank you, Kate, for telling us.’’ He then left 
 the room, but soon returned. ‘‘Yes,’’ he said, 
 “it is worth seeing.’’ And he led the way to an 
 upper window. 
 
 It was a glorious sight, the sun sinking behind 
 the Coniston Old Man Mountain and the mist and 
 ripples on the lake tinged with a crimson flush. 
 The two men sat silently in the window recess till 
 the sun went down behind the mountain. Rus- 
 kin was no doubt thinking of the sunset, but his 
 visitor was thinking most of the charming rela- 
 tion and sympathy manifested between master 
 and servants. 
 
 The greatness of a man’s nature comes out 
 more beautifully perhaps in sympathy than any- 
 where else. A new and beautiful story has 
 recently been published concerning Abraham 
 Lincoln. It was while he was a member of Con- 
 gress and was home in Springfield, Ill., during 
 the Congressional recess. He was going down 
 the street one morning when he saw a little girl 
 standing at the gate with her hat and gloves on 
 as if ready for a journey, but sobbing as if her 
 heart would break. 
 
 ‘‘Why, what’s the matter?’’ inquired the great 
 tall Congressman. 
 
 And then she poured out her little broken heart 
 to him; how she had arranged to take her first 
 trip on the cars that day, and the expressman had 
 failed to come for her trunk, and she was going 
 to miss the train. 
 
SYMPATHY AND PITY 129 
 
 “How big isthe trunk? There’s still time, if 
 it isn’t too big.’”” And he pushed through the 
 gate and up to the door. 
 
 She took him up to her room where her little, 
 old-fashioned trunk stood, locked and tied. 
 
 ‘*Oho!’’ he cried. ‘‘Wipe your eyes and come 
 on quick.’’ 
 
 And before she knew what he was going to do 
 he had shouldered the trunk, was downstairs and 
 ‘striding out of the yard. Down the street he 
 went, as fast as his long legs could carry him, the 
 little girl trotting behind drying her tears as she 
 went. They reached the station on time, and 
 Abraham Lincoln sent his little friend away 
 happy. 
 
 I doubt if any other scene in the splendid life 
 of that noble man reveals more beautifully the 
 simplicity and grandeur of his heart. It is the 
 same grade and quality of action which after- 
 ward, when applied to national affairs, made men 
 love him all over the world. 
 
 If we open our hearts for the coming of Jesus 
 Christ into its inner sanctuary, and permit him to 
 sit at the table and dictate our conduct, all our 
 lives will bloom out in a sympathy which will 
 make the most common career sweet and beauti- 
 ful with the Christ spirit. 
 
THE HARP-STRINGS OF THE SOUL 
 
 In the ro4th Psalm we have pictured with much 
 care and detail the beauties and glories of nature 
 and the goodness of God in dealing with his 
 creatures. It is wonderful how much is packed 
 into that Psalm! It talks of the God who covers 
 himself with light, who stretches out the heavens | 
 like a curtain; who makes a chariot out of the 
 clouds and uses the winds for wings. It is a 
 wonderfully picturesque Psalm. The springs 
 which burst out of the hillsides and run down 
 through the valleys, the birds that build their 
 nests along these little water courses, the droves 
 of cattle that find pasture on the hills, the vine- 
 yards and olive groves and fields, the cedars of 
 Lebanon, the fir trees where the storks build their 
 nests, wild goats and conies; the changing 
 seasons of the year, the day, and the night, in 
 whose darkness the young lions go out seeking 
 their prey, are all enumerated. Reflecting on all 
 these things the Psalmist is impressed anew with 
 the fact that God cares for and feeds each one of 
 them, and that none of them could live without 
 God’s ceaseless protection; and as his heart over- 
 flows at the majesty and goodness and love of 
 God he bursts forth into a most delightful melody 
 of thanksgiving. 
 
 I think it would be well for us to notice the 
 
 130 
 
THE HARP-STRINGS OF THE SOUL 131 
 
 strings on this harp, because every reason that 
 then existed for its grateful melody exists to-day. 
 The first of these is meditation: ‘‘My meditation 
 of him shall be sweet.’’ How much we lose 
 when we go rushing along through the world 
 without so mastering ourselves as to take time to 
 meditate upon God and his dealings withus. The 
 reason so many lives are barren and spiritually 
 uninteresting is because they have no times of 
 sweet meditation on heavenly things. Do not 
 make the mistake of supposing that you must 
 always have ideal circumstances surrounding you 
 in order to have meditations that are perfumed 
 with the atmosphere of heaven. A great many 
 of the sweetest Psalms bear evidences of having 
 been written in times of great trial and hardship. 
 Many of those written by David were composed 
 when he was a wanderer and had to hide himself 
 away in acave or in the mountains; but under 
 such circumstances he was able to meditate upon 
 God and his goodness. Though he was driven 
 into the hills, he could not thus be driven away 
 from God. When he saw a stork building her 
 nest in a fir tree, or a wild goat standing aloft on 
 some jutting crag, or heard at night the roar of 
 some young lion seeking his prey, David said to 
 himself as he meditated, ‘*The God who cares for 
 these things and does not forget them will surely 
 not forget me.’’ And as he meditated the bitter- 
 ness went out of his heart, love and hope came 
 in, and his whole life was sweetened. 
 
132 THE HARP-STRINGS OF THE SOUL. 
 
 Touching this string of meditation jars another 
 string, and that is gratitude: ‘‘I will sing praises 
 to my God.’’ I am sure we shall always be 
 grateful after any genuine meditation on God's 
 goodness. It is when we act or say things in 
 haste that we are not grateful. It is impossible 
 to count up God’s mercies, and to take account 
 of all the things that are still left which through 
 God’s kindness may yet minister to our happiness 
 even on the darkest and most trying day, without 
 there rising up in our souls an anthem of praise 
 to God. When we address God nothing, unless 
 it be confession of sin, so befits our lips as grati- 
 tude. We ought not always be asking and never 
 thanking the Lord. The thankful soul is the 
 happy soul. Show me aman whois ungrateful, 
 who is always receiving and never giving back in 
 words of gratitude, and I wilt show you one who 
 in the very nature of things can never know real 
 genuine happiness. A thankful spirit is as great 
 a blessing to the giver as it is to the one who 
 receives the gratitude. 
 
 If these two strings of your harp are touched I 
 am sure they will arouse a third: “I will sing 
 unto the Lord.’’ How natural it is for a heart 
 that is grateful, and is communing with the Lord 
 in meditation, to burst forth into happy song. 
 Christianity is the greatest singing religion in the 
 world. This is because there is more hope and 
 good cheer, more promises of good things to 
 come, more present gladness in the heart of the 
 
THE HARP-STRINGS OF THE SOUL 133 
 
 sincere Christian than in the disciple of any other 
 religion the world has ever seen. Christ is the 
 great hope bringer. When the angels came to 
 sing at his birth they said to the shepherds that 
 they brought glad tidings, and wherever Christ is 
 preached men are made glad. It is not only our 
 privilege but our duty to live glad lives, and song 
 is the most natural expression of gladness. I 
 think we ought to sing more than we do. We 
 ought to sing more inour homes. Ours isa sing- 
 ing religion, and we ought to live up to it. 
 Christian song has great power to banish the 
 blues and brighten our outlook on the future. 
 
 If we strike all these notes we shall get courage 
 to go on our way rejoicing. The Psalmist felt so 
 uplifted as he meditated and praised and sang 
 that he determined to keep on in that good way 
 as long as he lived. 
 
 If we give ourselves up to the fascination of 
 soul-music that is aroused by meditation upon 
 God. and communion with him, our hearts will be 
 made so glad and we shall be so charmed with our 
 heavenly conversation with Christ that we shall 
 be saved from many of the haunting fears of life. 
 
 Mrs. Duncan Stewart, a favorite in the highest 
 circles of Europe forty years ago, was wonder- 
 fully gifted in the art of conversation. She was 
 an intimate friend in the home of Disraeli. 
 Through the affection of the royal family of 
 Hanover for her eldest daughter, the king and 
 the queen showed her constant marks of consider- 
 
134 THE HARP-STRINGS OF THE SOUL 
 
 ation and favor. The king was blind, and the 
 brilliant conversation of Mrs, Stewart so de- 
 lighted him that she would save up for his bene- 
 fit every interesting story she heard. One day 
 she was telling him a story as they were driving 
 together. The horses suddenly started, and the 
 carriage seemed about to be upset. 
 
 ““Why do you not go on with your story?’’ 
 asked the king. 
 
 ‘“Because, sir, the carriage is just going to 
 upset.”’ 
 
 ‘*That is the coachman’s affair,’’ said the king. 
 ““Do go on with your story.’”’ 
 
 I think there is a good lesson for us in that 
 story. If we will give ourselves up often to 
 sweet meditations on God's goodness, and enter 
 heartily into the purpose of the Lord Jesus in 
 this world, we shall be so charmed by our fellow- 
 ship with him that we shall not be alarmed at 
 everything that threatens to upset our plans, but 
 will realize that after we have done our best the 
 security of our future is the business of him 
 whose promise is that ‘‘all things work together 
 for good to them that love God.’”’ 
 
IN WHAT RESPECT CAN THE CHRIS- 
 TIAN OF TO-DAY IMITATE JESUS 
 
 Though there has been a great deal of discus- 
 sion recently upon this question, the inquiry is 
 by no means novel. Paul wrote on it a good 
 many years before Sheldon. In the opening of 
 the eleventh chapter of his first letter to the 
 Corinthian Christians, Paul made a direct appeal 
 to them to follow him in the same way that he 
 followed Jesus. Now that gives us a little clue, 
 
 I think, to Paul’s idea of our inquiry. As we > 
 
 examine the life of Paul we can see what he 
 thought was the Master’s desire as to the manner 
 in which he should imitate him. And we can 
 often learn a good deal about things by finding 
 what they are not like. If we pursue that course 
 in this case we shall take note of the fact that 
 Paul did not pursue Christ in the outward man- 
 ner of hislife. Christ remained in that little land 
 of Palestine all his life long. He went about 
 doing good, and picked up here and there a 
 friend, but he did not undertake any wide field of 
 evangelism and made no attempt to carry his mes- 
 sage beyond the country in which he was born. 
 Paul, however, was soon led out beyond all this 
 narrow sphere into the wider world. His vision 
 of the man of Macedonia ke took as a call to the 
 135 
 
136 THE IMITATION OF JESUS 
 
 great Gentile world, and he went from city to city 
 arguing with the people, bearing witness to 
 Christ, and turning the world upside down by his 
 magnetic and powerful oratory. Everywhere he 
 went he organized churches, and he kept track of 
 them afterward, wrote them letters and visited 
 them as he had opportunity. 
 
