i'KJ'Yf.m' M I !'V K fftOkt UbfriiS If. < V; i* i\'Q •' BV 4571 . B6 1923 Bowie, Walter Russell, 1969. The armor of youth 1882 / . Digitized by the Internet Archive in 2019 with funding from Princeton Theological Seminary Library https://archive.org/details/armorofyouthtalkOObowi The Armor of Youth WORKS BY Walter Russell Bowie, D.D. Rector Grace Church , New York \ The Armor of Youth Sermons for Young Folks . . . #1.25 A new volume of addresses fresh and spontane¬ ous in their subjects, and phrased in simple and familiar language. The Road of the Star And Other Sermons . $1.50 A volume of addresses, which bring the message of Christianity with fresh and kindling interpreta¬ tion to the immediate needs of men. Sunny Windows And Other Sermons for Children . $1.25 A new volume of Dr. Bowie’s suggestive ser¬ mons to children of which The Record of Christian IVork so aptly remarked : “ Dr. Bowie’s talks are capital — straight to the hearts of children, clever, interesting, helpful.” The Children’s Year Fifty-two Five Minute Talks with Chil¬ dren . . . #1.25 " Few men have shown greater gifts in preach¬ ing to children. The value of these sermons as helps to parents and Sunday School teachers, and as suggestions to ministers, will be at once ap¬ parent. The lessons drawn will suggest other ap¬ plications ; every message helps to make Christ and His message more winsome.” — Henry Sloane Coffin, D.D. The Armor of Youth WALTER RUSSELL BOWIE, D. D. Rector, Grace Church, New York Author of" The Children's Year," "Sunny Windows" “ The Road of the Star" etc . New York Chicago Fleming H. Revell Company London and Edinburgh Copyright, 1923, by FLEMING H. REVELL COMPANY New York: 158 Fifth Avenue Chicago: 17 North Wabash Ave. London: 21 Paternoster Square Edinburgh: 75 Princes Street To Jean , Beverley , Elisabeth , and Russell. To Mate and Mel , awd to all the other boys and girls whose eyes have looked up to the pulpit in St. Paul's. Contents 1. The Armor op Youth . 9 2. Keeping On . 15 3. The House We Live In .... 18 4. Blazing the Trail . 22 5. The Singing Bird . 26 6. Many Voices . 29 7. Courage in the Cold . 32 8. The Listening Time . 35 9. How to Make the Good Things Grow . 39 10. Blossoms Which Must Wither ... 42 11. Dangers We Do Not See .... 46 12. How Not to Fear the Frost ... 51 13. “I Came Here to Fight” .... 55 14. Boys Who Would Not Be Beaten . . 58 15. Forts on Wheels . 63 16. The Cross Made Out of Palms ... 68 17. The Marred Face of Christ ... 73 18. The Judgments of Jesus .... 76 19. The Wings of the Maple .... 79 20. The Son of God’s Train . . . .81 8 CONTENTS 21. Builders of Dreams .... 22. The Heroism of Holding On 23. Service Flags . 24. “Take a Little Honey" 25. Settling the Muddy Waters 26. Cranks, and Self-Starters 27. Horses, and Mules, and People 28. Hitting the Mark .... 29. Playing a Man's Game 30. Pillars of the Temple 31. “Right Side Up With Care" 32. Ships of Hope . 33. The Good Spirits . 34. Ripening the Grapes .... 35. Nails, and How to Use Them . 36. Preventing Fires . 37. The Smothered Light .... 38. “Shine Inside" . 39. “Keep to the Right" .... 40. Whose Face Belongs in the Window? 41. “Weigh Yourself" .... 42. The Real Way to be Happy 43. A Boy Who is a Preacher . 44. Clinkers . 45. The Love of God, and Christmas . 86 . 92 . 97 . 100 . 104 . 108 . Ill . 114 . 117 . 121 . 126 . 129 . 134 . 137 . 141 . 145 . 148 . 150 . 153 . 156 . 159 . 162 . 166 . 169 . 172 1 THE AEMOR OF YOUTH THE name of this book is “ The Armor of Youth/7 and if any boy or girl whose eyes are on this page wants to know why that should be the book’s name, and what it means, the best thing to do is to open the Bible and read the glorious old story which is written in the seven¬ teenth chapter of the first book of Samuel. It is the story of David and Goliath. You remember that the army of Israel had gone out to battle against the Philistines. Sometimes the men of Israel had been able to defeat the Phi¬ listines and to drive them away ; but this time there was a terrifying difficulty. The Philistines had one huge warrior, so tall and strong that he was like a giant. Nearly eleven feet tall, he was, and he wore armor which no ordinary man could possibly have carried. On his head was a helmet of brass which flashed in the sun, and the greaves on his legs and the armor round his shoulders were also of brass. He carried a spear with an iron head, and a shaft that looked as thick as a growing tree, and a great sword hung at his waist. Out he came toward the army of Israel every day, shouting de¬ fiance in a voice of scorn, and the men of Israel trembled when they saw him. He dared any war- 9 10 THE ARMOR OF YOUTH rior in the camp of Israel to come out and fight with him; but no man dared, not even Saul the King. Then into the camp came David. It was more or less by accident that he came at the particular time when he did. He had probably never heard about Goliath; but he had three brothers in the army, and his father had sent him down to find out how the brothers were, and to bring them some things to eat. He arrived at the very moment when the two armies were drawn up for battle, and when Goliath strode out in front of the Philistines. At sight of him, there was a panic among the soldiers of Israel. They commenced to turn and get away from danger as fast as they could; and as they passed David, and he began to ask what all the confusion and terror were about, they shouted to him of Goliath. But, strange to say, David did not seem to be afraid. He was the only person on the side of Israel who happened to be not in the least dis¬ turbed. He said that he would take up the battle with Goliath himself. “ Let no man's heart fail because of him," he said. “ I will go and fight with this Philistine." When Saul the King heard that, the soldier-heart in him was glad. He knew courage when he saw it. He said he would give his own armor to David. The helmet, and coat of mail, and sword of the King himself should David use. THE ARMOR OF YOUTH 11 So David tried on Saul’s armor. But lie could not wear it. It did not fit him, and he felt awk¬ ward and hindered, instead of helped. He put it aside, and went out to dare Goliath with nothing except his shepherd’s sling and a handful of smooth stones which he picked up beside a brook. But these were enough ; for before the great, huge, heavy Goliath could come near him, David swung his sling, and a stone whistled through the air and struck the giant squarely in the middle of his fore¬ head, so that he came crashing down to earth and lay there dead. David did not need Saul’s armor. It did not fit him, and I expect that David thought to himself also that it did not work. Helmets of brass and coats of mail might seem all very well to protect a man’s body; but it did not seem as though they could protect his heart. In spite of all his armor, Saul had been struck by fear. The fear of Goliath had overcome him as surely as any sword could do. His brass and his iron could not defend him from being afraid. When David refused Saul’s armor, it looked as though he went out to meet Goliath with no armor at all. He had no armor on which anyone could see. But, as a matter of fact, he wore the most powerful armor which anybody can possess. It was the armor of youth. It was not outside on his body, but inside, all round about his heart. How can we win this armor of youth, and what 12 THE ARMOR OF YOUTH is it made of ? Does every boy and every girl have it just by being young? No, not always. Every young life can have it, but it depends upon whether or not we let God s hands take the strength of youth which might be in us and make it into armor. How did this happen for David ? He tells us of it himself. Before he came down to the camp of Israel, he used to be a shepherd boy. There in the hill pastures, alone with the sheep, he had much time to think; and he used to think of God. He would think of what God might want him to do, and of how he could please God best. One thing he was sure of. To please God so that he might be fit for great service to-morrow, he must be faith¬ ful to whatever he had to do, big or little, every day. Since he was tending sheep, he must tend sheep well. So when one day a lion sprang out from the rocks upon one of the lambs, David did not run away; and another day when a bear at¬ tacked the flock, again he did not run away. He asked God to help him, and he stayed to defend the sheep. Probably he was a very much frightened boy, up there in the hills, fighting all alone against a lion and a bear; but frightened or not, he stuck to his duty, and he drove the wdld beasts away. Then, later, he realized what had happened. He had gained the assurance that God would help him in everything which God set him to do. “ The Lord is the strength of my life,” he could say; “ of THE ARMOR OF YOUTH 13 whom then shall I be afraid ? ” He had learned the power of faithfulness, and that made him have faith in himself for whatever might happen to¬ morrow. His heart was made strong with confi¬ dence and courage, and that was the armor of youth. All of us can have that sort of armor round our hearts if we really want it. Saul’s kind of armor is not worth very much. It is only the brass and iron of an outward show. It is only the second¬ hand advice of somebody else. But every time we do a fine act of faithfulness, as David did, every time we stand up to a hard duty when it would be easier to run away, every time we try to please God when no one else might ever know, we are fashion¬ ing our own armor. We are girding our hearts with courage and strength so that nothing can get through to make us afraid. We are creating the armor of youth which can make us brave, as David was, to go out on every valiant service for God, knowing that not even Goliath can stand against us. So there could be no better thing for any book to do than to help boys and girls understand the way to fashion the armor of youth. It is fashioned by thoughts, and by deeds, and by all right choices and good desires. Every idea which strengthens our sense of duty is a hammer-stroke which rivets the armor of the heart. Every fine interest which makes us enthusiastic in a right cause is like fire 14 THE ARMOR OF YOUTH to weld it. Every thought of cheerful goodness is the light that brightens it. We bind the armor about us whenever we think nobly, and plan gener¬ ously, and do the things we know are fine and true. Perhaps the chapters in this book will help to re¬ mind us what these things are, and this first chap¬ ter of all will have done enough if it makes us want to be reminded. KEEPING ON e NEW Year’s Day, when we turn the leaves to a new calendar, and write a new date at the top of our letters, is the time when many people make what they call their “ New Year Resolutions.” The Old Year is finished, and its record rolled up, and we start afresh. How nice it would he, we think, if we can make everything better than we did last year. We will try to stop doing something we may have been doing which we know is wrong or mistaken. We will try to begin to do something else which is helpful and fine. Then sometimes people get discouraged. They say, a What is the use of making new resolutions ? After all, things do not change much. Life goes on apparently the same from one year to another. People may think we are foolish if we try to start out on a different line.” When we feel that way, it is good to stop and think of all the fine things which have been accom¬ plished in this world by the men who have had the courage to try, and to keep on trying. Samuel Morse, the man who invented the telegraph, has left us the story of how he might have been dis- 16 KEEPING ON couraged and have given np entirely if he had de¬ pended on what other people thought and said. He was labouring on his instrument, and trying to figure out something which would work, and for a long, long time it was so crude and awkward that he would not show it to anyone, knowing that they would laugh at it, and think the whole idea no more than nonsense. But all the time, secretly and with patience, he studied and thought, and changed and experimented; and at last he worked his idea out triumphantly, and the telegraph, which nobody else had dreamed of, was made into a fact. In the same way, when Robert Fulton was build¬ ing the first steamboat, people called it ec Fulton’s Folly.” Everybody shrugged their shoulders when they heard that he was trying to make a boat which would go without any sails or need of wind to blow it. “ Never did a single encouraging word or bright hope cross my path,” he wrote. He had to keep struggling on in his own lonely courage. But at last he also triumphed, and made the thing which he had set out to make. And now on all the rivers, and across all the seas, go the great steam¬ ships which are possible because one man who had the idea kept on trying, until he had worked out what nobody else thought could be made. Then in the things which we make, not with our hands, but with our hearts and inward hopes, there is the same need of steady courage in the face of those who laugh. I suppose when the disciples of KEEPING ON IT Jesus went out to carry His message to the world, and to make all the world at length the Kingdom of Christ, men laughed at them. Doubtless some of his friends thought St. Paul had lost his mind when he set out from Antioch to go through Asia Minor, and into Greece and Pome, into wide coun¬ tries and great cities where Christ had never even been heard of, to build the churches that were to he. But he never stopped before any discourage¬ ment. In spite of difficulty, in spite of loneliness, and everything that anyone might say or do, he kept on, determined to finish God’s great work' which he believed in. And the words which he wrote in one of his letters are good for all of us to learn and live by. If things were hard to-day, he set his heart all the more bravely to go on un¬ dismayed to-morrow. “ Forgetting those things which are behind,” he said, “ and reaching forth unto those things which are before, I press on.” 3 THE HOUSE WE LIVE IN HIS time we shall begin with a text and end with a story. The text is from the Hew Testament, and these are the words of it: “ Ye are God’s building.” God sets every single one of us to building a house. When we stop to think of it, we shall see how this is so. This house we live in is made up of our thoughts and of our deeds. Every time we think something, whether good or bad, and every time we do some¬ thing, whether good or bad, we are making the house that our minds and hearts must dwell in. It may be a very beautiful house, or a very mean and ugly one. We can have it one sort or the other, according to the way we choose. Take, for example, the boy who begins to go to school, and plays with other boys, and talks with them and hears them talk. Some day he may hear things that are not good to hear. Some boy will begin to use vile language and profanity, which he picks up and repeats because he thinks it is smart and does not know any better. Or some ugly story is started which the boy knows he would be ashamed for his mother to hear. If he listens to 18 THE HOUSE WE LIVE IN 19 that sort of talk, and builds his own thought out of it, presently his house will be all made up of ugly and grimy things. The tramp who slinks along the road may live in a dirty shed because he has nowhere else to live, and the boy who deliber¬ ately begins to build ugly thoughts is making his mind live in a shed. It may be even wTorse for him than it is for the tramp, for the tramp may live in a shed because he cannot help it; but the boy who gathers vile thoughts to put his mind in is making a shed deliberately, when he might have made something beautiful and fine. But suppose, on the other hand, that a boy de¬ termines to think, as St. Paul said we ought to think, of that which is “ true, and lovely, and hon¬ ourable, and of good report.” Then he is building for his mind a house high and lofty and beautiful, with great sunny spaces, and with windows looking up to the skies of God. When his mind lives in that sort of a house, the low and common thoughts cannot reach it. They would not dare to come into a house that looked like that. So it is also with things we do. Let boys and girls be truthful and courageous, let them stand up for some right thing at some moment when the wrong is popular, let them stand by the other boy or girl who is being unfairly treated, and every such fine act is like a great stone laid in the walls of character. After awhile it will be as though they lived in a castle, made so strong by all the 20 THE HOUSE WE LIVE IN high, brave choices that not even the very sugges¬ tion of meanness can get close enough to hurt them. But suppose somebody does not realize all that. Suppose you do not realize that the thoughts you think and the deeds you do make the house in which you yourself must live. Suppose you imagine that being brave and true and unselfish may be very good for the other person whom you are brave and true and unselfish for, but does not do any good to you. Sometimes boys and girls do get that notion. They think that it is too much trouble to try to be good, that their fathers and mothers and Sunday-school teachers and friends who tell them what is the fine way to think and act are doing it just because they choose to think so, and it will not really make any difference to the boys and girls themselves. But that is a great mis¬ take, and to show you the sort of mistake it is, I will tell you the story which I spoke of at first. Once upon a time — so the story runs — there was a rich man who had a poor neighbour. The poor man was a carpenter, and he had no money, and very little work, and he lived in a very dingy house. So one day the rich man had a fine idea, and he sent for the carpenter and said to him, “ I am going away, and while I am gone I want to give you the work of building a house. You shall go to work on it while I am gone, and put the best materials in it, and build it as well as you know 21 THE HOUSE WE LIVE IN Low. And when I have come back, yon can tell me how much it all cost, the materials yon pnt into it, and your own labour, and everything, and I will pay you.” So he pointed out a sunny hill-top where the house was to be, and went away. Then the carpenter began to build, and presently he thought to himself, “ The rich man has gone away and he will not know what I am going to do. In¬ stead of putting in fine material I will put in cheap stuff and charge him for it as though it were the best. Then I shall make more money.” So that was what he did. He put in poor material, and worked carelessly, and after awhile the man for u a whom he was building came back. I have finished the house,” said the carpenter. Oh, that is fine! ” said the rich man. “ And now, although you did not know it, you have been building it for yourself, for I meant you to have it, and I am giving it to you.” Then I suppose the carpenter began to feel as though he were shriveled up inside, for he had gone and built the meanest house he could think of, and he never knew that it was his own. So that is the way it is with us. We are God’s building. We build our character for Him accord¬ ing to the beautiful, bright plans He gives us. Hut though we build for Him, we build for ourselves, too. Eor the character we build, we ourselves must live in. And when we remember tnat, it will make us eager to be building nobly every day. 4 BLAZING THE TRAIL YOU can all see what this is. It is a piece of the trunk of a tree, with three notches cut in it. The notches have cut the dark bark clear away, and you can see the white wood of the heart of the tree trunk underneath. Boys and girls who have walked in the woods much — especially the deep woods off in the wild places — know what these cuts are called. They are blazes. When anyone goes through a thick wood and wants to mark the way so that he himself can follow it again, or someone else can find it, he will take a hatchet and chop these blazes on the tree. They are signs which mark the path from one part of the forest to the other. In the oldest of all the States in America — the one to which the first colonists came from England more than three hundred years ago — there is an old, old road called the “ Three-Chopt Road.” It was there when the Indians used to go back and forth across the country from which long since the white man has driven them away. It was there when the British troops were marching in the days of the Revolution. It was called the Three-Chopt 22 BLAZING THE TRAIL 23 Road because it was marked by three blazes on the trees. It was a fine thing that the old pioneers did in the early days. The pioneers were the ones who went ahead and made the roads and marked them out for others. They dared the dangers first so that others could come after them in safety. They did the difficult work so that the others would find it not so hard. The old days of blazing roads through the forests are mostly over, but there are other roads which still need to be blazed, and every boy and girl can help to blaze them. They are the roads of behav¬ iour, and they need to