 Now I think this suggests to us a certain 
 negative line of thought in regard to our own 
 conduct. We cannot imitate Jesus in many 
 things connected with our outward life. For 
 instance, we cannot all be unmarried men. And 
 a man who has a wife and children is, in the very 
 nature of the case, widely separated from Jesus 
 in the manner of his personal life. Again, Christ 
 was never a public official, and a man who has 
 official relation as a general in an army, as the 
 governor of a State, as a judge in court, or asa 
 policeman of a city, occupies an outward relation 
 to his fellow men entirely different from anything 
 which is illustrated to us in the life of Jesus on 
 earth. Christ lived ina very simple age. There 
 are many things in this complex society in which 
 we are living that so far as outward method and 
 manner are concerned are so unlike the humble 
 life of Palestine nineteen hundred years ago that 
 the biography of Jesus points no index finger to 
 any path through the perplexing artificial growths 
 that surround us in our daily life. 
 
 But now let us turn to the other side, and see 
 in what respect Paul followed Jesus. In the first 
 
THE IMITATION OF JESUS 137 
 
 place, he imitated Christ in the reverence and 
 prayerfulness of his life. From the day Jesus 
 spoke to him on the way to Damascus and Paul 
 cried out, ‘‘Lord, what wilt thou have me to do?” 
 Paul lived a reverent, prayerful life. In that he 
 imitated Jesus. His constant recourse in every 
 time of trouble, in every perplexity of his 
 experience, was to prayer. He felt all the 
 while that he was in delicate, sensitive touch 
 with God. He felt that he was under the 
 direction of the Holy Spirit. How much many 
 of us are losing because our prayers are formali- 
 ties. They are not hypocritical, we are honest 
 about them, but we somehow feel that God acts 
 on great formal lines, and we do not think of 
 breathing out our hearts to him as we would toa 
 dear friend who is just at our elbow, or whom we 
 could call up on the telephone and counsel with 
 without a moment’s notice. That is where the 
 average Christian loses beyond all computation. 
 One of the most effective Christian men I have 
 ever known was Dr. A. J. Gordon, of Boston, and 
 he kept in touch with God in such a way that he 
 walked hourly with the feeling that the Lord 
 directed and guided him, not in a general way, 
 but as one friend might lead another, taking him 
 by the hand. God wonderfully used him for the 
 salvation of souls and the comfort of his people. 
 His face glowed with the presence of the Holy 
 Spirit. Once when he called at the house of a 
 parishioner, a Catholic servant girl, who was new 
 
138 THE IMITATION OF JESUS 
 
 to the house, on going in to her mistress to an- 
 nounce him, said that she had forgotten his 
 name, she had been so excited; for, said she, 
 “‘the man has the face of an angel.’’ Surely we 
 may imitate Jesus and Paul by living in this 
 spirit of prayerfulness. 
 
 Paul followed Christ in another respect in that 
 his duty was ever the supreme thing in his life. 
 When the disciples came back from Samaria with 
 food, and found Jesus at the well where they had 
 left him, and could not persuade him to eat, he, 
 having won a soul to God while they were gone, 
 said: ‘‘I have meat to eat that ye know not of. 
 . . . My meat is to do the will of him that sent me, 
 and to finish his work.’’ The supreme purpose 
 in Christ’s life was to please God and to do his 
 work. That was the great joy and gladness of 
 living. Paul, too, was like that. Everything 
 else was only incidental. Paul did not grumble 
 at being shipwrecked; he did not mind being let 
 down over the wall in a basket; it did not count 
 though he fought with wild beasts; there was no 
 complaint when he endured chains and imprison- 
 ment; he worked making tents and supported 
 himself while pouring out his life to bring bless- 
 ings to others, and did all, as Christ did, for the 
 joy that was set before him. It was his meat and 
 drink to do the will of God and complete the 
 work which he had given him todo. We may 
 follow Christ in that respect. We may imitate 
 Jesus by setting our hearts on doing our duty to 
 
THE IMITATION OF JESUS 139 
 
 the full; on giving our whole soul and spirit to 
 the work which God has given us to do. 
 
 Then I think it all narrows down to this: We 
 cannot walk in Christ’s steps in many of the paths 
 he trod, but we can live in his spirit in all the 
 ways of our human life. In our attitude toward 
 God and toward our fellow men we can live in 
 the spirit of Christ. His spirit was reverence 
 and love toward God and sympathy and love 
 toward his fellow men. He kept his heart ever 
 open toward God, so that he never doubted the 
 presence of heaven in his life; and he kept his 
 heart ever open towards his fellow men, so that 
 he uttered no word and did no deed in relation to 
 them that was not inspired by love. And by 
 God’s help we may imitate him in this, and thus 
 live the Christ-life before the world. 
 
 Let us not be discouraged if our performance 
 has come so far short of our hopes, but let us 
 rather act on the determination of Paul, and for- 
 getting those things which are behind, press for- 
 ward toward that which is before, keeping our 
 eyes upon the goal, which is a character anda 
 personality that after awhile, if we are faithful, 
 shall be in the likeness of Jesus Christ. 
 
THE VALUE OF CASTLES IN THE 
 AIR 
 
 All the best work of the world has been done 
 by men who were ever building castles in the air, 
 dreaming souls who believed more than they 
 could see. Men whose faith does not go beyond 
 their sight are always limited and circumscribed 
 in the possibilities of their achievement. A man 
 who dreams of bowing suns and moons and stars 
 has no limit to his horizon. Joseph the dreamer 
 is ever a type of the man to whom all things are 
 possible. For, after all, the greatest things are 
 out of sight. Paul says that it is the seen and 
 temporal which is only transient, it is the unseen 
 which is eternal. He is a poor man indeed, how- 
 ever many times a millionaire the world may 
 count him, who has no wealth save that which an 
 earthly tax-gatherer can tabulate. Just now the 
 seen and the temporal attract much attention. 
 They are in sight and impress themselves upon 
 the senses, and there are many careless souls who 
 are ready to exclaim in the language of the old 
 proverb, ‘‘A bird in the hand is worth two in the 
 bush.’’ But it depends on the bird, and on what 
 you want the bird todo. If you want to eat the 
 bird and thus lose it, or if you enjoy keeping it in 
 your hand, just looking at it and gloating over 
 your possession, that is one thing; butif you want 
 
 140 
 
VALUE OF CASTLES IN THE AIR 141 
 
 a bird to sing and warble forth its glorious music, 
 if you want it to soar in the air with the sunshine 
 on its wings, carrying a little of heaven with it 
 wherever it goes, then a bird in the bush is worth 
 a great many in the hand. 
 
 Joseph went down into Egypt a poor slave, to 
 be auctioned off like any other merchandise 
 brought with the caravan. Outwardly he was 
 poor enough, but really he was richer than any 
 merchant in that company. His wealth was in- 
 visible, unseen, but none the less real, and none 
 the less available when the time came. On the 
 day when Joseph stood before Pharaoh, and 
 through the insight which God gave him inter- 
 preted Pharaoh’s dream and was made prime 
 minister of Egypt purely because of the unseen 
 spiritual wealth which he possessed, there was 
 not a purse-proud merchant in all Egypt that 
 would not have been glad to exchange properties 
 with him. 
 
 High ideals and lofty ambitions which crystal- 
 lize our visions into purpose and determination 
 are the most valuable resources any man or 
 woman can have. Who of us has not seen young 
 men and women with good health, strong bodies, 
 clear minds, excellent opportunities, and yet 
 infinitely poor because they were bankrupt at the 
 point where it counts most? They have no 
 castles in the air to lead them over the path of 
 exertion and self-denial to great victories. A boy 
 may be as poor and ignorant as was Abraham 
 
142 VALUE OF CASTLES IN THE AIR 
 
 Lincoln on those nights when he lay flat on his 
 stomach mastering books by the light of a pine 
 torch; but he is rich if, like Lincoln, he has 
 castles in the air supported by untiring exertion 
 and determined will. ‘‘The man of Macedonia,’’ 
 who led Paul and his companions on their great 
 mission among the Gentiles, was a castle in the 
 air which seemed so splendid that Paul risked his 
 life and gladly endured all sorts of persecution 
 that he might attain to it. 
 
 Christ is ever seeking to arouse in us the spirit 
 of the dreamer that will not be satisfied with the 
 commonplace and vulgar achievements of life. 
 He holds up before us a vision of the perfect man. 
 He declares that we are to be like him, and we 
 must not be satisfied with anything else; we must 
 not think of working as slaves work, without fellow- 
 ship, but must rise to such a high plane that we 
 shall do nothing without the consciousness that 
 our yoke in which we work has its other bow 
 about the neck of Jesus and that we carry no 
 burden that is a stranger to the shoulders of our 
 God. 
 
 Multitudes of good people rob themselves of the 
 sweetest and most delicious joys of life in that 
 they do not give themselves over to the full en- 
 joyment of their high privilege as the children of 
 God. How much Thomas lost through that 
 glum blue, forbidding way he had of doubting 
 all the joy and happiness which had come to the 
 other disciples! But even Thomas believed 
 
VALUE OF CASTLES IN THE AIR _ 143 
 
 finally, and cried aloud with reverent gratitude, 
 “*My Lord and my God!’’ Surely we, who have 
 so much evidence of the divine kindness in the 
 world, ought to yield ourselves with glad sur- 
 render to feast upon the promises of God’s Word 
 without allowing one cloud to rest on the sky of 
 our confidence. It is a sad thing for one who 
 names the name of Jesus to go through this world 
 with the head down and the heart walled in, not 
 realizing that it is a world full of the rustle of 
 angels’ wings and bright with the messengers 
 which ascend the stairway from earth to heaven. 
 The sky as well as the ground on which we walk 
 belongs tous; let us go with our heads up and 
 our hearts aglow. Let us build air-castles out of 
 God’s promises; they are both beautiful and safe 
 places in which to dwell. 
 
 I lately read of a man in the South who dug a 
 cavern several feet deep in his front yard, and 
 every morning he went there to pursue his literary 
 work. But you andI know people who live in 
 caverns all the while—underground dungeons 
 into which the light never comes. They are not 
 pleasant places in which to live, and, thank God, 
 the genuine Christian never lives there. If we 
 will go out into the forest and the quarry of God’s 
 Word, we shall find strong timbers and illuminated 
 stones with which to build a castle in the air 
 against which the gates of hell can never prevail 
 and which the darkest night cannot shroud in 
 gloom. 
 
144 VALUE OF CASTLES IN THE AIR 
 
 Longfellow, singing of the little boy with 
 ‘‘brown and tender eyes’’ who was building his 
 castle out of the blocks on the floor and listening 
 to fairy legends as he rode his father’s knee, looks 
 to the future, dreaming for him, and says: 
 
 ‘There will be other towers for thee to build; 
 There will be other steeds for thee to ride; 
 There will be other legends, and all filled 
 With greater marvels and more glorified. 
 Build on and make thy castles high and fair, 
 Rising and reaching upward to the skies; 
 Listen to voices in the upper air, 
 Nor lose thy simple faith in mysteries.”’ 
 