be made fresh every day. People are apt to follow where others have showed the way. If one boy will blaze a good road, other boys will find it easier to be brave and honourable and pure. If one girl will mark the way of gentle¬ ness and loving-kindness, other girls will be more apt to go that way. St Paul said there were three things which lasted when everything else should pass away three things which it would be always well to fol¬ low. They are faith and hope and love. We can use them to make the blazes on our Three-Chopt Road. Pirst is the blaze of faith. Paith is the spirit which dares to trust in some great, beautiful pos¬ sibility which is not proven yet, but which we mean to prove by the very fact of trusting it and daring 24 BLAZING THE TRAIL to go ahead. If you will read the eleventh chapter of the letter to the Hebrews, you will find there the glorious names of the men and women who blazed the roads of God by faith. There was Abraham, who started out from his own home for a new land because he believed that God had a great work for him to do, and though perhaps his neighbours laughed, he dared keep on in the power of his faith in “ Him who is invisible.” There was Moses, who left his place in the King’s palace to go lead his own people out through the wilderness to freedom, because he had faith that God would help him do the things which cowards thought to be impossible. Because they had faith, they blazed great roads of courage for others ; and wherever to-day any boy or girl has faith to attempt great things for God, that boy or girl blazes the great roads too. Then, second, there is the blaze of hope. Some¬ times we lose the first glow of faith. We start on something that is fine, and it looks as though we might fail. We begin to mark the path through the dark woods of difficulty, and the shadows are so deep, and the way so long that faint-hearts won¬ der whether they can ever get through. But then comes the bright spirit who is brave enough to be forever hopeful — the boy or girl who whistles when others whine, who looks ahead when others look back ; and by hope the way is blazed, and the path leads on. BLAZING THE TRAIL 25 Then, finally, there is love. Nothing is so help¬ ful and so blessed as that. Eor, many times peo¬ ple will not try to be good, and become sullen and hard, because they think that nobody cares. But then comes someone who shows them what they ought to try to do, and makes the right path plain by all sweet marks of sympathy and friendship. That is what Jesus did. He blazed the road that leads to God by the blazes of His love ; and we who remember Jesus must try to make that way of good¬ ness plain by the marks of a love like His. 5 THE SINGING BIRD ONCE there was a boy who had a canary which he loved and was very proud of. Of all the birds you ever saw it seemed the most merry-hearted. It would flit about in its cage and sing and sing. All day long it would be pouring out music until the house was filled with it. But there was one thing that troubled the boy. His bird, which sang so beautifully, had only a little wooden cage. He thought it ought to have a better cage, and he kept persuading his father please to give him some money to buy one. So at last he did get another cage — -a great gilded one, with perches and swings, and all sorts of orna¬ ments, and he took his singing bird out of the little cage and put him in the big one, and was very triumphant. But then what do you suppose happened? The singing bird would not sing. It looked bewildered and frightened. It flew about in the great cage, and fluttered up against the wires in one corner, and then sat on the perch, and ruffled its feathers, and drooped its head. It could not understand 26 THE SINGING BIRD 27 being in the big cage. It felt so awkward and strange that it would not sing. So presently the boy began to think to himself that, a great, gilded cage with an unhappy bird in it was, after all, not nearly as nice as the little cage and the singing bird. So he put the bird back into the little cage again, and the bird was happy, and' out came his pouring song. Always it is a good thing for us to remember that the singing bird is very much more important than the cage. It is better to have music in a little place than silence in a big one. It is better to have a merry heart with simple things around one, than to have a cold heart in the midst of riches. So many boys and girls, and grown up people also, are apt to forget that. They imagine that if they can get the elaborate and showy things they want, they will be happy. If they can surround themselves with fine clothes and expensive toys and pleasures of all kinds, then they suppose that their whole life will be as full of gladness as a bird’s throat is full of song. But it may not work out that way; and all the fine things in the world are useless unless, first of all, we make sure that the little bird within our hearts will sing. When we read our Bibles, and all other great books about life, we see how often it is true that the heart may be singing in the simplest places, and that it is not what we have, but what we are, that makes the difference. There was David, who was 28 THE SINGING BIRD only a shepherd lad, keeping his father’s sheep in the hills of Bethlehem. He was all athrill with courage and gladness, and Saul, the King, who lived amidst the utmost splendours that the King¬ dom could give him, was gloomy and miserable. Jesus Himself often had no roof over His head ex¬ cept God’s skies, and owned no houses nor wealth of any kind. He was always filled with splendid joyousness, and Herod, in his palace, was a man of gloom. What Jesus told His disciples is forever true. He said, “ A man’s life consisteth not in the abundance of the things which he possesseth.” That means, in other words, that it is not what we have that makes our life worth living. Much or little makes no difference in the end. The thing that counted was not the cage but the singing bird, and the thing that counts with us is not possessions, but the singing heart. Only God can give us the heart that always sings. The more we think of Him, the more we shall know that life is so sweet and full of blessings that every thought of it is like a song. 0 MANY .VOICES THE other day I walked into a great hotel which has a very beautiful palm-garden. In the center of it is a statue, and around it, marble walks between which are little tinkling fountains, and palms, and flowers, and over it all a glass roof through which the sun was streaming. But it was not any of these things that caught my attention. What I noted especially was that all the place was full of the sound of singing. The air thrilled with it, and it echoed everywhere. Then when I came to look to see where all the music came from, I saw that in big wicker cages in the corners of the palm-garden were canaries. There was not just one canary, but four — one in each corner. One of them would lift his head on his perch, and ruffle his throat, and out would come the rippling music. Then when he sang another would begin to sing. And so, one after another, they took it up until there was continual music. It was not only that there were four birds instead of one, and so four times as much singing as one could have made, but every bird seemed to sing about four times as much as he would if he had been all 29 30 MANY VOICES alone, and so there was sixteen times as much music as one bird alone would have made. For each one started the other, and so the music kept multiplying until it seemed as though the whole place were full of birds. Then I thought how nice it is to know that the same thing can be true of hoys and girls, and of people generally. If one sings, another is apt to begin singing too. It is that way in church with the singing of the hymns. I know of some churches where nobody seems to sing, and if a stranger comes in and picks up a hymn hook and begins to join in with the choir, as everyone ought to do, he sud¬ denly finds his voice sounding queer and solitary down in his comer of the church, because nobody else is singing, and everyone looks around in a sur¬ prised way to see whose voice that is. So perhaps he is embarrassed, and he stops singing too. But then I know of other churches where all the people try to sing because their hearts are glad with the thought of the Lord, and they want to pour that gladness out just as naturally as the rippling music of the birds. They may not all sing very well, but when everybody sings, each particular one, good or bad, does not make so much difference. Every one encourages everybody else until the whole church is filled not only with the music of voices, but with the better music of glad souls which are really wor¬ shipping God. So, also, there is a constant way in which we MANY VOICES 31 can be making music, even when our voices are still. St Paul in one of his letters wrote to the Christians whom he knew that they ought to be “ singing and making melody in your heart to the Lord.” Every time any one of us cultivates the habit of thinking beautiful thoughts about Christ and His love for us, every time we remember all the blessings which He has given us — home, and friends, and laughter and love, and the chance to work and serve— it puts a gladness into our hearts that makes them go singing on their way. One single cheerful heart will make other hearts cheer¬ ful. A single one that is bright with the thoughts of God will make others bright. So it will be like the sunny garden I told you of just now where all the birds were singing. Each heart that sings makes others sing, and their singing gives us back new gladness to make us want to sing again. 7 COURAGE IJST THE COLD OUE day I preached to the hoys and girls a sermon about two flowers, one of which was in a south window, where the warm sun shone, and the other in a north window where the sun never shone at all. The flower in the sun was growing and blossoming, but the flower which had stood in the window to the north was pinched and shrivelled, and scarcely had any life left in it. It needed the cheerful warmth and brightness which it could not get, and which the more for¬ tunate flower in the sunny window had always had. And then I told the boys and girls how a great many people are like the flowers — some of them in bright places of happy opportunity, and some where they see only the gray skies of unhappiness and feel the cold wind of unkindness blowing round them. And I reminded the hoys and girls of how fine it would he if we could all help to take the lives which thus are like the flowers in the north win¬ dows and bring them into the midst of our encour¬ agement and friendship, so that they would be like the flowers which had been given a place in the sun. I called that sermon “ Sunny Windows,” and after 32 COURAGE IN THE COLD 33 a while I put it in a book, and the whole book has the name of that sermon, for I thought it was a good message for all of us to think of. But here, to-day, I want to show you a flower which preaches another message, and a very cour¬ ageous one. Most flowers, just as I said that day before, will wither and almost die if they are put in a window where there is no sun, but here is a flower— this wax begonia — of a different kind. It will grow and blossom even if you do keep it in a window to the north. If it lacks the chance which the flower in the sunny window had, it does not complain nor despair, nor give up growing, but somehow manages to thrive and blossom just as well as the flower in the happier place. I think we all need to learn the lesson of this flower, just as much as we needed to learn the lesson which I told of in u Sunny Windows.” We were thinking then of how we ought to help one an¬ other and give boys and girls whose lot had been cast in gloomy surroundings a better chance for happiness and life. We might have taken for our text those words of St. Paul’s when he said, “ Bear ye one another’s burdens,” which is to say that we ought to help each other in the things which the other one finds very hard. But there is another text which we might take for our sermon to-day, and that is that other message of St. Paul’s when he said, “ But each man shall bear his own bur¬ den. That means that we cannot be always wait- 34 COURAGE IN THE COLD ing for someone else to help us out of our difficul¬ ties. We must be very brave and courageous to make the best of ourselves in spite of our diffi¬ culties, if these cannot be taken away. Here is the flower which is put in the north window and no¬ body comes to change it into the sun, so it just sets itself to make the best of the lack of sun, and tries hard to bloom as though it had it. And here are hoys and girls who may be in circumstances which seem very discouraging to them. They have not the friends they wish they had. They are poor in¬ stead of rich, and have to work hard instead of having much time for pleasure, and perhaps they do not even have the chance to study and learn like other more fortunate hoys and girls, and they go to work when others go off to college. But, never¬ theless, if they are courageous, they can do just what this flower which I have here to-day has done. They can bloom in spite of the north window. They can grow up into men and women, proud and strong and self-reliant, because there is something within their hearts that makes them determined to grow and blossom whether the sun shines or not. 8 THE LISTENING TIME ONE of the most important things about the great vessels which go hack and forth across the seas, and carry thousands of passengers from one side of the world to the other, is the wireless telegraph. Before the wireless tele¬ graph was invented there was no way by which one ship at sea could send a message to another if it should be in trouble. A ship might collide with an iceberg, as the great Titanic did. It might break part of its machinery, so that it drifted helpless in the sea. Or a fire might break out, and threaten to destroy the ship entirely. Yet there was no way of calling for help unless another ship by chance should sail that way and come in sight of the signals of distress. But now the wireless tele¬ graph has been invented, and it is carried on every ship. Between the masts, far up above the decks, you will see the long, fine network of wires from which the electric messages can be sent out, and by which messages from other ships can be caught from the air. So now if a ship is in trouble, it can communicate with others, and from far away 35 36 THE LISTENING TIME other ships which ordinarily would never have come within sight of it, can hasten up over the horizon to its aid. The other day I heard something about the way the wireless telegraph is used on board the ships which it is good for all of us to know. Out of every quarter of an hour, for thirteen minutes the operator may be sending messages out, but for at least two minutes out of each fifteen he will stop and listen, — to discover what messages which per¬ haps he ought to hear may be quivering through the air. Perhaps there may be some ship which is calling him, some ship which is in danger and is crying out for aid. If his own wireless were talk¬ ing all the time he could not hear. The other ship might be trying to catch his attention, but his wire¬ less would be so concerned about its own business that it would not know. So for those two minutes the wireless keeps still so that if any messages are coming through the air it may be sure to know it. But is it not a fact that a great many people are like a wireless which talks all the time? They are so busy with their own notions of what they want to say that they fill the air with clamour. There are boys and girls at table who have no politeness in keeping still during other people’s conversation, but they must be chattering every minute about what they have in mind. And there are those who never stop to find out what others may want to do. Instead of that they are shouting out what game THE LISTENING TIME 37 it is they want to play, and what they want some¬ body else to do to amuse them, and as for stopping to listen to know what somebody else might prefer, that never seems to occur to them at all ! Suppose we all should follow the rule of the wireless. Suppose that every little while we should deliberately check ourselves and say, iC I must stop making such a clatter now about the things I like and want. What sort of messages are there that are pouring in to me from the big world, if only I should listen? Who is there that is tired and needs me to run an errand? Who is there that is sick, or in distress, whom I can be good to ? Who is there in trouble whom I can help ? ” How much finer and happier, too, this would he than filling the air with our desires ! We can take the same idea also into our pray¬ ers. The notion of most people about prayer is that they must ask God for everything they can think of that they want, and then say, “ Amen,” and they have finished. But that is only a part of prayer. An even better part is keeping still and listening to what God has to say to us. If we try doing that on our knees, it will be easier to do it in all other times when we are going about our work and play. We can learn the habit of listen¬ ing for the Voice of God — that Voice which speaks to our conscience in the quiet place, and speaks to us also from all the crowding needs of other people whom we can help in God’s Name. u Be still and 38 THE LISTENING TIME know that I am God,” is a good verse from the Bible for us to remember. And a good answer, which comes from the Bible also, is this: “I* will hear what God, the Lord, will speak.” 9 HOW TO MAKE THE GOOD THINGS GROW ONE day I went to a fair, and there among a good many other exhibits was a little plate which had ribbons going out from it, like the spokes of a wheel, to other plates. On the little plate in the center there was something which looked like fine brown powder, and on the other plates were various things which you could recognize at once. On one plate was a pile of smooth Irish potatoes, on another a little heap of golden grains of wheat, on another some fluffy white cotton, and on another, corn. Then when I looked back to see what was on the first plate, I saw it was some fertilizer. Not all boys and girls know what fertilizer is, though most of those who live in the country do. Fertilizer is something which the farmer puts on his fields to make them fertile, — that is, to make them rich so that they will grow bigger crops, and better. Sometimes fertilizer is made of lime ; sometimes it is made of bone dust; sometimes of other things. But the purpose of it all is the same,— to make the land grow finer crops than it would have grown without it. The little pile of fertilizer on the plate which I am telling you about weighed only a pound and cost only two and a half cents, but it would make six pounds of potatoes 39 40 HOW TO MAKE GOOD THINGS GROW grow, and three pounds of wheat, or com or to¬ bacco which were worth much more than the farmer would have paid for the fertilizer. So whatever the farmer spends in fertilizer for his fields is more than worth the cost, for he gets it all back, and more, when he comes to count up his crop and sell it. If a farmer were stupid, though, he would not remember that. In the springtime when he sows his seed in the ground he might say, u Why should I spend my money for fertilizer? The fertilizer does not grow up into anything itself. It has no seed nor leaves nor fruit of its own. It disappears into the ground, and after a while I cannot even see that it is there. What is the use of my spend¬ ing money on it? If I put seed into the ground that ought to be enough. The land must take care of itself and make my seed grow.” But when the autumn comes and the crops are gathered he will not have nearly as much as he might have had, and his wiser neighbour who has made his land rich will have much more. There are many people who need to learn the same sort of lesson that the farmers have to learn. You remember how Jesus told one of His lovely stories, which we call parables, to make us remem¬ ber that the hearts of people are like a field. God’s words are like the seeds which are sown there, and whether or not those seeds spring up and grow and bring forth the fruit of good living depends upon HOW TO MAKE GOOD THINGS GROW 41 what sort of soil there is in the field of our hearts. Some hoys and girls, — and men and women, too, for that matter, — imagine that their hearts will somehow grow the fruit of good living without ever being fertilized. They think they can be good just by themselves. They do not pray. They grow careless about coming to church. They do not try to enrich their hearts with the thought of God. Then, after a while, their hearts become like some of the farms which we can find here and there farms of what men call the worn-out lands. They have grown their crops in other years, but the land has never been enriched again, and it has lost all its fertility and will not grow good crops any more. So the hearts of people can become like worn-out lands, too, without the gladness and strength which make the rich harvest of character and good deeds. What we need is to keep our hearts fertile by bringing to them the things that make them rich. We may not see at first just what good prayer does, or just what good there is in coming to church, or in trying every day to think of God and of the will of Jesus. We cannot see it at first any more than the farmer sees what good the fertilizer does when he first works it into the fields in the spring. But, very quietly, all our life, like the fields, will be becoming more capable of bringing forth good and beautiful things, until one day we may be aston¬ ished at the harvest of character which the silent influences have made to grow. 10 BLOSSOMS WHICH MUST WITHER HERE in my hand is one of the loveliest gifts of the springtime. It is a spray of apple blossoms, and the very sight of it makes us remember how very lovely the whole world is when the spring comes back after the long, gray winter. Out in the meadows the grass is growing green, and the flowers are coming up in all the gardens. The birds are coming back again, and we can hear their music everywhere in the hedge-rows, and in the trees; and in the orchards the boughs of the fruit trees have clothed them¬ selves with the blossoms that flaunt in every breeze, — the pink of the peaches, and the white blossoms of the pears and the cherries, and now the sweetest and most delicate of all, the white and pink of the apple. Ho wonder when anyone goes by an orchard he wants to break off some of the blossoms and take them home and put them in vases here and there, and make the rooms of the house look beautiful with them. And so they do look beautiful there, as beautiful as they did when they were growing on the trees — for awhile. But before long the blos- 42 BLOSSOMS WHICH MUST WITHER 43 soms will commence to wither and drop, and then there is no use in keeping the branch any more, for when the blossoms have withered, and fallen from the broken branch, that is the end of it. Nothing more will happen. The branch is dead, and can only be thrown away. But with the blossoms that remain on the tree there is a very different story to tell. When the blossom falls, and the little petals are scattered here and there by the wind, something else is left. At the heart of the blossom is the tiny little begin¬ ning of the fruit, and as the days go on that tiny thing, no larger than a bead at first, will grow and grow and be fed by the sap that flows to it from the trunk of the tree through the branch and the twig, until presently it will be the big, ripe apple. The blossoms which have been broken off could have grown into apples, too, but only if they had been left on the tree. There are some boys and girls who are slow to learn about themselves the truth which we can see so plainly in regard to the fruit trees. They look at themselves, and everything seems to be happy and promising, and they imagine that they can go on growing all by themselves. They have been born into a Christian home, and taken to Sunday School when they were very little; and at home, and in Sunday School and at Church they have been learn¬ ing about God and the Lord J esus, and the beauti¬ ful lessons of the Christian life. The influence of 44 BLOSSOMS WHICH MUST WITHER good people and of lovely places has flowed into them so silently that they hardly know what has been happening. The blossoms of Christian grace are upon them. They know how they ought to be¬ have, and how they ought to live. Then, perhaps, they begin to think they know it all, and do not need help any more. They do not want to listen to their fathers and mothers. Perhaps they get im¬ patient at Sunday School and want to stop. They forget that the blossoms are not fruit, and that the beginnings of lives which are gracious and good will never ripen if they are broken off from the life that feeds them. So there are men and women also who are just as unwise as some boys and girls. They used to say their prayers always, but now they have grown care¬ less and have stopped. They used to read their Bible, but they have grown forgetful. They used to come to church, but now they are indifferent and lazy, and do not come. When they make that mistake, ex¬ actly the same thing happens which happens when the bough of fruit blossoms is broken off from the tree. The fruit of all the fine Christian character which they ought to have developed never ripens. People who look at them are disappointed. They say, “ I thought that man, and that woman, would amount to so much more than they do. They could have been so helpful and useful if they had wanted to. They used to be interested in loving and un¬ selfish things, and now they cannot be depended BLOSSOMS WHIGH MUST WITHER 45 upon.” Somehow they have never come np to the expectations of others. They are like the fruit tree which Jesus found one day when He came to it look¬ ing for fruit, and found nothing but leaves. There is just one way for boys and girls who have in them the blossoms of Christian knowledge and all sweet Christian possibilities to grow the fruit of the full, fine lives that ought to be. They must keep as close as they can to the life of Jesus as it flows into them through His Church, and through all the living influences that bring Him to us. If we do not abide in Him, He said, we are cast forth as broken branches, and withered. But if we do keep joined to Him, as the branch is joined to the tree, we shall bring forth much fruit. 11 DANGEBS WE DO NOT SEE THE other day we were thinking about the branch cut off from the fruit tree. It looked very beautiful, and for a time it would seem very sweet and fresh if you put it in a vase of water in a room. But then we remem¬ bered that, after all, that bough could never bear fruit. Because it was broken from the tree, no sap could flow through it any more, and presently the blossoms would wither, and the fruit would never come. If blossoms are to be not blossoms only, but peaches and pears and apples, and all the other fine, ripe things which fruit trees are meant to pro¬ duce, they must stay on the tree. And people, also, if they are not to be only idle blossoms, and empty promises of goodness which never ripen into any¬ thing real, must keep themselves close to the life- giving powers of God. They must not cut them¬ selves away by carelessness in worship and prayer, and think that they can grow all by themselves without God’s help. They must keep their lives a part of His life, or they will surely wither. But to-day I want to go on and tell you about 46 DANGERS WE DO NOT SEE 47 something which may happen to the fruit, even though the boughs are still a part of the tree. Even though it he not broken off, the branch may fail to bear fruit. So it is with people, too. Even though we may not deliberately cut ourselves off from good things, we may still fail to make the best of our¬ selves unless we watch out for dangers which the fruit tree can teach us of. In the first place, the men who know about orchards know that they must be careful of the roots of their trees. Very often the little field mice, burrowing in the ground, will gnaw the roots and kill them. Or rabbits will eat the new bark until there is a bare ring all around the trunk of the tree, and the sap cannot flow, and the tree be¬ gins to die. The man who wants his fruit trees to grow and thrive, must protect them against the rabbits and the mice, or else before he knows it, his tree is spoiled. Then there is another thing which must be watched out for even at the cost of a great deal of trouble. On the branches of fruit trees there comes a little enemy called the scale. It is a tiny growth which spreads and spreads and spoils the fruit so that it is not sound and healthy. Every spring in regions where the great orchards are, we may see men going out with wagons on which are huge tanks and pumps with a long hose. Out of the tanks they pump a liquid stuff which breaks into a fine spray, and it sifts all through the branches 48 DANGERS WE DO NOT SEE and twigs and covers them with a mist that dries and leaves the trees white, or sometimes the strang¬ est light blue, from the ground-up powder which was in the spray. That is to kill the scale, and to make sure that the fruit will ripen sound and sweet. It costs a great deal of money and means a good deal of trouble to spray all the trees in an orchard, but it is worth it if a crop of fruit is saved. But what has all that to do with us ? a boy or girl may say. Well, it has a good deal to do with every one of us. When we stop and think, we begin to see. There are boys and girls, in the first place, who do not take care of their roots. Our roots are the good things that lie back of us — the help that comes to us from our fathers and mothers, the good name we bear, the fine example of those who have loved us which we are supposed to live up to. We may be so vain about those roots that we idly imagine that because we have them, everything will go well with us; and we do not trouble to make sure that nothing is hurting those roots and keeping their help from flowing into us. When I went to college, I knew a man who lived in the same room which his father had lived in before him, and his grand¬ father before that, and his great-grandfather had gone to that college and had graduated exactly one hundred years before this man was supposed to graduate. He had roots, you see, down through DANGERS WE DO NOT SEE 49 the life of that college for one hundred years. With all that example back of him, it looked as though he certainly must do well. But, instead of that, he began to waste his time. He was a nice friendly sort of fellow who looked as pleasant as a fruit tree in bloom, but he was lazy. And all the while those wasted days of his, while he was loafing about doing nothing but having a pleasant time, were like little mice, gnawing at the roots of the tree. When the time came for his class to gradu¬ ate, and all the others went up for their diplomas, he did not get any. He had failed. It did not make any difference then how many roots his tree had had. The little gnawing laziness had cut the roots, and the fruit that he was supposed to get out of his college years had withered. Just as surely also are we like the trees which need to be sprayed to kill the tiny scale. Some people, looking at a fruit tree with the scale on it, might shrug their shoulders and say, u What dif¬ ference does that make ? I am not going to take a lot of trouble spraying my trees just for that. I believe the fruit will grow anyway.” The fruit does grow anyway for a while. But after a time you see that it is full of specks and blotches which will begin to rot and spoil. So in the hearts of boys and girls there may come the tiny begin¬ nings of evil which look at first no bigger than the little scale on the fruit tree boughs. There is the habit of telling not quite the truth. There is the 50 DANGERS WE DO NOT SEE little twisting meanness of gossip that for the sake of making a good story says an unkind thing about some one else. There is the selfish habit of think¬ ing first of what is pleasant to do and not of what is helpful and brave and kind. If these little be¬ ginnings are left alone they will spread and spoil the fruit of all our finest living. What we must do is to cover all the branches of our lives with the wholesome thought of Jesus. It can sift in every¬ where, like the spray on the frut-tree boughs. Wherever it touches, it brings soundness and help, and puts an end to the destroying things, and makes sure that the fruit of all good living will ripen as God meant it to do. 12 HOW HOT TO PEAK THE FROST WHEH Jesus preached, He usually did not preach from a book, — unless it was the great, open book of God’s wide out- of-doors. He saw a man walking in the brown, ploughed field, casting seed into the furrows, and He preached His parable of how the sower, sow¬ ing seed, reminds us of the word of God which falls like seed into our hearts, and our hearts must be prepared, like the good ground, to receive it. He saw the lilies in the fields, growing all sweet and unafraid, and He taught us how we, too, like the lilies, must trust the good providence of God. He heard the birds sing in the hedge rows, and He said that if God remembered these, how much more might we be sure that He remembers His human children. All the world was full of sermons for Him, for it was full of the signs of the meanings of God. And so it is good for us that often we should take our sermons, not from the printed book, but from the book of God’s world that lies around us. Once again, therefore, our text shall be some* thing that is happening out-of-doors. Twice ab 51 52 HOW NOT TO FEAR THE FROST ready we have talked about the fruit trees, but for the third time there is a new thing to think about. One spring there came a very heavy and terrifying frost in a region where great orchards of apples grow. It was late in April, and everyone thought that the period of frost had passed. Some of the trees were in full bloom, and on some of them the little apples had begun to form. And then, unex¬ pectedly, the frost came, heavy and white and cold. The next morning, when men went out, it seemed to them that all their crop was ruined. The blooms were shriveled and blighted. It looked as though all the fruit were dead. A great many people began to think what ter¬ ribly hard fortune that was for all the growers of fruit. What could they do against such bad luck as that? What difference did it make how hard they had worked if the frost were going thus to kill all the fruit, regardless of anything that they could do ? But presently it appeared that notwithstanding the frost, it did make a tremendous difference what men had done or left undone. The frost did not kill all the fruit, but only some of it. The trees which it damaged most were the trees which had not been taken care of — the trees on which there was the scale that I told you of last time — the trees that had not been guarded and sprayed and kept strong. On the neglected trees, the frost killed nearly everything; but on the trees which were in HOW NOT TO FEAR THE FROST 53 best condition the blossoms were strong enough to withstand the frost. Some of them were killed, but a great many survived, and those trees would bear a crop, regardless of the frost. So it was not a question only of luck. It was a question of cour¬ age and patience and work which could overcome what seemed bad luck. That is a good lesson for everyone to learn. Sometimes a boy at school finds a question on his examination which has to do with a part of the book that he forgot to study. If almost any other question had been asked, he could have answered it, but this one he just cannot answer, and so he fails because of what he thinks is his hard luck. Or some day to a boy or girl, or to an older person, the temptation comes of some wrong-doing. Most other sorts of wrong things they would have said “ no ” to at once, but this particular one catches them unawares, and, before they know it they have done something they will be ashamed of. Then they say, “ What hard luck it was that I got into that tight place ! ” It is always easy to blame our failures on hard luck. In one of the parables which Jesus told, there were ten virgins who were to meet the wed¬ ding procession of the bridegroom in the evening. Five of them had their lamps filled with oil, and five of them had forgotten all about it, or thought about it after it was too late; and so their lamps were empty. Then when they were all sleeping, 54 HOW NOT TO FEAR THE FROST and nobody expected him, tbe bridegroom came, and tbe five foolish virgins could not go in with him because tbeir lamps were out. “ Wbat bard luck it was,” they might have said, “ that be came just at that one time when our lamps happened to be empty ! ” But it was not bard luck. It was because they bad not thought, and remembered, and planned before. There is a way always to overcome the things which we are tempted to complain about, and call hard luck. It is to put another letter before “ luck ” and turn it into “ pluck.” J ust as men who have gone steadily on working upon their trees, keeping them in the best condition they could, will find that their trees overcome the frost, so if you and I go on working as best we know to make our spirits clean and strong and true, then, in spite of difficulty, they will ripen into the harvest of good life for God. 13 “ I CAME HERE TO FIGHT ” IH France one day an American general was watching some soldiers who had come up to take their places in a regiment which needed new troops because so many of the ones it used to have had been lost in battle. He went up and spoke to one of them, a clean-looking lad with a boyish face. He said, “ Son, where did you come from ? ” The boy remembered all the long march through the queer little towns of France, each one with its stone houses and its crooked streets, so much like every other one, and his face was puzzled. “ General,” he said, “ I don’t know where we came from.” The general thought he would tease him a little, so he said to him, though he kept his face looking serious, “ Well, where are you going? ” “ General,” said the boy, “ I don’t know where we are going.” “ Well,” said the general, trying to look aston¬ ished, “ where are you now ? ” The boy looked round at the little village with the French name which he could never pronounce, 55 56 “ I CAME HERE TO FIGHT ” and shook his head. “ General/7 he said, “ I don’t even know where I am at.77 “ Well/7 said the general, “ what did you come over here for ? 77 At that the hoy straightened up and a flash came into his eyes. “ General/7 he said, “ I came here to fight ! 77 The general threw hack his head and laughed, delighted. The hoy understood the one thing that counted. He knew what he was there for, and all his courage and strength were ready. The war which took these boys to France, by God’s mercy is over, but is it not well for boys and girls at home to remember the war which is never over? We, also, are here to fight — to fight all things that are wrong and evil, — to be, as the great apostle called the young Timothy, “good soldiers of Jesus Christ.77 In a book which all young people ought to read, “ Tom Brown at Rugby/7 which is a story of a boy at school, there is this fine description of what hap¬ pened when Tom Brown went up to the chapel at Rugby. He heard the great Headmaster, Thomas Arnold, preach ; and then, “ wearily, and little by little, but surely and steadily on the whole, was brought home to the young boy for the first time the meaning of his life, that it was no fool’s or sluggard’s paradise into which he had wandered by chance, but a battle-field, ordained from of old, where there are no spectators, but the youngest 57 u I CAME HERE TO FIGHT ” must take his side, and the stakes are life and death.” What that means is that all life for every one of ns is a struggle in which our hearts must fight, where we cannot stand by and watch, but every¬ body must play his own part manfully: and the way we fight our battle will determine whether our souls win honour, or only defeat and shame. WLen things are hard, and temptations crowd U3 close, and the evils which we know we ought to fight against stand up before us, let us not wish to have an easier time, or want like cowards to sur¬ render. Let us say like the boy in France, “ I came here to fight ! ” 14 BOYS WHO WOULD HOT BE BEATEN IN the year 1914, when the great war began in Europe, the armies of Germany started on their way to try to reach the city of Paris and capture it before the Erench armies could rally to prevent them. Across little Belgium, those great German armies came. They brought huge cannon, such as had never been seen in the world before, and planted them before the Belgian forts. They blew the strong walls to pieces, and stormed the forts. Little by little, they beat the Belgian army back, and, like a great tide coming in from an angry sea, they swept all over Belgium, and passed on into France. Down over the roads of France, that army poured — past city after city, which they captured, with the French army falling back before them. At last, they were at the very gates of Paris, so that the people on the Paris streets could hear the thunder of the guns. It looked as though Paris would certainly be captured, and Paris was the heart of France. In Paris there lived a little boy. He was very troubled when he saw the French soldiers retreat¬ ing, and knew that the Germans were coming on; 58 BOYS WHO WOULD NOT BE BEATEN 59 he wanted very much to do something for France, his country. He wished that he were a man and could take a ride and go out to battle, too ; but he was only a little boy — and what could a little boy do to help ? Well, he did something all his own, which was a wonderful help, and you could never guess what it was. You see this little piece of paper in my hand ? It was with a piece of paper no bigger than this that the little boy did his part to save France. “ A piece of paper,” you say — “ What could a piece of paper do ? ” Yes, a piece of paper, but with something written on it. Up in the tiny room where the little boy lived with his grandmother, he cut squares of paper from all the blank sheets he could bnd, and on each square he wrote these words : “ France cannot be beaten.” Then he went out into the street, and to everybody he saw he would give one of the pieces of paper. People who had been frowning, and looking troubled and frightened, when they saw the little boy, and read his paper, smiled and took courage. Tired soldiers read his words, and lifted their heads again, and were made more brave. He had put a great idea into their hearts. He had lit the flame of courage which was almost dying out. In one of the readers, which boys and girls used to have at school when I was a boy, and which per¬ haps some of you boys and girls have read, too, there was a story called, “ The Victor of Marengo.” 