THE RISEN LIFE 
 
 The best evidence of the resurrection of Jesus 
 Christ is the fact that he has now the power to 
 pull men out of the slough of despond, to lift them 
 up out of the mire and clay of sin, to piace their 
 feet upon the rock, and put new songs of thanks- 
 giving and praise upon their lips. Every man or 
 woman thus lifted up into a new life is a new 
 volume of evidences of Christianity, a volume 
 written in the red blood of human life that men 
 will read and believe quicker than any other book 
 of testimony. Christianity must always be 
 judged by the kind of people it makes. Paul 
 declares that if we really are risen with Christ, if 
 our hearts, our love, our faith, our hope have fol- 
 lowed him up out of the grave until we have 
 really seen him, as Stephen did, at the right hand 
 of the throne of God, then we shall be inspired to 
 live a life of high thought, of pure imagination, 
 of brave deeds—a wholesome, noble life that will 
 touch the world with the helpfulness of Christ. 
 
 Much is said about the self-sacrifice demanded 
 of the Christian and about the self-denial of a 
 Christian life; but let it always be understood 
 that it is the kind of self-denial that lifts us up 
 and gives us something better than what we have 
 lost for Christ’s sake. 
 
 145 
 
146) THE RISEN LIFE 
 
 Not long ago a marriage solemnized at the 
 Castle of Miramer in Austria-Hungary attracted 
 worldwide attention because of the sacrifices 
 “which the bride made. She was the Princess 
 Stephanie, daughter of Leopold, King of Belgium. 
 She had been married in her girlhood to Rudolph, 
 only son and heir of Francis Joseph, Emperor of 
 Austria, and she naturally expected that in the 
 course of time she would become Empress of 
 Austria. But all such hopes were destroyed in 
 1889 by the mysterious death of the dissolute 
 Crown Prince, her husband, at the Castle of 
 Meyerling, either as a suicide or the victim of a 
 murderer. Since that time she has lived in state 
 as a member of the Imperial family. Now, how- 
 ever, she has become the wife of Count Elsmere 
 Lonyia, a Hungarian nobleman. The marriage 
 was resolutely opposed by her own relatives in 
 Belgium and by her late husband’s relatives in 
 Austria. The latter warned her that if she mar- 
 tied she would forfeit her right asa member of 
 the Imperial family; but she sacrificed her rank 
 in order to wed the man she loved. Thus she 
 became of lower rank through her marriage. But 
 no man or woman ever: does that through sacri- 
 fices made to become a Christian. Christ offers 
 just the opposite to us if we pledge our love to 
 him. The humblest soul or the noblest that 
 accepts Christ as a Saviour and friend is raised to 
 the highest dignity; and at last, when the great 
 multitude of ransomed and redeemed saints shall 
 
THE RISEN LIFE 147 
 
 sing the rapturous songs of praise to Christ in 
 heaven, the highest and the lowest of those who 
 have been Christians here on earth will join with 
 one another in singing praises, shouting their 
 anthems “‘unto him that loved us and hath made 
 us kings.”’ 
 
 We may be sure that whatever Christ has 
 promised in his Word, or whatever he has done 
 for others whose records are treasured there, he 
 is able to do for us; and we may be certain also 
 that no commandments are given to us that we 
 cannot by Christ’s help obey. 
 
 A young English officer was marching to assault 
 a position that was considered impregnable. A 
 fellow officer said to him, “‘It cannot be taken.”’ 
 The brave young soldier replied, ‘‘It can; I have 
 the order in my pocket.’’ And take it he did. 
 So there is nothing to which God has com- 
 manded us in his Word, or to which the Holy 
 Spirit directs usin our daily life, that we can- 
 not do in Christ’s name. 
 
 The highest and noblest life that men and 
 women have ever lived is possible to us if we 
 walk in fellowship with Jesus Christ. What we 
 need to do is to keep in close touch with our 
 divine Lord. 
 
 If we are to live this higher life, this risen life 
 of Christ, we must live in an atmosphere where 
 prayer will be natural to us and be to us a regular 
 source of nourishment and strength. Dr. Way- 
 land Hoyt says that he saw one day the memoran- 
 
148 THE RISEN LIFE 
 
 dum of a good Christian mother. It was a list of 
 a great many things she had to think about and 
 see done and get done during the day. Little 
 things like these: ‘‘Moths, camphor, cedar chest, 
 buy beans, leak in refrigerator, castor-oil, hair- 
 pins, bluing.’’ And the thing that astonished 
 ‘and on reflection inspired Dr. Hoyt was that 
 right in the midst of that long catalogue of frag- 
 mentary notes of a mother’s and housekeeper’s 
 daily duties, there was thrust this item, ‘‘Read 
 and pray.’’ When he saw that he knew what 
 made that woman such a good mother, he knew 
 why, with all her burdens, she was sweet-spirited 
 and self-composed and ever able to give counsel 
 and comfort and good cheer to those who were 
 weak or discouraged. It was because prayer was 
 her regular source of nourishment; it was just 
 as regular as the worry. She lived her daily life 
 on that high plane; her conversation with God 
 was the natural and accustomed thing todo. The 
 same wise precaution on our part will bring about 
 the same results. No man can live the risen life 
 in his own strength. Such a life can only be sus- 
 tained by communion and fellowship with the 
 risen Lord, 
 
THE BEAUTY OF THE SUMMER 
 FIELDS 
 
 During the last few weeks I have traveled 
 many thousand of miles through a wide stretch 
 of the summer world, reaching from the shores 
 of Lake Michigan to the Atlantic, and from the 
 mountains of New Hampshire to other mountains 
 in Virginia. Ihave looked upon a great diversity 
 of scenery; but back of it all, and beyond all, 
 that which has left its deep impression on my 
 mind has been the beauty of the summer world. 
 It has impressed me more from the fact that it is 
 a toiling season. The fields are full of workmen, 
 hot, dusty workmen earning their bread by the 
 sweat of their brow. People work in springtime 
 as well, but somehow it seems different then. In 
 the springtime the whole world is coming out of 
 prison into freedom; the earth as well as man has 
 Easter time; the woods, the orchards, the hill- 
 sides and the valleys are laughing in foliage and 
 flowers, and the atmosphere is so full of hope and 
 courage that there is a certain rollicking spirit 
 about labor that makes it seem more like a picnic 
 excursion than a time of hard grinding work; but 
 in summer time there is no such illusion, the fresh 
 impulse of the spring has spent its force and work 
 is work. 
 
 ‘ And yet all this workaday world of August 
 149 
 
150 BEAUTY OF THE SUMMER FIELDS 
 
 and September is beautiful beyond description. 
 Think how grateful we ought to be for the mar- 
 velous colorings of the summer fields. Suppose 
 they had all been draped in black or a dirt brown 
 to match the hard sober toil, how accursed indeed 
 would be the lot of the man who works in them; 
 but, instead, they riot in color and in fragrance. 
 How beautiful is a ripe field of o2ts, white almost 
 as the snow in winter; and howrich and golden a 
 field of wheat ready for the reaper! And the 
 corn! Over and over again, as I have looked on 
 the great fields of corn in the Hocking Valley or 
 in the valley of the Muskingum, or along the 
 banks of the Susquehanna, I have thought of an 
 army of knights of the olden times when men 
 went to battle plumed and tasseled and adorned. 
 Every cornstalk growing out of a rich soil, with 
 its nodding plume, its rustling draperies and its 
 great hanging ears of yellow gold, all colored as 
 though the chemistry of nature had nothing else 
 to do but to make it glorious, is ‘‘a thing of 
 beauty and a joy forever.”’ 
 
 And the fragrance of the fields! Who ever 
 knew a perfume sweeter than the smell of ground 
 when after a rain it turns from the farmer’s plow 
 with a track of robins following in the wake? Or 
 what odor is so delicious as the breath of new- 
 mown hay? Think you these are no compensa- 
 tion to the toiler? Yea, verily. Even the 
 hedge-rows and the fence-corners and the little 
 pieces of swamp leftin the marshy places untilled 
 
BEAUTY OF THE SUMMER FIELDS 151 
 
 grow beautiful seemingly on purpose to make 
 the worker in the fields happy in his surround- 
 ings. Nothing there is ugly from the golden-rod 
 with its crown of yellow to the thistle which 
 makes you forget its spikes in the gorgeous 
 splendor of its bloom. 
 
 Even the birds and animals who are marauders 
 of the summer time are handsomely adorned. 
 The squirrels that work havoc in the edges of the 
 wheat, the cherry birds that take toll of the red 
 fruit, and even the black crows, the highway rob- 
 bers of the cornfields, are handsome and pictur- 
 esque. The summer world would be lonely 
 without them. 
 
 Now what does all this mean? Can it mean 
 anything else save that God believes that even 
 toil may be made beautiful and charming. The 
 wheat is no less valuable because it is golden, nor 
 the corn less nourishing because of its beauty. 
 God would teach usin the beauty of the summer 
 fields that work may be adorned and made de- 
 lightful, and surely that was his purpose in us. 
 Paul said to some people whom he was trying to 
 bring to their best, ‘‘Ye are God’s husbandry,’’ 
 or, as the Revised Version has it, ‘‘Ye are God’s 
 tilled land.’’ Surely the Lord is not more kind 
 in his purpose to the fields than heistous. In- 
 deed, we know that he cares much more for us, 
 for did not Jesus say, ‘‘Ye are of more value than 
 many sparrows’? Then we may know that the 
 God who covers all the summer world of labor 
 
152 BEAUTY OF THE SUMMER FIELDS 
 
 with a charm and an attractiveness that no artist 
 is able to catch even in momentary glimpses, has 
 in his heart wonderful conceptions of beauty 
 when he thinks of the possibilities that are in us. 
 He knows that it is possible for us to become so 
 gracious and beautiful in character that our most 
 toilsome and prosaic day shall have all the rich 
 beauty of a golden field of wheat and all the 
 charms of a rustling army of ripe corn. 
 
 Some of the figures which are used to describe 
 God’s purpose in us are very suggestive. Take 
 that one in Isaiah where the Lord offers to make 
 us into a balsam fir tree instead of a bush of 
 thorns and briars. Who would not make an ex- 
 change like that? And yet it is within the reach 
 of every one of us.’’ We excuse ourselves alto- 
 gether too easily for the lack of beauty in our 
 daily lives. People who do not excuse them- 
 selves for the lack of aclean collar, or polished 
 shoes, have plenty of excuses at the tongue’s end 
 for a fretful spirit, a harsh or cruel temper, ora 
 selfish and greedy appetite. And yet how infi- 
 nitely more ugly is the defect in the moral nature, 
 the spot on the clothing of the soul, than the lack 
 of beauty in the raiment of the body! 
 