60 BOYS WHO WOULD NOT BE BEATEN Sometimes boys would learn it by heart and de¬ claim it when they bad to speak a piece. The story of the victor of Marengo was a story of a drummer boy in tbe army of tbe great Napoleon. At one point in tbe battle it looked as tbougb tbe French were being beaten back, and as if Napoleon must order them to retreat to keep them from all being killed or captured. From tbe bill-top, where be stood, be looked over tbe battle-field, and then be turned to tbe drummer boy by bis side and said, “ Boy, beat tbe retreat.” Tbe boy did not stir. Napoleon thought be bad not beard. “ Boy,” be said more loudly, “ beat tbe retreat.” Once again, tbe boy only looked at him and never moved. Very sharply and angrily Napoleon said again, “ Boy, beat tbe retreat.” Tbe boy turned to Napoleon, and this is what be said : “ Sire, I don’t know bow ! But I can beat tbe charge! I can beat a charge that would make tbe dead fall in line! I beat it once by tbe bridge of Lodi ; I beat it at tbe Pyramids, and, 0, Sire, may I beat it here ? ” Napoleon looked at tbe boy and was silent for a moment. Then be smiled. “ Boy,” be said, “ beat tbe charge ! ” So the boy beat tbe charge, and to tbe music of that rolling drum tbe French armies went ahead, and, according to tbe story, the one who won tbe BOYS WHO WOULD NOT BE BEATEN 61 battle of Marengo was not tbe great Napoleon, but the little drummer boy wbo beat the charge. Sometimes boys and girls wonder what they can do in the battles that must be fought for God. They may see a great many people round them growing very discouraged. Perhaps they are at school, and something is going on there which they know to be mean and low; aiid many boys and girls are saying there is no use to fight against it, because too many want it to be that way. Perhaps it is out among their friends, or even in the Sun¬ day School. It looks as though the right things are to be beaten and the armies of God are retreating from the battle. What can one boy or girl do then ? Everything! It was only one little boy who wrote the words, “ Prance cannot be beaten,” and strengthened the hearts of hundreds. It was only one who said that he did not know how to beat the retreat, but that he could beat the charge. We need boys and girls everywhere to-day of that same spirit. Once upon a time, long ago, you remember that the people of Israel came out of Egypt, with Moses at their head. They reached the shores of the Bed Sea, with the Egyptians pursuing them, and the water was there in front. People began to whim¬ per and complain. They thought there was nothing left to hope for. But God said to Moses: “ Speak unto the children of Israel, that they go forward.” And when they did go forward, God made them a 62 BOYS WHO WOULD NOT BE BEATEN wide open way. When we are about some good thing for God, that is always the word for ns — not backward, but forward — not discouragement, but the new courage which beats the charge and never the retreat, and says of all the right things, “ These cannot be beaten.” 15 FOETS ON WHEELS WHAT I have in my hand is a toy for boys to play with, but the thing which it is made to be like was something very different from a toy. You see what this is, with its queer, sloping back, and its wheels that crawl inside the strange, steel bands at its side, and the muzzles of the guns that stick out from its front. It is a tank. When the war was being fought in Europe we used to read about the tanks. Most of us have seen real tanks here at home, because they were brought back and shown on the streets and in parades when the soldiers came. They crawled and waddled along the streets with their engines roaring and their steel tracks making a great noise on the pave¬ ment. There were men inside them running the engines and turning the guns about, but you could not see the men. They were shut up entirely, back of the steel sides and under the steel roof of the tank. It was a bad day in the war for the Germans when they first heard of the tanks and saw them. Very secretly they had been made in England and 63 64 FORTS ON WHEELS sent across the seas to France to the British army. Up the roads they came at night, moving only when it was very dark and no German aeroplane could see them. The British soldiers laughed and cheered and joked like hoys at these queer, lum¬ bering things. One by one, and in twos and threes, they were taken up almost to the battle line and hidden in little patches of woods and other con¬ cealed places until they were ready to be used. Then one morning, all of a sudden, when the order was given, all the engines and all the tanks began to roar at once, and for miles and miles these crawl¬ ing things, like great, lumbering beasts, went out from the British lines with the British soldiers be¬ hind them over the ground toward where the Ger¬ mans were. Some of the Germans gave one look at them and began to get out of the way. Others fought, like the brave men they were, but it was no use. The tanks smashed right through the barbed wire which the Germans had strung in front of their trenches. They dipped their big, steel noses down into shell holes, and balanced for a moment on edge, and then slid down and ploughed up the other side. They straddled the trenches and broke down the dug-outs, and shot with their guns against all the Germans who dared stand up and fight. And that day all the British soldiers and all their friends were glad because they knew that they had discovered a new way to win the war, and they were not going to stay forever in their / FORTS ON WHEELS 65 own trenches hut were going to begin to get ahead. It had begun to look before that as though none of the armies would ever get anywhere any more. There were the Germans in their lines of trenches hundreds of miles clear across Belgium and North¬ ern France. There was no way of getting around them, for the ocean was at one end and the moun¬ tains of Switzerland at the other, and it did not look as though France and England and America, who could not get around, could get through either, because the Germans had built everything so strong that flesh and blood men could not break down those defenses. There was line after line of barbed wire stretched in and out among steel posts. There were trenches dug deep in the ground, and little forts here and there, made out of concrete, with machine guns which could shoot hundreds of bul¬ lets a minute. The Germans were quite sure that they could stay there in their lines until Dooms¬ day. And presently the French and the English and the Americans would get tired, and would have to make peace because they could never drive the Germans out, and there was nothing else to do. But “ No,” said the English; and “ No ” said the French, and “ No ” said the Americans. We must think of some other way of getting the Germans out. It will not do for us just to stay in our trenches and to keep the Germans from getting at 66 FORTS ON WHEELS us. We must get at them, and we must never rest until we have driven them clear away. So they invented the tanks. The Germans had forts which stood still, and they thought that even the very best of soldiers could never capture them. But the men in England and France and America made the tanks, and the tanks were forts on wheels. They did not just stay where they were. They went cruising around wherever they chose. It was a new idea, and the Germans had never figured on anything like that. The war is over, and all of us are very glad and grateful that it is, but the tanks which did so much in the war have a sermon to preach to us in the kind of warfare which is always going on. Sometimes we are like soldiers, stranded in the trenches, who cannot seem to get anywhere. Some sin or other has got into our lives and fenced itself round with such a barbed wire of bad habits that we cannot drive it out. It has dug itself in as though it meant to stay. Sometimes boys and girls, and the men and women which boys and girls grow up into, settle down as though they could never drive the evil things away. They must just accept the bad habits in their own hearts. They must say of the wrong things in their world that they have been there a long time, and that they will probably remain. But that is cowardice. What we want is the spirit which never will rest until it has thought up FORTS ON WHEELS 67 a way to drive the evil out. Our goodness must be not like our own trenches where we sit and hold our ground and are satisfied if we can keep from being any worse than we already are. Goodness must be like the tank which goes plunging on against anything, determined that it will not be stopped. Goodness must be a fort on wheels which is forever pushing on until it has broken the lines of wickedness and driven sin away. Here is a verse which I should like to have you learn, for Robert Louis Stevenson, who was a good fighter, wrote it: “ Pour forth and bravely bear your part, O knights of the unshielded heart, Forth and forever forward, out From prudent turret and redoubt! ’* And we can remember the words of St. Paul, that the spirit of God is “ mighty to the pulling down of strongholds.” It can make us do some¬ thing better than just hanging on to the little good¬ ness we have got. It can fill us with such strength and courage that we will be making goodness greater all the time. 16 THE CEOSS MADE OUT OF PALMS H the Sunday before Easter in many Churches the hoys and girls who come to Sunday School, and all the people who come to Church, are given little crosses to pin on their coats and dresses. These crosses are made of strips of palm leaves. When you think of it, that seems a very strange thing for crosses to be made of. Eor palms are used for gladness, and for tri¬ umph; and a cross means pain and death. Why should things like palms, which suggest so much that is beautiful, be made into something terrible like a cross? Palms and crosses seem so different that they do not belong together at all. You see this all the more when you read in the gospels the story of the Sunday before Easter, which is called Palm Sunday. That was the day when Jesus came down from Galilee with a great company of pilgrims to go into the Holy City. The crowd in Jerusalem had learned that He was coming. They were very excited at the thought of seeing Jesus, for they had heard many wonder¬ ful things about Him, and they thought He would 68 THE CROSS MADE OUT OF PALMS 69 do wonderful things for them. Perhaps He would be a great King and reward His favourites, and bring benefits to those who followed Him, and make everybody prosperous and rich. So they flocked out of the gates of the city when they heard that He was drawing near. They set up great shouts of welcome. They stripped the beautiful, broad leaves from the palm trees which grew along the road, and strewed them on the ground to make a triumphant way for Jesus to pass over. For thus it was that men did in those days when they wanted to greet a conqueror. They would wave palm leaves before him, and put the palm branches on his road. So, when we think of Jesus, and think of the palms, we see again the 'people shouting His name, and crowding around Him as though they admired Him and loved Him better than anyone else m the world. But, presently, something very different hap¬ pened. People began to find out that Jesus was not going to do the kind of things they had hoped. He was not come as a King, to make everybody rich of a sudden, and everything easy and smooth. He had come to teach the love of God; hut men had to be in earnest to listen to Him. He had come to teach all people how to live as their Bather’s children; and that was a very beautiful thing, but a very hard thing, too. So, very soon, their feelings began to grow cool. They were dis- 70 THE CROSS MADE OUT OF PALMS appointed, and as they were disappointed they began to grow angry. They listened to evil men who wanted to get rid of Jesus. Before many days went by, the same crowd which had gone shouting out to meet Him, and strewn the palm branches on His road, went roaring into the hall of Pilate, and lifted fierce hands against Jesus, and cried, “ Crucify Him ! ” And that day they went out to Calvary, and looked on with hard eyes as He was crucified. So there was a real sense in which the palms had changed into the cross. The people seemed to wel¬ come Jesus at first, hut it was no real welcome. It was made up of words, — very shallow, and very false, — which presently changed into hateful deeds. They were glad one day to name His name, but just as glad a few days afterwards to see Him put to death. And is not that the way it is sometimes with people even now? We may seem to welcome Jesus, but perhaps that welcome is not real. We speak His name as though we loved Him, and then we turn against Him, as though we did not love Him at all. We take our palms of welcome and out of them we make for Him a cross. Think a little and you will see how this is so. Suppose a boy comes to Sunday School and learns about Jesus. People think that he is a Christ-loving boy. Perhaps he even joins the Church, and stands up before God and the con- THE GROSS MADE OUT OF PALMS 71 gregation and says that lie wants to follow Jesus. Then perhaps the next day he goes to school, and when he is playing baseball he plays it in a mean, unfair way. If he thinks the umpire is not look¬ ing, he trips up another boy who is running the bases. He plays like a tough instead of like a gen¬ tleman. Or he bullies some small boy who is play¬ ing the game with him. Then other boys who look at him may shrug their shoulders. They think to themselves : “ Is this all that it means to say you want to be Christ’s follower ? ” What the boy said about the Lord Jesus does not matter very much. The thing that counts is what he does. Really to follow Jesus means courage, and honour, and fair¬ ness, and truth. When a boy throws all these things away, he is crucifying the spirit of Jesus, just as men crucified His body long ago. He is turning the palms of the fine words he said into the cross of a false betrayal. Or suppose a girl who has said that she, too, wants to learn to love Christ and to follow Him, and in Sunday School is quick with her lessons, and sings the hymns, and looks as glad as the people did who came out of Jerusalem on Palm Sunday, goes home and is crabbed and cross. Suppose she is in a bad temper about everything her mother suggests which she does not want to do, and is con¬ tinually insisting that everybody else should do things for her, and never wants herself to be loving and helpful in all the little things at home which 72 THE CROSS MADE OUT OF PALMS might be done for others. Do you think that the Lord Christ can have much pleasure in the palms of the words she said and the hymns she sang in Sunday School? Or would He not feel instead so sorry for her forgetfulness? The palms are changed into the cross. Hut what we have said need not be the end of the story. If it is possible for boys and girls to fall into the wrong of the people of Jerusalem who greeted Jesus with a welcome which was false, so it is possible for all of us not to be like that at all, but to be very different. Palms do not have to change into a cross. We can say we love Him, and want to follow Him, and mean it altogether. We can be Christians who once having welcomed J esus into our lives keep Him there forever. We can live lives so faithful that we shall be always prais¬ ing Him, and making others look up in expectation because through us Jesus will be coming into their midst along a beautiful way. 17 THE MARRED FACE OF CHRIST OVER in France where the armies fought hack and forth in the great war, and the terrible shells from the huge guns fell and burst, there are whole wide spaces where there is nothing left but ruin. Sometimes you will go through a village and see only heaps of dust and crumbled bricks. Sometimes part of the walls will be standing, just enough to show what the building used to be. It is that way often with the churches. There, at one end, may be a broken tower, and on the side the frame of a window which shows by its shape that it belonged to a church ; and perhaps in¬ side some fragments here and there that tell you what the building used to be. In a little town named Vaubecourt, not very far from the great French fortress of Verdun, where the fighting was so terrible, I went one day into the ruins of a church. All the roof was gone long ago. The great bells from the tower had crashed down to the earth. Everything inside the walls had been destroyed; but the cross which used to stand on the top of the tower was there in the mid¬ dle of the fragments, and about the foot of it lay 73 74 THE MARRED FACE OF CHRIST a few broken things which once had been a part of the altar or of the little statues along the walls. Among them was something which I picked up and knew to have been the face of Christ. Only half of it was left, but there was something about it which no one could mistake. There is no face like the face of Christ. Even this broken fragment was enough to show what it was meant to be. The sight of it made war seem a very terrible thing. Men begin to hate one another, and then war comes, and there is the fearful killing and all the agony of pain. In the midst of it Christ must be suffering. He is so sorry for the sins and the follies of men. His spirit is wounded, like the broken statue which I found. When Christian men and women begin to remember that, they will be ashamed of the greed and hate and wrong that grow into wars, and wars will not happen any more. But, meanwhile, you and I need to remember that we ourselves are wounding the spirit of Jesus and marring His face. Whenever there is ill- temper and meanness among us, whenever we for¬ get His spirit and let jealousy and envy and hatred have possession, our hearts are like the place where the war has been. The temples of the holy thoughts in which Jesus dwells are destroyed, and He, Him¬ self, is hurt and scarred in the midst of them. , It is told us in the Hew Testament that it is pos¬ sible for people, by the wrong they do, to crucify the Christ afresh and put Him to open shame. If THE MARRED FACE OF CHRIST 75 we remember that, and remember what it means to hurt the One who has loved ns most, we shall be more careful not to let sins come in to wreck the lives which ought to be kept whole and beautiful for Him. 18 THE JUDGMENTS OE JESUS WHEN we read the gospels we are always being made to understand how gentle Jesus was with those whom unfriendly people hated and condemned as sinners. There was no one in the world who hated sin itself so much as did Jesus. But though He hated the wrong things that people do, He was very gentle, never¬ theless, to those who did the wrong. For He be¬ lieved that most people can he taught to do better if they are encouraged, and that there are a great many people who are not as bad as they seem, be¬ cause underneath the wrong things they do are hearts which are ashamed of their wrong-doings, and that really want to be kind. There are going to be a great many surprises when at the end of our lives we all stand up before the eyes of Jesus and have Him pass His judg¬ ment upon us. Some people who are very proud and self-righteous, who have never committed any crime, nor had anybody say evil of them, people who are very respectable citizens, and think a great deal of themselves, may stand at the very bottom in the judgment of Jesus; because He knows that 76 THE JUDGMENTS OF JESUS 77 underneath their outward respectability are cold and selfish hearts. Some of those whom you and I may have despised may have a great deal to teach us, and may have in them a great deal that we wish we had when they stand before the face of Jesus and He sees what is really in their hearts, and makes us see. And to show how this may be so I will tell you what happened one day, not long ago, in a city. There was a bad old woman who had been a thief. She had fingers which just seemed to reach out and itch for things which did not belong to her. The police knew her, had arrested her once or twice, and were always on the watch for her, because they thought that she would be stealing again if she ever got a chance. One day she was walking in a park by a fountain in the middle to which all the paths led up, and around the fountain every afternoon a great many little children played. As she was passing along, she stooped and picked up something from the ground and wrapped it up in an old apron that she wore. Then she looked all around quickly, as though she were afraid somebody might see her, and stooped down again and picked up something else and wrapped that in her apron, and so kept on in a hurried way picking things up and wrap¬ ping them in her apron, and then she started off toward the street. But, meanwhile, a policeman over on the corner, standing under a tree where he could not be seen well, had been watching her. He y 78 THE JUDGMENTS OF JESUS had seen her picking np something, and immedi¬ ately he was sure that she had found something valuable and was stealing it. So, as she started off, he shouted to her roughly, and came running up, and demanded to know what she had in her apron. The old woman was very frightened and declared that she did not have anything. Then the policeman took her by the shoulder and told her that she was lying, that she had something which was stolen wrapped up in her apron, and that he was going to see it then and there. So, tremblingly, the old woman unwrapped her apron. There, in it, were handfuls of broken glass from a bottle. The policeman was astonished. “ What are you doing with that glass ? ” he demanded. “ It is not good for anything.” “ I know it,” said the old woman, “ hut I was afraid the little children might cut their feet.” So I wonder whether she may not look very dif¬ ferent from the way she looks to us, whether there may not fall on her a light from the eyes of Jesus that might even make her face look beautiful, when she stands in His presence? For He it was who said, “ Whosoever shall receive one of such chil¬ dren in my Name receiveth Me,” and “ Inasmuch as ye have done it unto one of the least of these, ye have done it unto Me.” 19 THE WINGS OF THE MAPLE HAVE you ever looked out in the spring¬ time and watched the maple trees? If you have, you have seen a beautiful thing. Long before the leaves come, something else comes on all the boughs and twigs. They look like little wings, coming out two by two, and after awhile they drop from the trees and go spinning down to earth. They are the seeds of the maple, and the tree is giving them wings so that the winds may blow them here and there, and scatter them over the ground, — it may be for yards and yards out¬ side of the widest circle of the tree. The maple does not clothe itself first. It does not get so busy dressing itself up in the spring finery of its new leaves that it forgets all about its seed, and only says as an after-thought, — “ Oh, dear, I have been so busy that I never thought of it at all, and now it is too late! ” No, — every year, and always dependably, the maple makes its seeds first, and gives them wings and sends them out. It is thinking of the days and years which are going to be. It must provide other little trees so that when the big maple is gone there will be other trees to take its place. 79 80 THE WINGS OF THE MAPLE Do you not think that all Christian people, and all Christian churches, can learn a lesson from the maple tree? Some of us are so busy thinking of our new clothes and Easter hats, and all the things we want to make us fine, and the Churches are so busy thinking of the new decorations, and organs, and all sorts of adornments which they want for themselves, that we do not remember our duty to give our money and strength to other people. We imagine that it is a very good thing for the world that God has created us, and it does not make much difference whether any other Christians are created or not. And, indeed, the truth is that if those other Christians were to be no better, nor any more un¬ selfish than we, perhaps it might be just as well that they should not be created. But people who are really blessing God for all the life and Christian privileges which He has given them, must be like the maple tree. Just as when the spring sap rises in the maple, the first thing it does is to make the seeds that shall plant other maple trees, so, when there thrills in us some new joy or gratitude for health or wealth or happi¬ ness, which God has given us, we shall want to share it. We shall want to be missionary Chris¬ tians and belong to missionary Churches. We shall show our gladness for what we have by giving of our best, that others may have it too. 20 THE SON OF GOD’S TRAIN THERE is a little boy I know who one day was playing with his toys. He had them all spread out on the floor, but the one he was playing with most was his railroad train. He had some tracks which fitted together, and he arranged them very carefully so that they would be level and smooth for the train to run on. He had an engine with a spring inside it so that it ran when he wound it up. He put the engine on the track and coupled the tender on behind it, and three or four cars behind that. Then he looked at it all very proudly, and he said: “ This is the Son of God’s train.” His mother, who was in the room with him, was very much astonished. “ What did you say ? ” she asked. “ I said, c This is the Son of God’s train,’ ” said the little boy. “ It is just like the hymn we sing in church: * The Son of God goes forth to war, Who follows in His train ? 3 ” Then I expect his mother could not help smiling 81 82 THE SON OF GOD’S TRAIN at the little boy’s mistake, for of course this is not the kind of train that is meant in the hymn we sing. The hymn does speak of a “ train,” and asks who will follow the Son of God in it. But the train it means is of a different sort. You remember how in the days of the war sometimes you would look out and there would be the soldiers going by in the streets. Perhaps they were marching away to be carried to the harbours, and so by the great ships across the seas to France. One day you might see a long line of artillery going by, one behind another — the great guns and the caissons on which the shells are carried. Then people said, “ Look at that train of artillery going by ! ” Or perhaps it would be company after company of soldiers, with their rifles on their shoulders, and people would say, “ There goes a train of infantry.” Wherever there is a long procession of men following a leader, there is something that is called a train. And that is the sort of a train which the hymn means when it speaks of the train of the Son of God. It is the marching army of the soldiers of Christ who follow Him wherever His spirit leads, to break down the things that are wrong, and to save and help every¬ thing that is good. But there are a great many people — and some of them are grown people, too — who really make the same sort of mistake as the little boy made, though they may not know it. They think that following THE SON OF GOD’S TRAIN 83 the Son of God is a comfortable, easy thing, like riding on a train of cars. There are the people, for instance, who seem to imagine that all they need to do to be Christians is to come to Church on Sunday and sit in a par¬ ticular corner of their own pew, with their cushion behind their back (and be very cross if anyone gets into their especial seat before them), and so while the choir sings, and the minister preaches, and they do not do anything much but just be there, they will somehow get carried a little closer to heaven. And then there are ever so many boys and girls, and older people, who think that somebody else can draw them along to be good without their taking any special trouble about it. I know grown men who think they do not have to come to Church, or even say their prayers, or inconvenience themselves in Christian work, because their wives do all these things, and they suppose that that will suffice for the family. And I expect you have seen a good many boys and girls who are quite willing that all the sweet, unselfish things at home should be done by their mothers. They do not trouble to think of lovely things to do for the sake of others. They do not try very hard to keep their own tempers, and to forget it if they should happen to feel a little badly, and to think instead of how they can make everything glad for everyone else at home. They just take it for granted that their mother will do all the generous deeds that need to be done. She 84 THE SON OF GOD’S TRAIN will pull everybody out of difficulties, and set things on the right track, and all that the rest need to do is to take things comfortably and be glad that she is there. But all this, when we really begin to think about it, is a very mean way to be content to live. No¬ body can be following the Son of God who does that way. For following in His train does not mean to sit down in a comfortable seat and be car¬ ried into pleasures by no effort of our own. No, the Son of God’s train is what I said it was just now. It is the army of Christian soldiers who follow their leader on ways which are brave, and may be hard. The wars between nations here in the world — the wars which are fought with swords and rifles and guns — do not go on all the time, and we hope that after a while the world will grow enough better so that there shall not be any such wars and killing any more. But there is a kind of great and noble war which goes on always, and must go on forever. It is the war of goodness against evil, the war of conscience against the things we know to be wrong, the war of everybody who wants this world to be a fine and Christlike place against all that would fill it with the spirit of the devil. Every time a boy sets himself to speak the truth in the face of mean things which other boys were about to start to do, or to protect some boy who was about to be bullied • every time a girl tries to change the spirit of a group of other THE SON OF GOD’S TRAIN 85 girls from gossip and ugly tale-bearing to tbe way of thinking which is generous and kind ; every time & anybody stands up for anything that is right and may be unpopular, instead of the thing that is wrong which was about to prevail, — then they are Christian soldiers who follow in the train of the Son of God. Before us always He leads the way, while unfurled before our conscience is His great flag on which is the sign of the cross; and if we would follow Him, we must remember that the cross means courage and self-denial, and that it is worth while choosing these in order to be able to follow in the train of the Son of God. 21 BUILDERS OF DREAMS ORE of the most interesting places in all this country, and a place to which every hoy and girl who loves brave deeds ought to go whenever the chance comes, is the island of Jamestown. For there, more than three hundred years ago, landed the men who were to build the first lasting settlement of English-speaking people here in the Rew World. When they came, except for a few Spaniards and Frenchmen far in the south and in the north of this great land which is now America, there were no people here except the Indians. Until the time of Christopher Columbus, nobody had even known that any such vast country as this which we live in existed on this side of the earth. Even Columbus did not understand what it was that he had discovered. He had set out not so much to find a new country as to find a way to circle the earth, since he believed the earth was round, in spite of the fact that most of the people of his time believed that it was flat, and were sure that if a man sailed on far enough he would tumble over the edge. Columbus opened the way to the West, and other men who came after him sailed 86 BUILDERS OF DREAMS 87 up and down tlie shores of this new land and began to get at least a little idea of the wonderful coun¬ try it might prove to be. Then other men conceived another daring thought. Now that the new land had been discov¬ ered, they would send out adventurers to take pos¬ session of it, to build their homes in it, and to make a new nation. It seemed like a day-dream to imagine such a thing, because the seas were wide, and the new land terribly far away, and it was only a wilderness, where the men who came would be obliged to begin to make their homes with noth¬ ing but the empty sea behind them, and the dark forests before. Nevertheless, though it seemed only a dream, men kept dreaming it, and the more they followed the dream, the more the blood stirred in their veins, and the more they were determined to make the dream come true. There is a picture which some of you may have seen of Sir Walter Raleigh when he was a little boy. There he sits with another lad about his own age on a wharf on the shores of Old England, listen¬ ing to a sailor who is telling of voyages overseas. The sailor’s arm is pointing out over the ocean, and you can imagine as you look at his face what marvelous, strange things he is telling; and Walter Raleigh, the boy, is listening, and his eyes are full of dreams. When he grew to be a man, this same Sir Walter was one of the bravest of all the ad¬ venturers to the New World. He sent out a colony 88 BUILDERS OF DREAMS of people before tbe one who went to Jamestown, and they landed at a place called Roanoke Island; and though all that colony disappeared, and nobody knows to this day wbat became of them, Sir Walter was not discouraged. To the end of bis life he kept his faith that English colonists should possess the Re w World; and he was right. Then came the men to Jamestown. Three tiny little ships brought them across the ocean — ships that would look like toys beside the ships that come into our harbours now. They were made of wood, and they had, of course, only sails to carry them on, because that was long before the time when men had imagined such a thing as steamboats. Weeks and weeks and weeks it took them to cross the sea, but at length one day they sailed into the mouth of the wide river to which they gave the name of the James, and at the place which they named J amestown they went ashore. Their minister spread a sail for a cover between the trees, and there he read the service out of the beautiful old Prayer Book of the Church of England, and men knelt down and had the communion for the first time on the shores of the Rew World, just as their fathers had done in the Old World through the long, long years. They built a church ; they set up palisades of stakes to make a fort; they built their houses, too; and so they established this settlement BUILDERS OF DREAMS 89 winch was to he the beginning of the nation which you and I love and belong to to-day. How was it that they did it? It was because men dared believe in their dreams. Like Sir Wal¬ ter Raleigh, they had the courage to think of great, wonderful things, and to believe that those won¬ derful things could be made to come true. Ordi¬ nary people in England would probably have shaken their heads. They would have said, (i All this idea of building a new nation over in that wilderness is a wild imagination. There is no use thinking of such an unheard-of thing.” But the great men were the great dreamers. They said to themselves, “ The biggest things we have thought of are not too big to try to do.” So America was founded by men who had the courage to believe in their dreams. And when I think of that, I like to think of One who was the greatest Dreamer of all time. Once there was a little boy who lived in a town among the hills. Sometimes he would climb to the top of the hills and look out over the wide world that was spread below. He would see people going up and down the roads. He would see legions of soldiers march¬ ing, with eagles carried on standards at their head. They were the legions of Rome, and the sight of them made Him think of that empire of Rome which in His day controlled almost all the earth. But this lad on the hills was dreaming of a King¬ dom that should be mightier than the empire of "90 BUILDERS OF DREAMS Rome, or than any other empire which soldiers could keep. For the lad on the hills was Jesus, and He was thinking of the Kingdom of God. He was believing that in the long, long time to come, the whole world should he won for God, because all the hearts of men everywhere should be con¬ quered by the thought of the love of God, and should want to live as God’s children should. Evil men laughed and shook their heads with scorn in His day, long ago. And evil men, and worldly- minded men in the days since, have not believed it. They have thought that His dream of all the world made good, and true, and merciful was only a wild imagination. They have not believed in mission¬ aries going out to heathen lands, and they have said, “ What is the use of such a foolish effort ? ” They have not even believed that Christianity at home could go outside the Church and outside of Sunday, and make all our every-day life full of the thought of God. But the great men and women have been those, who, like J esus, dreamed the dream of the Kingdom of God. The things that seem to ordinary folk impossible can come true if only enough of us have faith to believe as Jesus did. It was the power of great beliefs that took a wilderness and made it into a nation. And it is the power of great beliefs that will take everything which is wrong in this world of ours and change it, and build it into something better in the name of God. Boys and girls, above all others, can be the BUILDERS OF DREAMS 91 builders of the newer and nobler life. For tbe heart of a boy and girl is full of dreams, and all that we need to do is to make sure that our dreams are high, and brave, and unselfish, like the dreams of Jesus. 22 THE HEKOISM OF HOLDING ON LAST time we began to think about the settlement at Jamestown, and of all tbe men there and elsewhere in the beginnings of America, who dared to follow the great, courage¬ ous dreams which ordinary people would have smiled at. Hut if you will go to Jamestown, or if you will go to the place where the Pilgrims landed, not many years afterwards, on the wintry coast of Massachusetts, you will know that it was not only the first enthusiasm of a bold adventure which was needed. Those adventurers had to have the perse¬ verance and the patience to keep on when it looked as though everything were hopeless, and as though the dream were about to be smothered in disaster. There at J amestown, in the first place, there was not enough food to eat. Of course, when the Col¬ onists landed from the ships, no gardens nor any ploughed fields were there. There was nothing but the little strip of sand on the shore of the river, and the deep forests beyond. Little by little the trees had to be cleared away before there was any space even to plant seed. The food they had 92 THE HEROISM OP HOLDING ON 93 brought in their ships was soon exhausted, and their only hope at first was to try to buy food from the Indians, or to trade with them; and though sometimes they could do this, sometimes they could not. Then, as the hot days came on, and the unhealthy fogs began to rise from the swamps of the river, men fell sick of the fever. They had no good doc¬ tors, nor any healing medicines such as we have to-day. And presently men were dying so fast that it looked as though the whole colony very shortly must disappear. Furthermore, there was the danger from the In¬ dians themselves. Sometimes they seemed friendly, but then again one could never tell. Now and then the man who strayed out beyond the fortifications would be killed and never heard of any more. So from hunger and fever, and the peril of Indians, it looked as though the little colony would be de¬ stroyed. At last there came a winter so terrible that the men who were left grew desperate. It was called u the starving time.” Pood had gone, and the houses were falling into ruins because men were too weak to build them up again, and there seemed nothing left except to abandon the settlement and go home before all should die. And so with two little ships which had come from England in the meantime, — the u Patience” and the u Deliver¬ ance,” — the colonists started down the river, be- 94 THE HEROISM OF HOLDING ON lieving that their hope had come to its end. But before they could reach the sea, they looked, and there was the sail of another ship coming in. Lord He la Warr was come from England with more men to help them, and with food. So, weak as they were, they turned hack to go ashore at Jamestown and claim again the settlement which they had al¬ most lost. Never afterwards was there any such possibility that it would fail. Twelve years later there was a terrible massacre by the Indians, and four hundred people up and down the shores of the James River were killed in one day. But the colonists were not dismayed, and Jamestown was to live and grow until the settlement there had spread to other settlements along the river, and Virginia, the oldest of the colonies, and the mother of the States, had been established beyond any fear of destruction. The men who landed at Plymouth, in Massa¬ chusetts, were of that same courage, too. In the first winter after their ships had brought them to that shore, nearly half of their whole number per¬ ished. They buried their dead on the slopes of the hill, and sowed wheat over their graves so that the Indians should not know how many had died. They set their faces grimly, and determined that, come what might, they would not fail. One of the old historians wrote of them these heroic words which it is good for us always to remember : “ All great and honourable actions are accompanied with THE HEROISM OF HOLDING ON 95 great difficulties, * * * and all of them through the help of God, by fortitude and patience might either be borne or overcome.” So the settlement endured, and America was made possible not only because men dreamed their brave dreams, but bcause they carried them through. Suppose they had grown faint-hearted? Suppose they had said at Jamestown, when Lord De la Warr’s ships came in, “ It is no use to try again.” Suppose they had said in the year of the Indian massacres, “ It is too dangerous. The time has come for all of us to leave this deadly adventure and go home again across the seas.” Suppose men had said at Plymouth, in that first bitter winter, “ This is too hard and inhospitable a land ; we can¬ not endure the difficulties here.” What, then, would have become of America, and what would have become of us? Maybe you and I would be Indians, dancing around a fire, with paint and feathers on ! Or maybe we would not even be liv¬ ing at all. So the thing that we remember when we think of the builders of America is the stout-heartedness which began a great adventure and carried it through. That was what was needed in the build¬ ing of a nation, and that is what is needed in the work of God everywhere. If God gives us some¬ thing to do for Him which turns out to be difficult, if He puts in our hearts a duty which we know is the finest thing we can attempt, if He tells our 96 THE HEROISM OF HOLDING ON consciences to plant some new flag of truth and purity there in our school, or among our friends, and makes us know that we ought to stand by it, then let us remember the heroes who have taught us that the things which are once attempted in God’s name can he carried through by His strength. We can remember those brave words of one of the old heroes which have come down to us through hundreds of years (if you want to find them, they are in the first chapter of the Hook of Deuteron¬ omy), “ Behold! The Lord thy God hath set the land before thee; fear not, neither be discouraged.” 