 Let us cherish the great fact that the beauty of 
 the summer fields is God’s pledge that we too 
 may be beautiful in our characters though en- 
 gaged in the severest toil. Do you remember 
 the Psalmist’s prayer, ‘‘Let the beauty of the 
 Lord our God be upon us’’? He was praying for 
 
BEAUTY OF THE SUMMER FIELDS 153 
 
 exactly what the Lord does in nature. The sum- 
 mer fields are beautiful because God pours his 
 own heart out on them, and if we will open our 
 thoughts and affections to receive the heavenly 
 influences we too shall be clothed upon with the 
 beauty of the divine nature. And if we do this, 
 we shall be adorned with a raiment of the Spirit 
 that will not be for special occasions only, but one 
 that will clothe us with charms for every-day life. 
 
THE MOODS AND TENSES OF 
 EVERY-DAY LIFE 
 
 The prevailing mood in which we live is very 
 important. A man is to be judged not so much 
 by occasional acts as by the prevailing and con- 
 trolling mood. One of the worst moods for a 
 Christian is that of lethargy. Itis better to make 
 serious blunders now and then in the course of 
 earnest and aggressive work for righteousness, 
 than to never make any blunders because we are 
 not doing anything. I 8920 icy 
 
 Martin Luther once told this allegory: The 
 devil held a great anniversary at which the 
 under imps were convened to make report to their 
 master. ‘‘I let loose the wild beasts of the desert 
 on a caravan of Christians,” said one, “an eir 
 bones are now bleaching on the sands.” **What 
 of that?’’ said Satan; ‘‘their souls were all saved.” 
 ‘*I drove the east wind,’’ said another, ‘‘against 
 a ship freighted-with Christians, and they were 
 all drowned.’’ ‘‘What of _that?’’ said Satan, 
 “their souls were all saved.’’ ‘‘For ten years I 
 tried to get a single Christian asleep,’’ said a 
 third, ‘‘and I succeeded, and left him so.” 
 ‘‘Then,’’ says Luther, ‘‘the devil shouted and 
 the night stars of hell sang for joy!’’ If your 
 prevailing mood in the church is that of _slum- 
 
MOODS AND TENSES OF LIFE 155 
 
 ber_and lethargy you may be sure that you 
 make the devil glad. Another dangérous mood 
 for a Christian is a mood of indifference as to 
 his influence with others. ~ Frequently we hear ~™ 
 
 “Tt doesn’t matter what people think of me; I 
 know my heart is Tight.” But is it true that it 
 doesn’t matter? It most certainly does matter 
 what people think of you. A gentleman writing 
 in the Oxtlook gives this striking illustration of 
 the danger of being misunderstood by other 
 people: In sight of his office window is a church 
 tower on three sides of which isaclock face. On 
 one of these one of the hands has been broken, 
 
 making the clock tell strange tales. Of course 
 there are people who do not understand the cir- 
 cumstances and are misled. At heart the old 
 
 reer 
 
 in meeting their engagements and have missed 
 their trains because the face is not an index of 
 that which it covers. Our prevailing mood ought 
 to be wide-awake and earnest, that our influence 
 may be for.Christ. RON tone 
 
 Our prevailing mood ought also to be one of 
 courage. A visitor to Northfield says that he was 
 taken into the room where Moody died. Over 
 the bed on which the great evangelist breathed 
 his last the visitor was interested to notice a mag- 
 nificent engraving of ‘‘Daniel and the Lions.’’ 
 It was a picture which Mr. Moody greatly loved. 
 
156 MOODS AND TENSES OF LIFE 
 
 He lived his life in harmony with that picture. 
 He was as brave as Daniel to do what he thought 
 to be right. One of the greatest sources of his 
 power was that his prevailing mood was invinc- 
 ible courage. 
 
 The Christian’s prevailing mood ought to be 
 one of sympathy. A little girl six years old, with 
 ‘big blue~éyes that were full of tears, came to 
 Bellevue Hospital recently with a cat in her arms. 
 The cat had been wounded bya street car and 
 one leg was badly mangled. At the gate the girl 
 told Tom, the big policeman, the cat was hurt. 
 “*‘T want a doctor to help it,’’ she said. Tom took 
 her to the receiving ward where he found a doctor 
 who was not busy. ‘‘Here’s a case, Doc,’’ said 
 the policeman. “I ain’t a ’* what he was 
 going to say was that he wasn’t a cat doctor, but 
 when he saw the little girl’s eyes he broke it off 
 and said, ‘‘Let me see.’’ After examining the 
 patient his comment was, “‘Pretty bad.’’ Then 
 he got some knives, a little bottle of chloroform 
 and some bandages. ‘‘You must help me,”’ he 
 said to the girl. She aided bravely, though it 
 made her pale as she watched the doctor’s sharp 
 knife and deft fingers. Soon the doctor had done 
 all he could, and as the cat was recovering from 
 the anzesthetic he said, ‘‘Now you can take your 
 kitty home with you.”’ “‘It ain’t mine,’’ the girl 
 said. ‘‘I just found it. Now you take care of it. 
 Good-bye.’’ Now, the little girl lived in the mood 
 of sympathy. If she continues in it, when she 
 
MOODS AND TENSES OF LIFE 157 
 
 gets to be as old as the Good Samaritan she will 
 live the same kind of life. 
 
 But I want to say something about the tense in 
 which we live. Some people live too much in the 
 past tense. They get their heads turned back, 
 and they look that way so much that the neck 
 gets stiff until they can’t get_ it round again. 
 They are _always seeing where they have missed 
 it and vainly wishing they could go back and 
 make it different. Of course they cannot do 
 that, and so they are miserable. 
 
 There are other people who manage to get just 
 about aS much misery | by living inthe: future 
 tense. Things are not so very bad to-day, but 
 to-morrow and the day after the clouds are black 
 as night. And so they worry about what is going 
 to come until they are weakened and enfeebled 
 about all their work to-day. Living in either the 
 past or the future tense in sucha way as to get 
 trouble and discouragement” out of it is to deliver 
 yourselves over to the demon of worry, and there 
 are few things worse than that. Worry i is a good 
 deal harder than work. Some oné ‘sings about it 
 
 very truly: 
 
 “Tt is not the work, but the worry, 
 That wrinkles the smooth fair face, 
 That blends gray hairs with the dusky, 
 And robs the form of its grace; 
 That dims the luster and sparkle 
 Of eyes that were once so bright, 
 But now are heavy and troubled, 
 With a weary, despondent light. 
 
158 MOODS AND TENSES OF LIFE 
 
 “It is not the work, but the worry, 
 
 That drives all sleep away, 
 
 As we toss and turn and wonder 
 About the cares of the day. 
 
 Do we think of the hands’ hard labor, ~ 
 Or the steps of the tired feet? 
 
 Ah! no, but we plan and ponder 
 How to make both ends meet. 
 
 “It is not the work, but the worry, 
 
 That makes us sober and sad, 
 
 That makes us narrow and sordid, 
 When we should be cheery and glad. 
 
 There’s a shadow before the sunlight, 
 And ever a cloud in the blue, 
 
 The scent of the roses is tainted, 
 The notes of the song are untrue. 
 
 “It is not the work, but the worry, 
 
 That makes the world grow old, 
 
 That numbers the years of their children 
 Ere half their story is told; 
 
 That weakens their faith in heaven 
 And the wisdom of God’s great plan. 
 
 Ah! ’tis not the work, but the worry, 
 That breaks the heart of man.”’ 
 
 tense. Yesterday we cannot reach except that 
 we may repent of its sins and be forgiven, and 
 the future-has-not-yet ‘Come and Will be sufhcient 
 unto itself on its arrival” To-day is our own. 
 The duty of life with us is ‘‘now."’ To live 
 humbly toward God, to live courageously and 
 generously, reaching out our hands in a brotherly 
 way and doing what good we can to-day is our 
 
MOODS AND TENSES OF LIFE - 159 
 
 privilege. Every day lived right will make it 
 better for us to-morrow, whatever that may be. 
 To live each day as though we only had the one 
 day on carthathe onc dav in Which todo good, yin which to do goo 
 the one day in_which to praise ( God, the one day 
 
 in which to be loyal to Christ, el one day~in 
 
 which to to make the world happy—that i is the way 
 to live in order to bring something of heaven into 
 the present. ind\surely that is the way we 
 ought to live; anal are only travelers passing 
 through this world to our home beyond. As 
 Joseph Luccock She es 
 
 “We are pilgrims bound for home, 
 
 For the sunny, sunny clime, 
 
 Where the balmy zephyrs waft the sweets 
 Of endless summer time. 
 
 Where hearts are always gay, 
 Where fruits immortal grow, 
 
 And music mingles *mid the scene, 
 Where joys unending flow.”’ 
 
THE BLESSINGS OF HARD WORK 
 
 The other day I asked two friends who were 
 sitting together, ‘‘What are the blessings of hard 
 work?’’ One immediately replied, ‘‘One is that 
 it gives you a good appetite.’’ Now I think that 
 was a good answer. Hard work for the body or 
 the mind gives a certain zest for nourishment, 
 creates a demand for food, and God has so 
 ordered it that the taking of food either physic- 
 ally or intellectually to a normal, healthy man or 
 woman should be a pleasant performance. 
 
 It is a terrible thing to lose one’s appetite. It 
 is not an uncommon thing for the appetite to fail 
 physically, and without any seeming reason no 
 zest or desire for food is felt. To eat then is a 
 weariness of the flesh, and unless the trouble can 
 be remedied the entire health of the body will 
 soon be undermined and the unnourished system 
 rapidly fall into decay and death. I remember 
 the case of a man who went away from home to 
 try to get back his health, and who stopped for 
 some time in that great palace-like hotel in St. 
 Augustine, Florida. He wrote back to his family 
 in the North wonderful stories about the beauty 
 of his surroundings. The climate was balmy and 
 delightful. Thehotel wasadream ofart. Bands 
 of music regaled the guests at their meals. The 
 
 160 
 
THE BLESSINGS OF HARD WORK 161 
 
 table was loaded with rare dishes and with a won- 
 derful variety of tropical fruits. But he always 
 closed his letters with a sigh. ‘“‘It is all so beau- 
 tiful, so romantic, so delightful,’’ he said, ‘‘if I 
 only had an appetite.’’ The appetite never came, 
 and it was not long before they brought him home 
 to die. 
 