23 SERVICE ELAGS OR Memorial Day there are flags out every¬ where in the city, and in front of many of the churches you will see what are called the “ Service Flags.” They used to be hung there during the war, and at special times like Memorial Day, they are hung there again. They are white flags with red borders, spangled over with blue stars. Every star represents someone who went from that church to serve the country in the days of the war, and every gold star represents one who laid down his life. When we remember the flags of Memorial Day, it is well to realize the kind of lives that deserve to he remembered. Suppose in war times some¬ body had said, “ I am not going to risk my life for somebody else. I am not going to go off into any army and serve the country. I am going to stay home and make money. I will buy a great many barrels of flour, because in war time, when the men have gone from the farms, flour will be scarce ; and the people in the armies who have to have it will pay any price I choose to ask; and when I sell the barrels I bought, I shall grow very rich.” Suppose someone did that, and did grow very rich. He 97 98 SERVICE FLAGS might have a big bank account, and might be known among the people who handle money, but he cer¬ tainly would not get a star on any service flag, and he would not be remembered when people came to consider the ones whom they wanted to honour. Very often we think the way to get ourselves recognized is to do something big for ourselves. Boys and girls imagine that, because they see so many men and women who think so too. They think that if they can make more money than any¬ one else, or build the finest houses, or have the best clothes, they will be honoured, and everyone else will wish to be like them. It may seem that way for a little while, but when people really begin to think, they know that the persons they want to honour are not the ones who snatch and grab for themselves, but those who try to help others and try to make their country better because they have given to it the best they had. There is a story of a little boy who, in the time during the war, when the service flags were seen everywhere, was allowed one night to sit up later than he had ever sat up before, so that for the first time he saw the sky at night all full of stars. He looked up at it in wonder, and clapped his hands. He said, u Look at God’s service flag ! 99 He thought that the stars in the heavens were the stars on the service flag of God. And God does have His service flag. There are more stars on it than there are stars in the skies, for the Book of Daniel tells SERVICE FLAGS 99 us that “ they who turn many to righteousness shall shine as the stars, forever and ever.” Everyone who is good, and helps others to he good, is a star on the service flag of God, and the one great star of all is the star of the life of Jesus Himself. For He was the one who served others most. And He has told us that he who would he the ehiefest must be the greatest servant of all. 24 “ TAKE A LITTLE HONEY ” ONE of the sweetest stories in the Old Testament is the one about Joseph and the love of his father for him. Joseph, you remember, was sold into Egypt by some of his brothers who were jealous of him, and for a long time he disappeared entirely, and his father thought he was dead. But, meantime, while his father was mourning for him, thinking that he should never see him again, Joseph, in wonderful ways, had risen to power in Egypt, and had become the great¬ est man in all the land, next only to the King himself. Then there came a terrible famine in the land where Jacob and his family were living. For a long time there was no rain, and everything dried up, and nothing grew, and all the people began to be starved for food. The news came that down in Egypt there was grain, and Jacob hoped that if he should send his sons down there, perhaps he could buy some for their need. So he sent them down, and the man who received them, and who had in his hands the power to give food or to keep it back, was their own brother J oseph, though they did not 100 “ TAKE A LITTLE HONEY ” 101 know him. Joseph sent back word that if they ever wanted to come again and buy food they must bring tbeir youngest brother with them — bis own youngest brother, Benjamin, whom be loved and desired to see. So the time did come when they bad to have food again, and the old father, Jacob, was wondering what be might do to please the great man in Egypt (for neither be did not know it was Joseph) so that be might be merciful, and be good to Benjamin, and send them all some food. He told bis sons to take presents with them, and among the presents was a special one which I am going to tell you about for our sermon to-day. He said, “ Take a little honey.” Now Jacob was feeling very solemn and very sad. I suppose be would not have wanted to eat sweet things himself at all at that particular mo¬ ment. He was in no mood to enjoy a feast. Everything looked very dismal to him. The son he loved had gone away, he thought, forever; the rest of his sons were almost starving. Another of his sons was a prisoner down in Egypt (for I for¬ got to say that when the brothers went down into Egypt the first time they were compelled to leave behind their brother Simeon as a pledge that what they were saying was true). If there had been anything that would have expressed his feelings, it would not have been honey, but vinegar, or sour, raw grapes. If he had sent a present according to his feelings, that is the kind he would have sent. 102 “ TAKE A LITTLE HONEY ” But Jacob bad better sense than to do anything of the kind. He would send to the great man in Egypt a present which he thought would please him and put him into a temper that would make him feel kindly disposed. So he sent spices and nuts and almonds, and honey, too. The honey was not only sweet to the taste, but it suggested all pleasant things — the wide out-of-doors, and sunny fields, and bees, and flowers. Why do you suppose it is that so many of us are not as sensible as Jacob was? Sometimes we set out to get things for ourselves, and try to persuade other people to do what we want them to do, but we do not take a little honey with us. We take instead vinegar and thistles, and words that are sour as green persimmons. Sometimes you will see a boy who thinks that the way to get on among other boys is to talk loud, and be rough like a bully. That may seem to work for a little while, if he is bigger than the other boys, but it certainly will not last long, for everybody will begin to dislike him, and wait for the day when they can get even for ail the meanness he has done to them. Some¬ times you will see a girl at home who thinks that the way to get what she wants from her mother is to whine and tease. And then, on the other hand, you will see the boys and girls who are sensible like Jacob. They know that it is much better to go about with sweet things than with sour things. The happy heart and the smiling face, and kind “ TAKE A LITTLE HONEY ” 108 thoughts, and gentle words, are always the way to make other hearts expand towards us and give us of their best. And so those words from the Old Testament are a good text for us. In all that we think, and all that we do, let us “ take a little honey.” 25 SETTLING THE MUDDY WATERS IN a city I know, the water which comes out of the faucets used to he the worst looking water you ever saw. It was so full of mud that it was reddish-brown and thick, and you might have thought it soup instead of water. The reason was that the water came through the reservoir straight from the river, and the river flowed through a country where there were many fields of red clay, so that whenever it rained the clay was washed into the streams, and the streams poured it into the river, and the river was dark with mud. When you drew a glass full of the water and drank it, there would be a little layer of mud all over the glass, and if you drew a basin full to wash your hands in, you could not see the bottom of the basin. Things went on that way for years and years, and at last people began to get tired of the muddy water. They said, “ We must do something about it. We must find some way of getting the mud out of the water, so that it will he clean and clear.” So at last they had the city build a thing like a little lake, with the sides and bottom made of 104 con- SETTLING THE MUDDY WATERS 105 crete, which they called a settling basin. It would he drawn full of water, just as the water came out of the river, all muddy and brown. And then the water would be kept there for a time, and some¬ thing sprinkled into it which made the particles of mud settle down toward the bottom, while the water became clearer and clearer, until at last it was al¬ most as clear as the water which comes out of a spring. Then the clear water would he drawn out from the top, and now and then the mud which settled to the bottom of the lake would be cleaned away. It was a tremendous improvement. Every¬ body now had clean water to wash their hands in, and clean looking water to drink, instead of the ugly, muddy stuff of the times before. It was all because of the settling basin and the way it helped the water to purify itself. When I think of that settling basin, and how it cleared the water, I begin to think how helpful it would he if we had something like the settling basin for other things. There are a great many people who are like the reservoirs in the city jn the days long ago. They have things poured into them which are ugly and muddy, and they pour them out again just as they came into them. Here is a boy who may hear all sorts of vile talk among the other hoys at school, and to-morrow he may pass it on to another boy, just as it came to him. Or a little boy hears a big boy curse, and he begins to think it is smart to learn profane, coarse words 106 SETTLING THE MUDDY WATERS himself. What he hears the big boys say, he says too. The stream of ugly talk which has flowed into his ears comes out again from his lips. Or, here is a girl who has heard some mean gossip about another girl whom perhaps she does not like very well, and about whom she is willing to think evil. She does not stop to find out whether the gossip is true or not, or whether it is kind to tell it to others, but she passes it on just as it came to her. Presently the boys and girls like these grow up into men and women who act in the same wav. That, perhaps, is the reason why we have among grown people who ought to know better, so many who speak profane and ugly language, and are al¬ ways telling the ugly, unkind stories which nobody ought to like to spread. How much better it would be if all who are tempted to pass on the ugly things which they have heard would begin to get disgusted with that — just as the city got disgusted with its muddy water. Suppose they should say, “ We must have in our thought a sort of settling basin. We must not sim¬ ply pass along all the unclean things that come to us. We must stop and think and consider, and ask whether what we have heard said is true, and whether it is a pleasant, kindly thing to pass along. We must try to sift out of it all the mud and dirt, so that whatever goes from us to others will be clean and sweet.” All of us have seen people of that sort. No matter how much ugliness or un- SETTLING THE MUDDY WATERS 107 kindness they may have to hear, they do not repeat it. Everything that comes to their knowledge is purified, like the water in the settling basin. We can he like them if we try, and everybody will be glad because of what we shall have done. 26 CRANKS, AND SELF-STARTERS EVERYBODY can see what this is that I have in my hand — -this awkward, crooked, iron thing. It is a crank which belongs to an automobile. It is the thing you have to turn to crank the engine with when the engine will not start in any other way. The other day I was trying to crank an auto¬ mobile, and all of a sudden there was an ugly flare- back of the engine, and this crank flew through the air, and caught the hack of my hand and knocked the skin off and made it bleed, and only by good luck did not break the bones. Cranking an engine which does like that is not a pleasant thing, and may be dangerous. Usually, you know, an automobile ought not to have to be cranked at all. It is supposed to have a self-starter. That is a contrivance which works by electricity, and all you have to do is to push a button on the floor of the car with your foot, and the electric starter flashes into action, and turns the engine for you, and the automobile is ready to run. But sometimes the self-starter gets out of order,' and then the only way you can start the engine is with a crank. 108 CRANKS, AND SELF-STARTERS 109 Now there are a great many people in this world who are like the automobile when the self-starter is out of order. They will not begin anything for themselves. They are indifferent and lazy. Un¬ less somebody else comes along to make them go, and to crank them up by main force, they might just stay where they are and be just what they are forever. I know some boys and girls who have lost their self-starter about getting up in the morning. Left to themselves they would stay and sleep until no¬ body knows when. It seems they have not even energy enough to wake up and begin to live. Some¬ body must go and call them, and probably after a while go back and call them again. And maybe even then they are late, or get up with a whine as though someone had done them an injury. And then there are people in church, and in every other good company, who will never start anything fine themselves. They always wait for somebody else to suggest the happy, active thing to do. They would rather do nothing and let everything stay as it is. They do not want to bother to take any trouble with new ways in the Sunday School, or new ideas to put life and glad¬ ness in the Church. Sometimes if someone else tries to start up the engine of their help they will flash out with a backfire of ugly temper, like the backfiring of an automobile, which hurts the one who tried to help them. People who have to be 110 CRANKS, AND SELF-STARTERS cranked up like this just are cranks and nothing more. But the fine thing is that none of us have to be cranky people if we do not want to. All we need to do is to keep our own self-starter in order. There is a beautiful word, “ enthusiasm,” which describes something that every one of us ought to have. And do you know what enthusiasm means? It came into our language long, long ago from the Greek, and it is made up out of two Greek words, one of which means “ God,” and the other of which means “ in.” The enthusiastic person is the per¬ son who has God in him. And if we do let the thought of God, and of all His fine, glad purpose for us, fill our minds and hearts, then in very gen¬ uineness we are “ enthusiastic.” Boys and girls who are enthusiastic in this real sense have the best of ail self-starters in their minds and hearts. They will be quick to go ahead in every happy, whole¬ some thing. / 27 HOUSES, AND MULES, AND PEOPLE THE Bible is a wonderful book. It tells us of things that we ought to do, and of things that we ought not to do, and of what we ought to be, and of what we ought not to be. To-day I am going to tell you about some¬ thing which an old, old writer of long ago has writ¬ ten down for us in the Book of Proverbs. It is something which out of his experience he said that people ought not to be. And this is what it is : “ Be ye not as the horse or as the mule.” I expect that the somebody who wrote that old proverb so long ago had had a bad time with a mule. He was speaking out of his recollection of something which had happened straight to him. Perhaps his mule had kicked him, or had balked in the road some day when he was driving off to see his sweetheart. He never liked mules from that day on, and he gave them a bad name which lasts clear down to our time. Perhaps it would be a good thing for boys and girls to-day to take his advice. Be ye not like a mule. The first way in which we are tempted to be like a mule is to be bad-tempered, and kick out ill 112 HORSES, AND MULES, AND PEOPLE at someone, — even, it may be, at some one who is trying to help ns. Haven’t yon seen boys and girls sometimes wbo are just like a fractious mule? Perhaps they are being dressed in the morning, or are putting on their best clothes to go to a party. They think something is too tight, or the collar hurts them around the neck, and though their mother may be helping them to get ready for something which they are the ones who will enjoy, they slash out with some bad-tempered word, and frown and cry like a mule who kicks when he is being har¬ nessed. And then there are the boys and girls who balk. They may be starting out on something that ought to be a happy adventure, but right in the middle of it they conclude they will not go any further. They sulk and do not want to play. They stick out their lips and say, “ I won’t ! ” Then there is a third thing about the mule, and the horse, too, in which boys and girls ought to sur¬ pass them. You cannot send a horse or a mule out alone to do what you want to have done. You hitch him up to a wagon filled with groceries, for example, but you cannot give him a list of all the houses where you want the groceries delivered, and tell him just to go around to every one. You must send a man along to show him the way and to drive him from place to place. Sometimes people are like that. They will go if somebody else holds the reins, and touches them HORSES, AND MULES, AND PEOPLE 113 with the whip now and then. They will be good if somebody else keeps them from doing wrong. They will keep in the straight road if somebody holds the tight rein on them so that they cannot turn the cor¬ ners into evil. But though that may be enough for a horse and a mule, surely it is not enough for boys and girls whom God has made. We must think so much about His ways for us, and grow to love them so much, that we will go in the right paths of our own accord. We must be intelligent and depend¬ able Christians who will not need anyone else to watch us, but can be trusted all* alone. 28 HITTING THE MARK IN many places a while ago there was put up a beautiful, big poster as a part of an invita¬ tion to men to come and join the navy. It is a picture in colours of a great battleship, steaming through the ocean, with the white foam rushing past its bows. It is steaming straight into battle, with black smoke pouring from its funnels, and the great guns spouting fire on every side. And un¬ derneath the poster are these words : “Hit the Mark ! ” lhat is a good motto for the navy, but it is also a good motto for all of us who may never expect to be in the navy at all. There are ways in which every one of us — boys and girls and men and women must hit the mark. W e have got some¬ thing to shoot at, and we want to shoot with good effect. The battleship steaming into action had its par¬ ticular mark that it must hit. It was the battle¬ ship of the enemy which it must destroy, or else it would be destroyed itself. We also have our enemies. They are not made of iron and steel, but 114 HITTING THE MARK 115 they are made of even tougher stuff. Our enemies are the sins which we must overcome. Now if we would fight our sins and destroy them, the first thing that we must know is just what it is that we are aiming at. We cannot hit the mark until we know what mark we want to hit. So the first thing for each one of us to ask himself is this: What is the special sin that I need to be on the look¬ out for, and that I must blow to pieces before it comes near and ruins me? It may be some great, plain sin like a violent bad temper. It may be some little sneaking submarine sin like a lie, or the vile thought which tries to creep into the mind and make it all unclean. The sins which people must look out for are different for different people, and what each one of us wants to be sure of is that we know which are our particular ones. Then the guns of our good intentions will not be shooting wild. In the second place, if the battleship is going to hit the mark, it must keep its guns clean, and in good condition. Nobody ever heard of a battleship that would allow the guns to fill with rain and salt spray and get all rusty inside, nor have dirt sift into those fine, steel muzzles and clog up the ma¬ chinery of the guns. Constantly the guns are gone over and kept free from everything that might hurt their perfect shooting. And in just that same way you and I, if we are to hit the mark of our sins, must keep the guns of conscience clean. We can- 116 HITTING THE MARK not let onr conscience grow rusty from neglect. We cannot let it fill up with the dust of careless and common thoughts. If we find that something is making a little speck of dirt upon our conscience, we must see that it is quickly taken off, for a very little speck may spoil the aim. In the third place, the battleship, in order to he sure that it will hit its mark, must keep in practice. Day by day the gun crews are trained in long, care¬ ful drills. Every once in a while the battleship will go off into the big, wide ocean, and for days it will practice shooting at targets. No matter how skillful a gunner may be, he cannot keep his skill unless he keeps in practice. So you and I, if we would be skillful in destroy¬ ing the sins which come and threaten us, must never stop learning how to handle the guns of con¬ science right. We may not destroy the first time some sin which we are aiming at, but every time we truly and honestly try to beat it away we shall come a little closer to destroying it. And then some day we may strike that sin fair and square, and it will go to pieces like a ship hit by a shell, and will sink out of sight and threaten us no more. So, to sum it up, remember again the three things which we learn from the battleship. Know what we are shooting at. Keep the guns of conscience clean. Keep in practice. And then, at the end, we shall HIT THE MARK. 29 PLAYING A MAN’S GAME HERE and there on the streets of the cities, yon may see a big poster printed in brown and green and red. At the top, it has a picture of the globe with the continents on it, such as you see in the geographies, and over the globe an eagle, and underneath it an anchor. Then at the bottom of the poster are these words: “ Wherever this device is worn. Ashore or afloat, United States Marines, PLAY A MAN’S GAME.” The marines are the ones who are like soldiers, and like sailors, too. They carry rifles, and they drill, and they fight in battles on the land like sol¬ diers, and yet they go in companies on the big bat¬ tleships of the Navy wherever the battleships sail. If anything happens, they are usually the first of the fighting forces to go ashore. They are soldiers- on-board-ships, ready for service in every part of the earth. Wherever you see a marine, you will see that he wears the marks which were printed on the poster. He will have them on the front of his cap, or on the collar of his coat, like a tiny little 117 118 PLAYING A MAN’S GAME ornament in silver or bronze. The globe represents the whole, round world — to any part of which the marine may be going. And the eagle, perhaps, stands for the spirit of service to America which may carry the marine everywhere, and the anchor represents the ocean and the ships. “ Wherever this device is worn,” says the poster, “ ashore or afloat, United States Marines play a man’s game.” That is a fine, proud, thing to be able to say. The marines have a high record and they expect everybody who comes into the marines to live up to it. Over in the Great War in Prance, at a time when the Germans had almost broken through to Paris, and it looked as though they were about to bring the war to an end, it was the marines who, with other troops from American divisions, held the roads and braced the fighting lines, and turned the Germans back. In a place called Belleau Wood, a dangerous thick tangle of trees and un¬ dergrowth, full of barbed wire and German ma¬ chine guns, the marines won a gallant victory. People think of Belleau Wood to this day, when they remember the heroic achievements in the war. There, and at every place the marines may go, their motto is that they “ play a man’s game.” There are other sorts of games which people can play, and sometimes do play. There is the game of the coward and the slacker. The time comes when the country is in danger, and some go out to serve her, and some stay at home and make ex- PLAYING A MAN’S GAME 119 cuses to get out of service because they are afraid, or because they think it will be a good chance to make money, while others are doing the hard thing. These can never say, as in the words of the poster, that they played a real “ man’s game.” Then, there is what the boys might call a squealer’s game. Some may begin to play this who are not slackers or cowards. They start to do the hard thing, but they do not keep their courage up. They complain over every little inconvenience. They sulk and grouch. They may play the game in a half-hearted sort of fashion, but they do not play it courageously and cheerfully, and in the spirit to help every one play it better. There is a fine story which a poet has written into a poem. He called it “ Opportunity.” A battle was raging and a soldier slunk along the edge of it. He had a sword in his hand, but he complained to himself because it was not a better one. “ If only I had a sword like the King’s son’s sword,” he said, u I could fight well ; but this mean thing is not worth fighting with.” So he broke it in two, and threw it down, and stole away. Then, presently, the King’s son came, driven back by the enemy- — wounded and sorely beset, and with his own sword struck from his hand by a blow. Then, of a sudden, he saw the broken sword the soldier had flung away, and he ran and snatched it up, and with that broken half of a coward’s sword, he went back into the battle and drove his enemies 120 PLAYING A MAN’S GAME before him, and won his victory. That was the difference between the squealer and the one who could “ play a man’s game.” To play a man’s game is a big, fine thing, and it means a lot. It means to be as swift as an eagle to see the fine service which somebody ought to do, and to go and do it. It means to have a courage and daring as wide as the whole round world. It means to be dependable everywhere, by land or sea, in sun or storm. I told you what the device is that the marines wear, and it is a beautiful one. But if you stop to remember, we, everyone of us, wear a device, which is a simpler one, but more wonderful still. We cannot see it with our eyes, but it is here, on our foreheads. It is the cross which was put there with the water when we were baptized. It is the device of the soldiers of Jesus. And do you not think the soldiers of Jesus, boys and girls, and men and women, and all, ought to be able to speak as proudly for themselves as the marines can speak? We must not be cowards and slackers in the things that the Christian ought to fight for every day. We must be quick to put down meanness, and false¬ hood, and cruelty. We must not be squealers who complain when the things which we are asked to do for others, and which a good soldier of J esus would be quick and glad to do, are inconvenient things. We must make it true of us, that everywhere and always, we “ play a man’s game.” 30 PILLARS OF THE TEMPLE SOMETIMES you go into a great church, and among the things that you notice first will be the pillars. Perhaps some day you may take a trip across the seas and go into the vast cathedrals in the countries of the old world. Or you will go into the newer cathedrals which are building here in our own land, like the one on Momingside Heights, in the city of Hew York. There they stand, great, glorious columns of stone, holding up the vaulted roof and the mighty arches which soar so high above your head. Or you may go into some sweet old church which belongs in the very town you know best, with the high white columns which hold up its porch, or lofty pillars that stand behind the pulpit and support the roof of the chancel to which you look up as you sit in the pews. There is a sermon in the pillars. In the Book of Revelation it is said, “ Him that overcometh will I make a pillar in the temple of my God.” That was the promise of one of the angels of God, and it means that whoever is faithful, and constant, and 121 122 PILLARS OF THE TEMPLE true, will be like one of tbe beautiful pillars chat bold up tbe temple of God. Wbat are tbe things we must remember about tbe pillars if we would be like them ? First of all, tbe pillar must be straight. If tbe masons who lay tbe stones of the pillars in tbe vast cathedrals cut them carelessly, or set them so that they are out of plumb, or if tbe builders make pil¬ lars of wood that is warped, then tbe roof which they are supposed to bold up is not secure. A crooked pillar is never safe. Some day tbe weight upon it may twist and bend it more, and tbe temple of God, which it was meant to bold up, may come crashing down in ruin. In a church I know of, not long ago, an architect was asked to examine it all to make sure that everything was safe. In bis report came back tbe message that a certain pillar which be pointed out was warped. “ It is better to take it out,” be said, “ and put a new one there. It is possible that nothing might happen, but then it is never safe to trust to a pillar that is not straight.” And what do you suppose God’s angels who build the temple of His presence in the midst of life must say about the boy or girl who is not straight ? What of the one who will not tell the truth for fear of punishment? What of the one who will do something behind another’s back that he would not do if he thought anyone were looking? What of the one who does not play straight in a game? PILLARS OF THE TEMPLE 123 Such as these cannot keep their places in the temple of God. The holy influences are not helped by them. The true, the honest, the dependable — these are the boys and girls who will be the pillars in the temple of God. Then, in the second place, the pillar must be sound all through. Suppose for the stone columns which hold up the glorious arches of the cathedral, the builders had put only a shell of stone and filled the center with crumbling sand and mortar and rubble of broken rock. From without, the pillars might look sound enough. So far as you might see, they appear all safe and strong. But if you knew how hollow and cheap they really were, you would be afraid. You would know that they were neither safe nor worthy of anything built for the glory of God. So with us also it is not merely the outside that counts. There are some boys and girls who seem respectable enough. They have good manners and a pleasant, plausible way about them. But when you look deeper you find that their hearts are not sound. They are filled with common, cheap de¬ sires. There is no real principle which runs through and through them. If any big pressure came upon them you could not be sure that they would stand firmly up. To be built into the temple of God we must be solid through and through. We must try to make everything inside of us as true and real as we should want to seem. 124 PILLARS OF THE TEMPLE Then, in the third place, after a pillar has been made straight and sound, to be 'worthy of God’s temple it ought also to be beautiful. The appear¬ ance of it is not the only thing that counts, but that does count, too. In glorious churches, such as the old cathedrals, the pillars may be carved into the most loving and wonderful beauty. Out of the stone the artist may chisel the most delicate things — flowers and leaves and exquisite patterns, until the pillar is a thing upon which to feast one’s eyes. And that also is true of the pillars of souls which are to hold up the temple of God. “ 0 wor¬ ship the Lord in the beauty of holiness ! ”, says one of the psalms. There are a great many people who are righteous, but they are not beautiful. They are awkward and clumsy in their would-be good¬ ness. They say such stupid things, and they carry out their conscientious ideas in such dull and grumpy spirit that nobody has pleasure in their sort of goodness. They are like pillars which are honest enough in the way they are built to hold up the roof, but are so jagged and rough that everyone thinks what a pity it is that anything so unat¬ tractive had to be in the temple. Just as the ut¬ most beauty which the patience of the carver can create has its place on the pillars of the cathedrals, so the utmost beauty that our own best spirit can give to our lives and our behaviour is needed in the temple of God. We must try to make our good- PILLARS OP THE TEMPLE 125 I ness so glad and so gracious, so bright-tempered and so winsome, that others will want to come into the temple of the presence of God because it is so beau¬ tiful to be there. 31 “ EIGHT SIDE1 UP WITH CAEE ” ONE morning, just as I was going into church to begin the service, and presently to preach the children’s sermon, one of the men who is an officer in the Sunday School came in to speak to me, and I said, u Hello, how are you this morning, and how is everybody at your house ? ” He said, “ Well, they have all had colds, and have been sick, hut I am all right. I have been keeping myself right side up with care.” And all of a sudden I thought to myself, that is a good text for a children’s sermon. You know what u Eight Side Up With Care ” means. If you go into a freight office where big boxes are being shipped on the railroad you may see a great many of them marked with those words — “ Eight Side Up With Care.” It means that you must not throw them about, nor turn them upside down. Perhaps they may he filled with very delicate things, like china, for example; and the man who has packed the box has put the heavier pieces at the bottom, and the lighter and more fragile pieces at the top. And if the 126 u RIGHT SIDE UP WITH CARE ” 127 box were turned wrong side up, the heavier pieces would come crushing down on the delicate ones and mash them by the time the box had got to its jour¬ ney’s end. And so he paints on the top of the case, u Right Side Up With Care/’ so that every¬ body who handles the box will be sure not to get it upside down. And in that same way we need to keep ourselves cc Right Side Up With Care.” We need to do it/ first of all, in our health. If a boy and girl for¬ get to take care of themselves, and run out into the rain and mud with no rubbers on, and get their feet wet, or stand in a cold draught when they have been playing hard and are very overheated, then presently they will not be “ Right Side Up ” at all. They will be down in bed somewhere, groaning mightily because they feel so sick. Little wiggly bugs of grippe, or some other sickness, will be dancing through their blood. The fever will be beating in their heads like hot hammers. The wrong things entirely will have got uppermost, and all their usual helpful and cheerful selves will be very down and very doleful. Then, as in our bodies, we must keep the healthy side up, so we must do the same with our spirits. Sometimes people forget and let evil get the upper hand. Some temptation comes along, and that temptation gets a grip upon them and beats them down. A bad habit of impurity, or ugly temper, or dishonesty, lays hold of them and becomes the 128 “ RIGHT SIDE UP WITH CARE ” master. Then what we want to remember is the good, wholesome message of those words — “ Right Side Up With Care.” Which is the right side of us? It is the kind side, the brave side, the side which thinks the thoughts and does the deeds of Jesus. It takes a fight sometimes to keep the right side up. St. Paul said it was just like a man who must be continually wrestling, and he said that he himself had to do that. “ I keep my body under, and bring it into subjection.” He meant that he put all selfish appe¬ tites, and laziness, and cowardice, down at the bot¬ tom, and unselfishness and service for others on top. He kept himself, as we must do, “ Right Side Up With Care ” — the good side, the God side, up, and everything else underneath. 32 SHIPS OF HOPE ONE day a little while ago when I was riding in a trolley car in a city, I looked np — and there I saw a sermon. It was just above the windows, in the long, bright-coloured row of advertising signs. Perhaps it was not meant to be a sermon, hut nevertheless there the sermon was. On the corner of this card, in the midst of the other advertising cards, there was a picture so pretty that I wish I could have it printed in this book, with its colours and all, — a picture of a ship ploughing its way through the ocean, and ahead of it the great white clouds piled up by the wind like castles in the blue sky. It was not such a ship as we see nowadays, but the sort such as the Span¬ iards and the English sailed in long ago when America was first discovered and the old explorers used to go out into seas where no one had ever sailed before. It was not gray and plain like the ocean liners are; but it had a great high stern, all carved in wood, with a shield upon it, and masts with widespread sails of crimson and gold. It was very good to look at, and it made you think of the wonderful days when Christopher Columbus, and 129 130 SHIPS OF HOPE Cabot, and Sir Walter Ealeigh and Sir Francis Drake and the other great sailors and sea captains put to sea in vessels just like that to find the gold of the Indies, and islands with palms and brilliant- coloured birds, and all the strange, new treasures which they were sure must be in the countries which were waiting for some bold ship to find. “ The Ship of Your Hopes” — these were the first words which were printed on the card beside the picture. “ Ships of Hope ” were the ships which men used to sail in long ago, when they launched out, so bold and eager, to see what the distant seas might hold. And every ship that ever sails is a ship of hope. The reason it sails at all is because some person — or hundreds and hundreds of persons — want something which they cannot get except through the sailing of the ship and they hope the ship will gain it for them. They want to go to the harbour far off, perhaps on the other side of the world to which the ship is pointed. They want to get something which the ship will bring back from that other land. Or they want to see someone they love to whom the ship will carry them. And so for many and many a reason every ship that sails has a great company of people who are thinking of all the things they want the ship to do, and they will be praying that it may have a safe voyage all the way ; for it is the Ship of their Hopes. And what a sad thing it is when the Ships of Hope never come back! In the olden days, that SHIPS OF HOPE 131 would be true oftener than it is true now. Out from the harbour mouth the ship would go, with the great sails spread, and the pennons snapping in the ocean breeze, and the white foam curling at her bow — and on the shore the people cheering. And then perhaps it would never be heard of any more. Some black pirate craft might capture it and carry it off among the tangled islands. Or it would go down in the deep, black water, driven and broken before a storm. Or it would run upon a hidden rock and lie there helpless, with sails and pennons drooping, while the breakers ground it to pieces day by day. In vain the people in the harbour would watch for its coming home, for never again would it return. But there are more Ships of Hope than sail upon the ocean. The heart of every boy and girl, and of every man and woman, has its Ships of Hope. Each hope itself is like a ship that sails out upon its way, and leaves us waiting and watching to see what it may bring back. Here is someone whose hope is to be successful in business and be pros¬ perous. It is a good hope, if it is not a selfish one. A lad starts out to make his own living and he tries to make money, and to save it, so that he will not be dependent upon someone else. A man works hard and tries to gain more than he spends, so that if anything should happen to him, there would be enough saved up for his wife and children to live upon. Every business venture he makes is 132 SHIPS OF HOPE like a ship of hope, which he launches in the trust that it will come back to him freighted with reward. This is the sort of ship of hope that was meant by the advertising card I saw, for it was the adver¬ tisement of a hank. “ The Ship of Your Hopes — who will bring it to harbour when your sailing days are over ? 