 An appetite is just as necessary in mental and 
 moral and spiritual affairs. There is nothing 
 more serious than to lose one’s taste for the 
 Bible, so that any other book seems more attract-_ 
 ive; to lose one’s appetite for listening to the 
 preaching of the Word of God, so that the Bible 
 stories of human life, of the struggle of men try- 
 ing to climb out of the mire and the clay up to 
 the Rock of Ages, no longer interest the mind 
 and heart. To lose one’s appetite for the prayer 
 meeting; to reach a place where the strains of an 
 opera stir one more than the great spiritual hymns 
 of the church. That is a sad thing, for there can 
 be no real spiritual peace and joy unless there be 
 an appetite for spiritual food. Now, just as 
 many a man who has been in the law-office or in 
 the school-room or the banking-house for a long 
 time, until he has got into a rut and lost his appe- 
 tite, will go out home on the farm in the summer 
 time and work in the hayfield and do chores 
 around the barn until he finds himself coming 
 hungry to his meals; so many a man who has lost 
 all spiritual vitality and zest, if he will only put 
 himself to work doing the things in which Christ 
 
162 THE BLESSINGS OF HARD WORK 
 
 is interested in the world—trying to lift the bur- 
 den off of some weary shoulder, seeking to lead 
 some poor sinner into the light, trying to help 
 some handcuffed prisoner of the devil to find his 
 freedom—will find all his appetite for the Bible 
 and the prayer meeting and the old hymns com- 
 ing back, and he will be as hungry as ever for 
 the feast of good things that God puts on the 
 table for his workers, - 
 
 The other friend, after a little reflection, said 
 that one of the blessings of hard work is that we 
 enjoy the rest that comes afterwards. Thatisa 
 good answer also. No man knows anything 
 about the enjoyment of rest unless he has worked 
 until he is dead tired. People who never have 
 been tired have no idea of the exquisite sense of 
 relaxation which comes at the close of an honest 
 day’s toil. So there are many people in the 
 church who never know the exquisite hours of 
 restful communion, of quiet peace, that God 
 gives to his tired children who have worked till 
 they have used up all their strength in his cause. 
 
 But there is still another blessing of hard 
 work, and that is the strength that can only come 
 that way. There are some things you cannot buy 
 with money, and one of them is strength. Ifa 
 man could go into the market and buy strength 
 by the bottleful, as you can quack medicine, what 
 giants there would be in these days of million- 
 aires! But strength is not to be had that way; it 
 is personal, and great strength can never be 
 
THE BLESSINGS OF HARD WORK 163 
 
 acquired except through exercise. It is through 
 bearing burdens that men grow strong to endure. 
 A man works until he has used up the vitality he 
 had in store, and goes home at night saying to 
 himself, ‘‘I have expended all the strength I 
 had’’; but the next morning, if he has had a good 
 night’s rest and plenty of nourishing food, he is 
 conscious that he goes back a stronger man than 
 ever. Somewhere, somehow, through the ex- 
 pending of his strength a deposit of added 
 strength was made in his physical banking-house, 
 and through his hard work he becomes a stronger 
 man day by day. 
 
 Now the philosophy is the same in spiritual 
 matters. Itis by exercise, by hard work for the 
 church, for the service of our brothers and sisters, 
 that we become strong, morally and spiritually. 
 It is only through temptation and strain that 
 strong character can be developed. The eagle 
 gets its mighty strength of wing, not because it 
 gorges itself with more food than other birds, but 
 because it flies many hours a day in the face of the 
 sun. An eagle has been known to pick up from 
 a barnyard a pig four times his own weight and 
 carry its squealing burden away with ease. God 
 means that we shall not be pigs simply to gorge 
 ourselves on the good things of life, but eagles to 
 mount up into the sky on great deeds intent. 
 
THE FIRST FLUSH OF AUTUMN 
 
 Do you know the signs of the first flush of 
 autumn? Have you seen one bough on the maple 
 tree—one on the tree standing by the lake, or 
 bending over the hole in the brook where the old 
 trout hides—suddenly flame out into crimson and 
 scarlet? Have you heard the hum of the thresh- 
 ing-machine in the fields where the shocks of 
 wheat look like the thatched cottages in Scotland? 
 Have you heard the roar of the blackbirds as they 
 gather in regiments before the little aristocrats 
 go south for the winter? Have you seen the wild 
 geese flying overhead with their faces toward the 
 equator, a huge triangle so far up against the blue 
 of the sky that you cannot hear their conversation 
 as they sail away toward the warmer waters and 
 the milder skies? Have you felt the pause of 
 nature, the brooding stillness hanging over the 
 orchard and the garden? Itis hard to describe 
 it, but a sort of prophecy in the air tells that sum- 
 mer is departing and presages the cooler days and 
 the new beauties and glories of autumn just at 
 hand. 
 
 All these signs come into the first flush of 
 autumn. They foresee atime of full barns and 
 overflowing cellars, the storing up of rich treas- 
 
 ures from the harvests of all the springtime toil 
 ° 164 
 
- 
 
 THE FIRST FLUSH OF AUTUMN 165 
 
 and allthe busy work of the hot summer days. 
 Something like that comes to us as men and 
 women when we strike the middle line of our 
 expected stay on earth. The seasons of life are 
 much like the seasons of the year. Infancy and 
 early childhood are full of squalls, and childhood 
 grown a little older has much of Aprilinit; espe- 
 cially the April showers that are to bring forth 
 May flowers. May is beautiful both in the spring- 
 time and in the youth of human life. It, too, is a 
 brooding month, when one wonders what is com- 
 ing out of it all, whether it be in the promise of 
 the fields or in the budding boy or girl. And 
 June! ‘‘What so rare as a day in June?’’— 
 whether it be the June of the nest-building robins 
 and the first early cherries; the June of the 
 luscious strawberries and the roses, or the June 
 of the ‘‘sweet sixteen’’ of girlhood or of the awk- 
 ward and bashful but hopeful and ambitious boy- 
 hood in high school with eye toward the college. 
 
 July is anew epoch. Life is serious now, but it 
 it is the seriousness of summer’s heat and promise. 
 It is a prosperous seriousness. Everything seems 
 possible. Days are long, nights are short. The 
 corn grows all the twenty-four hours and the 
 young womanhood and young manhood have long 
 days of confident assurance of success and short 
 nights of doubt or trial. Sorrow may endure for 
 the brief night, but joy cometh in the morning of 
 a day that seems never toend. August, and the 
 fields are white or golden; the orchards are fra- 
 
166 THE FIRST FLUSH OF AUTUMN 
 
 grant with the early apples; the ears of corn are 
 beginning to hang heavy on the stock. The rat- 
 tle of the reaper is heard in the land; life is real, 
 now; life is earnest. The season of picnics is 
 almost past; work begins with the dawn and ends 
 when it is too dark to see the sheaves in the field. 
 How like life in those vigorous muscular years 
 from twenty-five to forty! 
 
 From forty to fifty, which means September 
 and the opening of October, is the first flush of 
 the autumn. The career is settled; it may grow 
 infinitely larger yet, but its outlines are marked. 
 Until the man is thirty, or even thirty-five, he 
 may be a lawyer, or a doctor, or a preacher, or 
 a business man, or almost what he pleases, 
 depending only on the limitations of his in- 
 tellectual inheritance; but at forty he is one 
 or the other, and he will change at his peril. 
 The track is now open before him. Wise he 
 is if he fixes his eye on the goal with deep, 
 intense earnestness and strips himself more 
 than ever for the race. They ought to be the 
 best years so farin his life. They are the years 
 when a man has all his resources at his command. 
 The cellar of the mind and heart is filled with all 
 the knowledge he has gained by his education in 
 school, through reading, and by rubbing against 
 men; indeed, all his personal experience in 
 human life. He has a background to draw 
 upon, resources that were utterly unknown to 
 him in his youth. His judgment should be bet- 
 
THE FIRST FLUSH OF AUTUMN 167 
 
 ter, his imagination should be more thoroughly 
 disciplined and trained, his perceptions keener, 
 his purpose more steadfast, his heart more mel- 
 low with sympathy and kindly fellowship than in 
 any of the years of youth and early manhood up 
 to the noon and beyond of life. 
 
 There is always a little touch of sadness in the 
 autumn which I think is both reasonable and un- 
 reasonable. It is reasonable because the imme- 
 diate past of spring and summer can never come 
 again, and just before lies winter, harsh and for- 
 bidding. It is unreasonable because there are 
 other springs and summers in God’s bag of 
 mercies, and, please God, they may have earlier 
 crocuses, more fragrant violets, more luxurious 
 roses, richer wheat fields, than those that are 
 gone. It is unreasonable also from another 
 standpoint, and that is that winter also is in God’s 
 order and has many blessings that are more 
 beautiful than any other season of the year. It 
 would be missed more, pethaps, than any other 
 season if it were lost out of the calendar. 
 
 But, you say, ‘‘ How is it possible for a man or 
 a woman to get comfort out of such an illustra- 
 tion, in the face of the fact that the bounding 
 limbs and dancing spirits of childhood, the 
 optimism and boundless courage of youth, the 
 strong muscles, and the conscious power of mid- 
 dle life are passing, and for many have passed, 
 and we are facing toward the west with the cer- 
 tainty that childhood and youth and full mature 
 
168 THE FIRST FLUSH OF AUTUMN 
 
 strength never can come back, and that old age 
 with its weakness and its decay of power lies 
 athwart the path in the near future?’ 
 
 Yet we can face all that with a steady pulse 
 and a quiet heart; face it because it is God’s 
 order and he knows best; face it because age 
 with its wintry frost of white hair and weakness 
 has its compensations to the child of God; face it 
 because pure-hearted old men or women, with 
 the sunshine of God upon their hearts and coun- 
 tenances, are necessary to childhood and youth 
 and mature strength to hold the world steady and 
 keep it rolling onward toward its final redemp- 
 tion. We can face it because we do not face 
 disaster and final eclipse of our powers. ‘There 
 may be a few brief years while we tarry here, at 
 the end, when our powers shall sleep to some 
 extent, but soon the call will come, ‘“‘It is 
 enough; come higher.’”” Then shall come a 
 season of the year that this world has never 
 known, a season in which springtime and sum- 
 mer and autumn and winter shall each have their 
 beauty and glory merged into one blessed im- 
 mortality; the season in which the innocence and 
 beauty of childhood, the hopefulness and the 
 enthusiasm of youth, the strength and dauntless 
 courage of young manhood and womanhood, the 
 rich and mellow fruitfulness of autumn, the 
 glorious and exalted years of the old age of the 
 saints, shall all be merged into one glorious ex- 
 perience that shall last forever. 
 
THE FIRST FLUSH OF AUTUMN 169 
 
 This is the glory of our Christian faith. It 
 gives us victory over weakness, makes us patient 
 to bear pain, inspires us to smile through our 
 tears, and nerves the heart in old age because 
 “‘we know that if our earthly house of this taber- 
 nacle were dissolved, we have a building of God, 
 an house not made with hands, eternal in the 
 theavens.’’ With Paul, we ‘‘reckon that the 
 sufferings of this present time are not worthy to 
 be compared with the glory which shall be 
 revealed in us’’; for we know that ‘‘our light 
 affliction, which is but for a moment, worketh 
 for us a far more exceeding and eternal weight of 
 
 glory.’ 
 
THE BAD AND THE GOOD KIND OF 
 SENSITIVENESS 
 
 The wrong kind of sensitiveness is born of self- 
 ishness and egotism. Men and women who 
 think they deserve a great deal of attention, and 
 then feel they are not fawned upon and flattered 
 as much as they imagine they deserve, are ready 
 to hang their heads or burst into tears with the 
 broken-hearted expression, ‘‘ Nobody loves me!” 
 Winifred Black hits the nail on the head when she 
 says that the right way to answer that exclama- 
 tion is with the natural query, ‘‘Why should 
 they?” 
 
 Some one has well said that when a man looks 
 either for slights or for opportunities of service 
 he always finds what he is looking for. Haman 
 was a good type of one kind of sensitive man. 
 Haman fed on public applause, and he hungered 
 for every one to bow down to him. And every- 
 body in town did bow down to him except one old 
 Jew named Mordecai, but so sensitive was Haman 
 that all the bowing and scraping of a city full of 
 people went for nothing because that stiff-necked 
 old Jew would not bend his head. Haman was 
 one bow short, and therefore miserable. Who 
 of us do not know such people? It is the same 
 kind of thing when a mother gets vexed and sor- 
 
 170 
 
SENSITIVENESS 171 
 
 rowful, and is almost ready to take her child out 
 of Sunday-school, because some cther little girl 
 or little boy is called on to speak oftener in Sun- 
 day-school concerts than is the child who is the 
 apple of her own eye. 
 
 Another kind of sensitiveness which is bad is 
 typified by Martha, at whose house Christ liked 
 to go and visit. Martha was sensitive because 
 Mary, her sister, did not express her love for the 
 Master in pies and doughnuts and roast beef in 
 the same way as she herself did. But Christ told 
 Martha not to worry about it, for Mary had got- 
 ten deeper into the heart of things in her relation 
 to the Lord than had she. How many times we 
 are tempted to that kind of sensitiveness. Some 
 people seem to prosper in a religious way, and 
 yet they don’t worship the Lord just as we do, 
 and we are tempted to fret and get sulky about 
 it. All such sensitiveness is mischievous. Let 
 each one of us do his best according to his own 
 light. 
 
 One of the most fruitful sources of trouble from 
 sensitiveness comes from a temptation to fear 
 that we will not be given the best things and be 
 made as much of as some other people in the 
 church or community. Now that comes from an 
 entirely wrong idea of the source of happiness. 
 Senator Chauncey Depew, in a speech in London, 
 before the great International Christian En- 
 deavor Society Convention, made this remark- 
 able statement. Said he: ‘‘The way to be 
 
172 SENSITIVENESS 
 
 happy is, if there is any good thing in you, 
 to let others have it.” That is, we get our 
 happiness not by standing around like a beggar 
 ready to catch what other people will throw to us, 
 but by going forward like a king or a queen, in 
 generous love bestowing the largess of our abun- 
 dance upon every one who will share with us. 
 The happy man is not the one who is sensitively 
 fearing he will be slighted in the distribution of 
 blessings, but rather the one who is seeking to 
 make himself useful and helpful to others. 
 
 Now there is a good kind of sensitiveness, and 
 I wish we had a great deal more of it. It is the 
 kind which Philip had. He was very popular in 
 Jerusalem, and everything seemed to favor him; 
 but the angel of the Lord spoke to him and sent 
 him away into the desert toward the city of Gaza, 
 and he arose and went without a question. He 
 went because he was sensitive to the Spirit of 
 God. And as he went along the way, not know- 
 ing what God wanted him to do, but believing 
 that God would bring it out all clear in the end, 
 a great opportunity came tohim. Suddenly there 
 came driving along the road on which Philip was 
 walking a man, the treasurer of Queen Candace 
 of Ethiopia, and he was sitting in his chariot 
 reading one of the old prophecies. Of course 
 Philip did not know what he was reading, but the 
 Spirit of the Lord suggested to him that he 
 should immediately join himself to this chariot. 
 And so Philip ran along beside the chariot, and as 
 
SENSITIVENESS 173 
 
 he ran he heard the man reading from the 
 prophecy of Isaiah, and he shouted above the din 
 of the wheels, ‘‘Understandest thou what thou 
 readest?”” I suppose the treasurer was greatly 
 astonished when he saw him, and he shouted 
 back, ‘‘How can I, except some man should 
 guide me?’’ Then he stopped the chariot and 
 begged Philip to get up and sit with him, and 
 explain the prophecy to him. ‘‘Then Philip 
 opened his mouth, and began at the same scrip- 
 ture, and preached unto him Jesus.’’ That is the 
 kind of sensitiveness that we need. Oppor- 
 tunities slip by us every day because we are not 
 sensitive to the divine Spirit. 
 
 The late Rev. William I. Fee, a minister for 
 over half a century in Ohio, was as sensitive as 
 Philip to the Spirit of God, and God gave him 
 mighty power to win souls. He was standing 
 one day in one of the homes of his people, in 
 Hamilton, Ohio, where he had just christened 
 a child, when he saw pass the window the 
 leading infidel in the city. The very moment 
 he saw him it was strangely impressed upon his 
 mind that he should hail him, and walk down the 
 street with him as far as his own house. Leav- 
 ing his overcoat and hat he ran to the door and 
 called him, saying: 
 
 er: © , 1f you will wait a moment, I shall 
 be pleased to walk with you as far as my house.’’ 
 
 The man assented cheerfully; and Mr. Fee, 
 excusing himself to the family, put on his hat 
 
174 SENSITIVENESS 
 
 and coat and joined him. They walked together 
 in silence to the corner of the next street, when 
 the minister began to fear that he was placed in a 
 very awkward position, to say the least of it. As 
 they paused on the corner of the street he said: 
 ‘“Mr. O——, my conduct in hailing you as I did 
 no doubt seems very strange to you, and needs 
 an explanation. I tell you frankly that the im- 
 pression to do this came to my mind like a flash. 
 I was engaged at the moment in another matter, 
 and I cannot account for it. Ido not know why 
 I did it; the only impression was that I should 
 join you, and walk with you.’’ “ 
 
 The man became pale; and after a moment, 
 with the deepest emotion, he said: “I know. 
 God Almighty sent you. I will tell you the 
 truth. You may have heard some weeks ago 
 that I was assaulted by an enemy and severely 
 wounded. On examination the doctor informed 
 me that the wound was mortal, and that my life 
 would probably terminate very soon. My infi- 
 delity vanished in a moment. The sins of my 
 life came up before me in awful array. I felt 
 that I was a lost sinner. My soul was drifting 
 toward eternity without help or hope. What 
 should I do? Another examination took place, 
 and, to my delight, the surgeon informed me that 
 he was mistaken in the first examination, and had 
 strong hope that I would soon recover. This 
 gave me great joy; but the foundation upon 
 which I have been building was shattered, and 
 
SENSITIVENESS 175 
 
 the consciousness that I was a great sinner was as 
 vivid as ever. I at once thought of you, and 
 determined to visit you and ask your counsel as 
 soon asI was able. I went to your residence; 
 but had no courage to goin. I went again; but 
 my courage failed me, until I went six times. At 
 last I prayed God that I might in some way or 
 other meet you and unburden my soul to you. 
 And now, sir, I can’t but regard our meeting to- 
 day, strange as it may seem to you, as the answer 
 of a poor sinner’s prayer.”’ 
 
 We may be sure that Dr. Fee led that man to 
 Christ with great joy. That is the kind of sensi- 
 tiveness we need, and if we have it we may be 
 sure that it will banish the evil kind from our 
 hearts. 
 
VACATION RELIGION 
 
 There are several distinct dangers which con- 
 front the Christian in the vacation season. If he 
 stays at home during the time when many people, 
 either for business or pleasure, go away, he is 
 tempted to feel that he is somehow imposed upon 
 in having an added burden in helping to carry 
 the load of church life when so many are free 
 from it. He is also likely to feel that because 
 many are away, and the services will be more 
 lightly attended, that he might as well stay away 
 too, and that it isnot worth while to go ahead with 
 his accustomed fidelity in church attendance and 
 service. Now all these are sophistries of the evil 
 one. Of course we need religion in the summer 
 just as much as we doin the winter. People have 
 sickness and sorrow and matters that perplex and 
 irritate and doubts that fly forth like foul bats in 
 the summer time as well asin the winter. There- 
 fore we need the church of God, we need to 
 steady ourselves with the public worship; and this 
 need is often more urgent during the vacation 
 than at any other time. 
 
 On the other hand, it is a peculiar opportunity 
 to show fidelity to God and to the church. Dur- 
 ing the prosperous season of the church we may 
 be led to attend for many other reasons than our 
 
 176 
 
VACATION RELIGION 177 
 
 humble desire to worship God and to serve him 
 with loyalty; but during the slack time we have 
 the privilege of going to please God, and to stand 
 by faithfully when our presence will count fora 
 great deal. Noone ever does anything like that 
 for the Lord without receiving rich blessings in 
 return. David established a precedent, long 
 ago, that the man who stood by the stuff should 
 share in the spoil equally with the man who went 
 out to battle. That is very good, but God does 
 better than that. He pays larger wages to the 
 people who stand by him in emergencies and are 
 faithful when the workers are scarce. 
 
 There are also peculiar dangers for the Chris- 
 tian who goes away from home. Vacations are 
 good things for tired men and women. The bow 
 that is always bent will after awhile lose its spring 
 and refuse to send the arrow toward the target. 
 But in going on a vacation it is very important 
 to remember that many of the forces that hold us 
 to goodness and make it comparatively easy for 
 us to be Christians are slackened in their pres- 
 sure. At home we are greatly upheld by the 
 consciousness that everybody knows us, and that 
 any deviation from the path of right will be 
 quickly seen and remarked, and will bring dis- 
 credit upon us. One of the powerful forces for 
 righteousness in this world is a proper regard 
 which every good man and woman has for the 
 esteem and good opinion of their fellows. But 
 when one gets away among strangers there is 
 
178 VACATION RELIGION 
 
 often a sense of freedom from inspection, a feel- 
 ing that what one does will not be commented on 
 and will therefore do no harm. Such an idea is 
 exceedingly fallacious; for whether we are known 
 or not, a wrong act cannot fail to have its vicious 
 and evil influence, just as surely among strangers 
 as among people who know us. It will also have ~ 
 its bad effect upon us, and will deteriorate our 
 moral nature; and, above all, it will be a sin 
 against God just the same as if the whole world 
 knew about it. Therefore we need to resist this 
 devil of license which is always whispering his 
 evil insinuations into the ears of people away 
 from home. 
 
 Another temptation which comes to the Chris- 
 tian on a vacation is the thought that in vacation 
 time he need not be careful about observing the 
 strict duties of a Christian life. The giving way 
 to that temptation has caused many a Christian 
 on a vacation to lose a hundredfold more than he 
 gained. He gained in body, but lost in moral 
 and spiritual quality. The seeds of a worldly and 
 irreligious life are often sown in vacation time 
 and grow up afterwards to choke out the good 
 seed sown by the Lord. We need to remember 
 that it is when we are off guard, are unharnessed 
 from a keen sense of responsibility, that the devil 
 has the best chance at us. Many old proverbs 
 grow out of this fact, such as, “‘An idle mind is 
 the devil’s workshop’’; or ‘‘Satan finds work for 
 idle hands to do.’’ Many people who when at 
 
VACATION RELIGION 179 
 
 home in the regular harness of every-day work 
 were able to resist the devil, have been over- 
 thrown by him when off guard. 
 
 Christians away from home ought for many 
 reasons to be specially careful to keep up their 
 regular devotions. Prayer, and the reading of 
 the Bible, and little opportunities for Christian 
 service should be carefully kept in mind. This 
 will not detract from the vacation; it will add to 
 its joy, and at the same time will give us the 
 opportunity of doing a great deal of good by the 
 wayside. ’ 
 
 I have known of a number of cases where the 
 faithful Christian life of a tourist or a summer 
 boarder, in the mountains or by the shore of a 
 lake or the sea, has been the source of inspiration 
 to some young man or young woman that has 
 turned his or her entire career into a path of noble 
 Christian service. A strange voice in a little 
 country prayer meeting will often make a red- 
 letter day of happy remembrance to a group of 
 faithful disciples of Jesus, and will be to them a 
 source of fresh impulse from the very heart of God. 
 
 In traveling on the cars, or on the steamboat, 
 the opportunities for Christian service are ever 
 abundant. The man who fights the temptation 
 _to be cross and peevish, who gives a soft answer 
 to a petulant traveler and keeps, in spite of dust 
 or heat, a sweet and cheerful countenance, makes 
 the vacation world more religious and more 
 Christlike. 
 
LIVING UP TO OUR VISIONS 
 
 Paul never said a greater thing about himself 
 than when he declared to King Agrippa that he 
 had lived up to the heavenly vision that came to 
 him on the way to Damascus. It is one thing to 
 have a vision, and quite another thing to live up 
 to it, though at the time of the vision it may 
 seem avery easy thing to do. Vision hours are 
 usually times of exaltation. At such times we 
 are lifted up on high; we breathe a noble atmos- 
 phere; the heroic spirit seems the only air pos- 
 sible to us, and we feel that we can go right on 
 without much struggle, keeping faithful to the 
 highest standard and loyally pouring our lives 
 into the doing of noble deeds. But it often looks 
 very different the next morning. We find then 
 that that which looked easy, and was easy in cer- 
 tain associations, requires, under different circum- 
 stances, all the grit and perseverance there is in us. 
 
 It is very important that we should get it thor- 
 oughly fixed in our minds that visions of duty and 
 opportunity are not given us simply to revel in. 
 Some people like to go to camp-meetings, or re- 
 vivals, or great religious conventions where their 
 minds and hearts will be stirred, just that they 
 may dream dreams and see visions and revel in 
 religious emotions. Then they go home and are 
 
 180 
 
LIVING UP TO OUR VISIONS 181 
 
 as cross and fretful and stingy and avaricious and 
 mean-spirited all the rest of the year as if they 
 had not had their religious picnic. There is no 
 value at all in such performances. A vision is 
 useless unless it leads at once to conduct. When 
 Paul saw and listened to the Christ on his way to 
 Damascus, he at once felt this truih, and his cry 
 was, ‘“‘Lord, what wilt thou have me to do?’’ It 
 was not long until some one was leading Paul, 
 still blind, on the way toward instruction and on 
 to his great career of service. 
 
 Later on there came a vision to Paul of the 
 great need of the Gospel among the pagan lands 
 beyond; but that vision had its messenger, its 
 “‘man of Macedonia,’’ to lead him out from his 
 vision of duty to perform the service demanded. 
 There is no duty without its messenger if we are 
 ready to follow. Many times, however, the mes- 
 senger has to go off without us, and then the 
 vision has been a failure so far as we are con- 
 cerned. 
 
 When Peter was stopping at the house of the 
 tanner, down by the sea coast, and there came that 
 wonderful vision of the sheet let down from 
 heaven, with its many kinds of animals, and the 
 command came to Peter to slay and eat, he was 
 scarcely roused from the vision before one came 
 to tell him that three men waited for him at the 
 door to lead him on the way to the house of Cor- 
 nelius, where his vision was to work itself out in 
 duty. If Peter had failed to follow those men, 
 
182 LIVING UP TO OUR VISIONS 
 
 that is the last we should have heard of Peter. 
 But Peter was not disobedient unto the heavenly 
 vision, and his vision, lived up to, made him for- 
 ever after a broader, nobler man. 
 
 God gives us visions in these days. Every day 
 they come to us, these visions of duty, and we 
 can either revel in them, and philosophize about 
 them, and send the messenger away empty; or 
 we may with the devotion and fidelity of Paul or 
 Peter follow the way they lead and, living up to 
 our vision, do service for God and man. 
 
 These visions come tous in many ways. Some- 
 times they come in a paper or a book that rouses 
 our emotions even to tears concerning some 
 oppressed people, some wrong in the commu- 
 nity that needs righting in the strength of 
 God and in fellowship with Jesus Christ. 
 There are two ways in which we may treat 
 that impulse, that heavenly vision. One is to 
 let it expend itself in feeling; and if we do 
 that it will not be long before we are harder- 
 hearted than ever and more indifferent to right- 
 eousness. The other way is to follow the new 
 impulse, the aroused emotion, and let it vent 
 itself in seeking to right the wrong, to lift up the 
 oppressed, to bring help to those in need. If we 
 choose the latter course, and live up to our vi- 
 sion, we are lifted up into the atmosphere of 
 vision; we climb to a higher level of life and in 
 every way our hearts and minds are enlarged. 
 
 Almost every day we are stirred with some 
 
LIVING UP TO OUR VISIONS 183 
 
 vision from heaven that arouses in our hearts 
 sympathy for some one whom we meet or hear 
 about. We are prompted to speak the sympa- 
 thetic, kind word, or by a little self-sacrifice to go 
 and do a gracious, brotherly deed. If we do not 
 respond at once the opportunity slips away, the 
 chance to give vent to our sympathy passes on 
 and is gone, and it will not be so easy to arouse 
 us on another occasion. But if we speak the kind 
 word, do the helpful act in a loving, helpful 
 spirit, then our vision exalts us. 
 
 The same thing is true of new impulses that 
 come to us for a holier, more consecrated, per- 
 sonal life. It may be you have gotten into a low 
 tone of spiritual life. You have not given your- 
 self over to wickedness, but your prayers are 
 formal, your Bible reading irregular and joyless, 
 and your service to the church has but little heart 
 and spirit. Suddenly a sermon, or a prayer meet- 
 ing, or the sickness or death of a friend, some 
 volcanic occurrence, shakes you out of your 
 lethargy and lifts you into an hour of vision and 
 makes God and Christ and heaven and goodness 
 seem more real and important, and your heart 
 and soul throbs anew with longing and desire to 
 live a bright, strong, vital, religious life. Ah, 
 that is a glorious hour! It may be the source of 
 fresh impulse that will drive you toward heaven 
 with more speed than you have ever known. 
 Live up to that vision, and all the years to come 
 will be sweeter and more beautiful because of it. 
 
THE UPS AND DOWNS OF CHRIS- 
 TIAN LIFE 
 
 Christian people, in harmony with many other 
 folks, have a good many ups and downs, experi- 
 ences on the mountain-top and in the valley, that 
 are simply incidental to the ordinary trials and 
 frailties of human nature. These are very often 
 wrongly called the ups and downs of their Chris- 
 tian life. They are experiences that come to 
 them as human beings, not as Christians; they 
 come because they have a bad stomach or a good 
 one; come because they have exposed themselves, 
 and have the rheumatism; or because they have 
 had a good dinner, and feel well over it. All such 
 experiences, which have so much to do with our 
 moods simply as human beings, are of no impor- 
 tance when we touch the higher question of one’s 
 career as a Christian. 
 
 What I wish to speak to you about is something 
 very different. There are legitimate ups and 
 downs in the Christian life. In the story of the 
 Sermon on the Mount, the most lengthy of all the 
 recorded sermons of Jesus, you will notice that it 
 is stated that Christ went up into the mountain, 
 and when his disciples followed him up, and 
 gathered about him, he began that wonderful dis- 
 course which has had more to do with modern 
 
 184 
 
UPS AND DOWNS OF CHRISTIAN LIFE 185 
 
 civilization than any other address or sermon 
 that was ever delivered. It was there that he 
 gave them that wonderful paragraph about the 
 ‘‘Blesseds.’’ It was there that he searched deep 
 into their hearts, and told them that Christianity 
 was an extra superimposed on the ordinary stage 
 of human life, indicating a high-water mark in 
 the career of mankind. It was in that sermon 
 that he used that wonderful figure of the salt and 
 the light, and the city set ona hill, to tell of the 
 beauty and usefulness of Christian character. It 
 was in that sermon that he revealed to his dis- 
 ciples the immense superiority of Christianity 
 over any formal religion, making it clear to his 
 hearers that no formal ceremonial religion could 
 take the place of a sincere heart-fellowship with 
 the King of kings. In that sermon Christ taught 
 his disciples about prayer; told them of the won- 
 derful power of secret prayer on the public life, 
 and gave them that model which we call the 
 Lord’s Prayer, and which millions of people 
 repeat every day. All those wonderful sayings 
 about laying up treasures in heaven, about keep- 
 ing the inner eye of the soul single toward God 
 and duty, the beautiful illustration about the 
 fowls of the air that have no fields to sow and no 
 sheaves to reap and no barns in which to store 
 their goods and yet are fed of God, the picture of 
 the lilies of the field that toil not nor spin and 
 yet are beautifully clothed of heaven—all are in 
 that sermon. It would be hard to find a sermon 
 
186 UPS AND DOWNS OF CHRISTIAN LIFE 
 
 anywhere with such a wonderful series of illustra- 
 tions. The figure of the man taking the mote 
 out of his brother’s eye while there is a beam in 
 his own; the warning about casting pearls before 
 swine; the asking, and seeking, and knocking 
 figure; the parallel of the straight gate and the 
 wide gate; of the broad way and the narrow way; 
 the picture of the false prophet that comes in 
 sheep’s clothing when he is inwardly a ravening 
 wolf; the man who tries to gather grapes of 
 thorns and figs of thistles; and finally, that tre- 
 mendous picture of the two houses, built respect- 
 ively by the wise and the foolish man, the one 
 building on the rock and the other on the sand, 
 both living alike comfortably until the storm 
 comes, but when the winds beat, and the rain 
 pours down, and a house is specially needed, the 
 one built on the sand is washed away and de- 
 stroyed, while the one founded on the rock 
 remains as secure as before the storm began. 
 
 We are amazed when we see what a vast 
 amount of truth and what a marvelous variety of 
 illustrations were used in that sermon. Now 
 that was a mountain-top experience for the 
 disciples. It was the mountain-top of teaching. 
 Christ lifted them up toa high intellectual and 
 moral level, and gave them such instruction in 
 spiritual things as he never had given them 
 before. It is interesting to note that imme- 
 diately afterward Christ led his disciples down 
 the mountain into the valley, and the first greet- 
 
 | 
 | 
 
UPS AND DOWNS OF CHRISTIAN LIFE 187 
 
 ing that came to them was from the poor leper, 
 who said, ‘‘Lord, if thou wilt, thou canst make 
 me clean.’’ And Jesus cleansed the leper. 
 Scarce was that good deed done than the cen- 
 turion came to him, beseeching him for his serv- 
 ant who was very sick, and Christ spoke the word 
 of healing forhim. Then he came into the house 
 where a woman was sick with fever, and as he 
 touched her hand the fever left her. And so it 
 went on, one thing after another, showing the 
 disciples that we go up onto the mountain of 
 truth to be instructed and to get wisdom only 
 that we may be of service. People go to school, 
 many times, and cultivate their minds with an 
 entirely wrong idea of what culture means. 
 They think of culture as a selfish thing; they 
 want education and intellectual training simply 
 for their own personal enjoyment; but the teach- 
 ing of Christ’s Sermon on the Mount and the 
 deeds that followed it is that knowledge is given 
 us that we may put it to work. Culture is noth- 
 ing, or worse than nothing, unless it makes us 
 better servants, better helpers, of our fellow 
 men. 
 
 Another illustration of this legitimate kind of 
 ups and downs of the Christian life is seen when 
 Jesus took some of his disciples with him up on- 
 to a high mountain, and there was transfigured 
 before them, and Moses and Elijah came and 
 talked with him concerning the atonement which 
 he was to make for the sins of the world. It was 
 
188 UPS AND DOWNS OF CHRISTIAN LIFE 
 
 a time of great spiritual exaltation to the dis- 
 ciples. They caught a new vision of the beauty 
 and majesty of their divine Lord. Their hearts 
 were so happy and satisfied about it that Peter 
 wanted to build three tabernacles and stay there. 
 But a little later Christ leads them down the 
 mountain again, and the first person that meets 
 them is a father with a poor afflicted child pos- 
 sessed with evil spirits, whom the other disciples 
 had not been able to help. And Christ healed 
 the child, and sent the father away with his little 
 boy, full of gratitude and worship. And so these 
 disciples who had been ready to linger on the 
 Mount of Transfiguration were made to know 
 that God takes us up into moments of lofty feel- 
 ing and high emotions, that he gives us visions of 
 the majesty and glory of Christ, not that we may 
 linger there to build tabernacles on the mountain- 
 tops, but rather that we may be encouraged and 
 strengthened to come down again into the valley 
 of every-day life, and be able in self-denying 
 service for our Lord to conquer the devils that 
 afflict men. 
 
 These are the kinds of ups and downs that be- 
 long to the true Christian career. It is right to 
 make money, it is right to get culture, it is right 
 to have lofty hours of worship and transfigura- 
 tion; but riches and culture and Christian experi- 
 ence and communion must all be regarded by us 
 as rich gifts put into our hands to make us more 
 helpful in sharing the burdens and healing the 
 
 EE 
 
UPS AND DOWNS OF CHRISTIAN LIFE 189 
 
 afflictions and sorrows of our fellow men. Whit- 
 tier wrote truly when he said: 
 
 “The meal unshared is food unblest: 
 Thou hoard’st in vain what love should spend; 
 Self-ease is pain; thy only rest 
 Is labor for a worthy end.”’ 
 
THE CHRISTIAN’S THREE HOMES 
 
 Over in New England they are making more 
 every year of what they call ‘‘Old Home Week.”’ 
 They choose a week in summer or early autumn 
 which is to be celebrated as a week of reminis- 
 cence and home-comings. Invitations are sent 
 all over the United States, across the sea, and all 
 over the world where the sons and daughters of 
 
 the little town or village have wandered. And 
 
 many of them come home for that week. The 
 day it opens, and, indeed, all the week, is full of 
 beautiful incidents of reunion. I came down the 
 railroad one day in New Hampshire, and passed 
 through several towns which were celebrating 
 this festival of ‘Old Home Week.’’ At every 
 station where such was the case bunting was in 
 the air on ali sides. The houses were covered 
 with flags as though it were the fourth of July. 
 Hundreds, and in some eases thousands, of people . 
 were at the depot to meet the train. The hacks 
 and carriages were gay with flags, and with the 
 printed ensign, ‘‘Welcome Home,’’ on them. 
 The band of music was there to lead the proces- 
 sion as the visitors left the train. The pathos of 
 it was in the very air one breathed. There were 
 tears of welcome on scores of faces. I rode in 
 the train with two gray-haired men who when 
 190 
 
THE CHRISTIAN’S THREE HOMES 191 
 
 they were boys had gone away from the town 
 where they got off to take their part in the cele- 
 bration. They had been away a great many 
 years, and both had been very successful. They 
 had won honorable names for themselves, and 
 now they were coming home to see their com- 
 tades, the boys and girls they had gone to school 
 with, who were now, like themselves, old men 
 and women. ‘They could not talk to me about it 
 without tears, and yet their hearts were glad. 
 The tears were a tribute to that love of home 
 which is in the heart of man. Home is the most 
 comprehensive word of human tenderness. It 
 has been well said that ‘‘mother’’ is the sweetest 
 word in any language, but the word ‘‘home’’ is 
 still more comprehensive and precious, for it 
 takes all the loved ones of the dear fireside into 
 its gentle arms. As we get older we agree more 
 perfectly with John Howard Payne, the homeless 
 exile, who wrote man’s sweetest song about home:. 
 
 ‘«*"Mid pleasures and palaces though we may roam, 
 
 Be it ever so humble, there’s no place like home! 
 
 A charm from the sky seems to hallow us there, 
 
 Which, seek through the world, is ne’er met with elsewhere. 
 Home, home, sweet, sweet home! 
 There’s no place like home! 
 
 ‘‘An exile from home, splendor dazzles in vain; 
 
 Oh! give me my lowly thatch’d cottage again! 
 
 The birds, singing gaily, that came at my call— 
 
 Give me them !—and the peace of mind dearer than all. 
 Home, home, sweet, sweet home! 
 There’s no place like home!” 
 
192 THE CHRISTIAN’S THREE HOMES 
 
 The Christian has still another home that is 
 very precious to him, and that is his church 
 home. I am very, very sorry for any Christian 
 who has not found some church that is so much 
 more precious to him than any other that it is in 
 a very tender sense home to him. Some people 
 fritter away the possibilities of such an experience 
 by tramping about from one church to another, 
 until they become ina moral and spiritual way 
 like the vagrant who tramps about from one spot 
 to another, eating what he can beg or steal, until 
 he loses all sense of home and perhaps the very 
 power to enjoy it. Some people simply get to 
 be just sermon-tasters, Gospel vagrants, church 
 tramps, who go wandering around, mere curiosity- 
 seekers after every new sensation. They are 
 great sponges, sustaining such religious life as 
 they may possess, which is never very rich, from 
 what they can beg or borrow or steal in the 
 church where they camp for the day or night. 
 They not only get no sense of home, and form no 
 home ties, but they soon so deteriorate in their 
 own nature that it is almost impossible for them 
 to become helpful and beloved members of a 
 home. A home is not a mere association of 
 tramps; it is held together by ties, not only of 
 love and sympathy, but of mutual responsibility 
 and care and toil. So in achurch home we get 
 the home feeling as we get the feeling of responsi- 
 bility for it, and as we come to regard it not only as 
 a place where there is a feast, and where we may 
 
THE CHRISTIAN’S THREE HOMES 193 
 
 be fed, but a place where we may feed others; a 
 place where we may bear the burden as well as 
 enjoy the blessings; where we may share the fel- 
 lowship of Christ and his people in service as well 
 asin benediction. It is sweet to have a church 
 home, where somebody relies on us; where some- 
 body misses us if we are absent; where some- 
 body lifts their eyes to us for sympathy and 
 fellowship; where we run our roots down in the 
 garden of God and flourish under the great Gar- 
 dener. 
 
 But there is still another home dear to the 
 Christian, and that is our final home in heaven. 
 We are only here on the earth for awhile, and 
 home is speedily broken up as the children grow 
 up into manhood and womanhood, and go away 
 to college or to business or to build homes of their 
 own. I meta good woman ata conference the 
 other day, a minister’s wife, and she said to me: 
 *‘Just think of it, my baby has grown old enough 
 to go to Germany to college, and there’s nobody 
 at home now but just my husband and myself.”’ 
 And a quick tear came into her eye as she said 
 laughingly: ‘“‘And that’s why I am at confer- 
 ence.’’ The home was broken, and soon death 
 breaks it. And what is true of the first home is 
 true of the second; the church homes change and 
 pass away. But we are going home where all 
 these things will cease, and we shall be at home 
 forever. If we are living in the right spirit, and 
 serving God with loving heart, this thought of the 
 
a 
 
 194 THE CHRISTIAN’S THREE HOMES 
 
 heavenly home gets sweeter every year. Every 
 year there are more people there that we know. 
 Every year the current tugs more at the keel of 
 our ship, and love’s magnetism pulls harder at 
 our heart, until we long to be at home with the 
 dear ones who have gone ahead of us. Many feel 
 as Jean Ingelow sung in her little poem, ‘‘Long- 
 ing for Home’”’: 
 
 “‘I pray you what is the nest to me, 
 My empty nest? 
 And what is the shore where I stood to see 
 My boat sail down to the West? 
 Can I call that home where I anchor yet, 
 Though my good man has sailed? 
 Can I call that home where my nest was set, 
 Now all its hope hath failed? 
 Nay, but the port where my sailor went, 
 And the land where my nestlings be: 
 There is the home where my thoughts are sent, 
 The only home for me— 
 Ah me!” 
 
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