99 it said, — and the idea was that if you did not want the ship of your hopes to make money and save money to be lost and go to wreck, you had better come and let the bank teach you the thrifty ways that would make your ship come safely home. Hut that is still not the best sermon which we can get from the picture of the ship. It may be good to want to make money; it is better to want to make the best of ourselves. I want to be brave, and good, and useful, and strong — that is the noblest of all ships of hope for a boy or girl to build. I want my life to go sailing out like the beautiful ship which shall bring back to those who watch for it all manner of fine and helpful things, — that is the best of desires for us to cherish. But there are dangers in the way of the ship of hope. There are the pirates of the secret sins. There are the hidden rocks of mistakes that wreck us just when we are most confident. There are times when we ourselves grow so confused about the way to be good, and so discouraged when we have tried to do good and failed, that we wonder whether we can ever bring our ship of hope to port. And then SHIPS OF HOPE 133 some far day, when we grow old and the shadows gather, and we wonder how we can guide the ship through the narrow ways that men call death, we know we need a Captain who is wiser than we are. “ The Ship of Your Hopes, who will bring it to harbour when your sailing days are over ? ” There is only one Captain wise enough — only one whom boys and girls, and men and women, can trust to hold the rudder of their hearts. His name is Jesus! “ Jesus, Saviour, pilot me,” we sing in the old hymn ; and it is with Jesus as our Pilot and our Captain that we can send bravely out the ships of all high hopes, and know that through Him they will come home. 33 THE GOOD SPIRITS HE other da y I read a beautiful story about the Indians who used to live in this great country of ours, and roam across its plains, and bunt in its woods, long before the white man came. It is said that on summer nights, when the corn was ripening, just before dawn the In¬ dians would go into the corn fields, and lifting their hands straight up toward the sky, they would chant this prayer “ Chitani-wa-ganit, Good Spirit of Strength, Ilau-wa-ganit, Good Spirit of Courage, Wula-wa-ganit, Good Spirit of Truth, Enter Thou into our corn. That we who eat thereof May become strong and brave and true.” Then the old, old story says that when the sun was rising, and the morning mists were lifting from the corn fields, the three Good Spirits would come, and Chitani-wa-ganit, the Good Spirit of Strength, would raise his hand in the Indian sign of friendly blessing, so that the Indians might know that their prayer was heard and answered. Reading of them, I began to think of Jesus. Once, you remember, on the night of the day of His resurrection, two of His disciples were going 134 THE GOOD SPIRITS 135 along a road, and One whom they thought in the shadows to he a stranger, came and joined them, and walked with them to the house to which they went in the little village of Emmaus. There He sat down with them at table, and took the bread, and brake it, and in the tones of His voice, as He gave thanks, and in the familiar gesture of His hands, as He brake the bread, they knew that it was Jesus. Then another day, after the time when He was crucified, and the disciples had gone away from Jerusalem, they were fishing one morning, in the old, familiar way, on the Lake of Galilee, and lo ! as they looked up through the morning light, there was Jesus standing on the shore. He called them to come near, and on the beach they made a fire, and cooked their breakfast, and J esus sat there with them at that morning meal. I am sure that both those times when the dis¬ ciples ate their bread with Jesus by them, there came not only into their bodies the strength of the bread, but into their spirits His strength to be strong and brave and true. Long ago the Indians prayed as best they knew, for the Heavenly Father of us all had put into their hearts the instinct to make them know that He would help all who called upon Him, even though their knowledge was only like that of little children. And we to-day, who know more than the Indians knew, understand that in Jesus the answer to all our prayers is found. 136 THE GOOD SPIRITS He will come as the Good Spirit of Strength, and Courage, and Truth. He will come to bless the food for our bodies, and to he the food for our souls. So it would be well for Christian boys and girls to remember the beautiful prayer of the Indians, and to make a Christian prayer that shall be even greater than theirs. Here is a grace that we might learn to say whenever we sit down at table to the food which God has given us : “ O Lord Jesus, Good Spirit of Truth, and Courage, and Strength, bless Thou this food to our bodies, and to our souls, that we may be true, and brave, and strong for Thee.” 34 RIPENING THE GRAPES NEARLY ©very boy and girl who reads this book has seen a grapevine growing. You know how the vines and the tendrils and the big green leaves clamber over the fence or the arbor by which they are planted; and as the weeks of summer go by, you can go and look under the leaves, and there are the grapes. At first they are clusters of tiny things hardly bigger than little beads; then, gradually, the grapes grow larger till they are almost as big as they will ever be, but they are still green and hard until after the long hot suns of August have begun to ripen them. Once out in the country at a place where there were many grapes, at a time in duly when the grape clusters had not begun to soften, I saw a lady start out along her vines with a lot of paper bags. And what do you suppose she did with them ? She put a bag over every bunch of grapes, and tied the mouth of the bag with a string tight around the stem, so that the bunch of grapes was out of sight entirely — like children popped into bed in the day time with the covers right over their ears ! Then I began to think what a wailing and com¬ plaining the grapes might be making if only we 137 138 RIPENING THE GRAPES could hear what they said. Mustn’t they be indig¬ nant that anybody should tie them up in bags like that ! Think of all the nice warm sun and air that they couldn’t taste any more. Think of all the green grass and the trees that they couldn’t see — and the birds, and the bees, and all the interesting things that liked to twitter and hover in the vines. They couldn’t play with them any more, and with these bags over their heads they would surely never ripen, and they would be hard and green all their lives, and never beautiful and sweet and purple as grapes ought to he. It was just plain cruelty they thought, and they were sure their lot was very hard. But what was the lady really meaning when she tied the hags over their heads? Did she have a grudge against the grapes? Not at all. She was doing the wisest and helpfulest thing for them that anyone could do, even though the little grapes, being very young yet, did not know it. Eor if you leave grapes out in the open air, when they begin to soften just a little toward getting ripe, the birds will commence to come down in swarms and feed upon them; and the bees will rob them of their juice to make their honey, and all sorts of flies and crawling things will sting them, so that many of the grapes will never ripen into the fine purple of the autumn at all, but will he picked to pieces and spoiled long before the gathering time. The hags protect them from the birds and bees and flies, RIPENING THE GRAPES 139 and the bags do not keep out the good, strong heat of the summer sun. Instead, the grapes ripen just as surely inside the bags as though the sun shone directly on them, and with a more even sweetness all through the cluster. So really if the grapes had known what the lady was doing whep she tied the bags over their heads they would have been glad. The day will come when the bags will come off, and they will look out on the sun and the grass and the trees and on each other, and be mightily astonished and proud to see what great purple, perfect grapes they have come to be! Maybe you can think of times when boys and girls are like the grapes. Sometimes when they go to school they feel just as the grapes did when the bags were tied over their heads. The fall days return, and the school doors open and the bell rings again; and boys and girls begin to lament that the vacation is over and that they have to go into that old shut-in school again! “ No more freedom and fun,” they think. “ No more playing as we please! Back go our heads into a bag of books, and what’s the good of living any more ! ” What is the good ? All the good there is. The best sort of good, which they will be glad of and proud of after a while. For this is the time of ripening. The little birds of carelessness, and the flies of idleness that buzz and sting, are shut out, so that they can think and study and learn, and all 140 RIPENING THE GRAPES their minds grow as full of happy knowledge as the grapes are full of juice. The boy and girl who will ripen most, and he the proudest when they come to see what has happened, are the ones who can keep the hag on closest and be happy inside. Sometimes we see people who when they go to school, or when they have any important thing to do, or when they are reading in a room with other people, can shut themselves in so thoroughly to their own thoughts that no noise nor anybody buzzing about can distract them at all. That is what people call “ concentration ” — which is a big word, but all that it means is just what we have been talking about. It means that we shut out the things that distract us, and get close inside our own thought where the thing we want to know about will ripen quickly. And we have this advantage over the grapes. They could be glad at last that the lady had put the bags upon them ; but we can be smart enough to put them on ourselves. 35 NAILS, AND HOW TO USE THEM ALL the boys and girls I know love to ride in automobiles. If they see one about to start out, they are sure to run and say, e{ Let me go, too ! ” If the boys and girls who read this book feel that same way, they will know what a good time I bad when one day, not long ago, I started out one fine June morning, with some pleasant people, to come more than a hundred "miles in an automobile along a smooth road through the open country. It was a clear, cool day, with the bright sun shining in the fields and hills, and the fence rows sweet with honeysuckle. We skimmed along with everything going finely, and the road all open before us, until we had gone half the whole distance ; and then we came to a bridge, across a wide river. The bridge needed repairing, and some carpen¬ ters were at work mending it. They were taking up old planks from the floor of it, and putting new hoards in their places, and nailing these down. Of course, where they were working the bridge was blocked, and automobiles and wagons, coming from both directions to the ends of the bridge to cross 141 142 NAILS, AND HOW TO USE THEM the river, had to stop. There they were, in long lines, ranged one behind another, waiting for the way to he opened so that they could go across. We took onr places in line, too, and waited and waited ■until we were all impatient. It was more than a quarter of an hour that we had to stay, until at last enough of the new hoards were down in place on the bridge for the carpenters to stop a while and let us go by. Then on we went, thinking now that all the way was surely clear before us, and we could speed along to the journey’s end. But we had gone only a few hundred yards beyond the bridge when some¬ thing began to bump and rattle, and we stopped and got out, and there was one of the tires gone flat with a big nail stuck through it. Then we knew that the tire must have picked up a nail on the bridge. Instead of keeping their nails carefully in a box, or in their apron pockets, the carpenters had strewn them around the floor of the bridge, and here was this nail which had ripped straight through the tire and let all the air out in a mo¬ ment. So there was nothing to do but stop in the hot sunshine,- — for it was noontime then, and the sun was straight up above us in the sky, — and work on the dusty wheel until we had the flat tire off and a new tire in its place. Meanwhile, you can be sure that everyone was wishing that the carpen¬ ters had been more careful, and had not strewn their nails about. NAILS, AND HOW TO USE THEM 143 But the more I began to think about that nail the more I began to realize how many of us are like the careless carpenters. We strew things about which can do even more harm than a nail. They are the things which all of us have to do with every day. They are words. The words which you and I use whenever we talk are like the nails which the carpenters had there to build the bridge. We can use these words which we speak in helpful ways as the carpenters could use the nails to mend something which was broken and make it strong; or we can scatter them recklessly here and there, like nails dropped on the roadway to make trouble for everyone who goes along. Suppose, for example, we hear of a boy who has done something wrong, or is being very reckless, so that wrong may result after a while. The kind thing for a friend to do is to go straight to that boy and show him just where he is making a mistake, and why it is a mistake, and so help him to have more sense and to do better. If the boy knows that the one who comes to him is his friend and is fond of him, he will stop and listen, and the damage will be mended. Every kind, true word which is spoken that way is like the good, straight nail driven in its right place to mend the weak spot in the bridge. It mends character and holds it to¬ gether and prevents disaster. But suppose, instead of that, we hear a report 144 NAILS, AND HOW TO USE THEM of some ugly thing which has been done, and in¬ stead of going in a loving sort of helpfulness to set it right, we commence to gossip. You know how gossip spreads, and how people begin, “ They say,” or “ People tell me,” or “ I hear so and so,” and then without stopping to hear all the truth, they scatter the ugly report broadcast. And presently a great many people’s feelings may he hurt, and there is trouble and anger. Words like these — the careless, thoughtless, gossipy words — are like the sharp-pointed nails scattered on the floor of the bridge. In the wise old hook of Ecclesiastes there is a phrase which runs like this : “ The words of the wise are as nails fastened by the master of assem¬ blies.” That means that the words of good and thoughtful people are like the nails which are driven by the master carpenters who make every nail count for helpfulness and service, and do not throw any down where they will hurt and hinder the passer-hy. That is what we want to do with all the words we speak. We want to make them count for kindness, which means building up, and not for recklessness, which scars and hurts and hinders. PREVENTING FIRES IN a city which I know of there were put up a while ago, in shop windows and other con¬ spicuous places, posters which told the people that it was “ Eire Prevention Week.” On the poster was a picture of a house on fire, with flames pouring from the windows, and leaping from the roof. Eire engines were hurrying toward it, and presently the ladders would he up and streams of water flung into the flames. But from the way the house was burning, it looked as though they would be too late. The fire had gained too much of a start to be stopped before the building had been ruined. That is the way it so often is with fires. They start in some hidden place, and the flames begin to spread, and before anyone notices them, and turns in the alarm, they have spread so far that nothing can save the building then, no matter how many fire engines come hurrying up. In this same city where I saw the posters which I am telling you of, there happened two great fires in one year. The first was in a store filled with furniture, and it happened one Sunday morning just as people were coming out of Church, and all 146 PREVENTING FIRES the congregations flowed into the streets to see it. Firemen from every quarter of the city were brought out as one alarm after another was rung. Some of them were on the roof of the building next door, and while they were there the wall of the building which was burning fell in, and carried the men, and the roof on which they were standing, down into the wreckage and flames to their death. Not many months after that a fire broke out in an old hotel. It was early in the morning, and people were asleep in their beds. Before they were awakened, the flames were roaring up the stairs and through the hallways. People were trapped in their rooms, and many were burned to death or killed as they tried to leap from the windows to the street below. In both of these fires it was too late to stop them when the firemen came. What was needed was that they should have been prevented before they ever had a start. No one knew what set the furni¬ ture store on fire, but in the hotel there were a num¬ ber of cans of paint, and a great many old rags, full of grease and oil, which had been left down at the bottom of the elevator shaft by careless work¬ men. It was there that the fire began, and it streamed up the elevator shaft, and made the whole building like a furnace before anyone could know. The fire was possible because of the carelessness which had left the rubbish in which a fire could get its start. PREVENTING FIRES 147 In the same way, the wise thing is to keep onr hearts clean of the rubbish which may start a fire there. Down in some dark corner of the heart, for example, there may be the old grudge against someone whom we may imagine to have done us a wrong. Perhaps we do not think of it very much, but there it is, full of dangerous possibilities, like old waste soaked with oil ; and it may be some day that a single word which angers us, or a little slight which may not have been intended, falls on that ugly grudge like a match, and it flames up into some explosion of temper which we are bitterly ashamed of afterwards. Or in a corner of the mind may be the impure memory, or the unclean imagination which we have not set ourselves to clear away ; and one day the flame of some tempta¬ tion falls upon it, and the fire of some evil reck¬ lessness leaps up and scars us in a way which it is hard ever again to hide. The only safe thing is to take care before the fire comes that there is noth¬ ing in us to start, and to spread, the blaze. There needs to be a “ Fire Prevention Week ” every once in a while for all Christian people — a time when everybody will pray, in the beautiful words of the psalm, u Create in me a clean heart, 0 God,” and when everybody will set to work to clear out the ancient grudges and the ugly thoughts, and every¬ thing else on which the fires of evil might feed. 37 THE SMOTHERED LIGHT * ( * For this sermon there is needed a thin glass tumbler and a short candle, set on a candlestick of the following sort. The socket which holds the candle should be in the midst of a shallow saucer upon which the edges of the tumbler, when turned upside down, can fit smoothly. It is better if this saucer should have some perforations in it, such as one may see sometimes in candlesticks made of open¬ work brass. ) TO every single one of ns God has given wondrous gifts. He gives us, first of all, the marvelous gift of life itself, with a body to grow strong, and a mind to learn more and more each day. He has given us health and strength, perhaps. He has given us our home and friends, and all the lovely kindnesses from the peo¬ ple who love us all the time. The thought of these things is like a light which ought to burn in us bright and clear. (Light the candle.) It is like the light of this candle which can burn steady and strong. You can carry it into dark places, hut the darkness will not smother it. It will light up the darkness itself. It can spread its own brightness, and make shadowed places clear wherever it goes. But suppose people begin to he selfish with all the brightness and happiness which God has given 148 THE SMOTHERED LIGHT 149 them. Suppose they grow churlish and fretful of every little thing which they imagine might take their happiness away. Suppose they think they will shut that happiness in to themselves. They will take good care of what is their own and see that no harm comes to it. It sounds as though that might he a very wise and prudent thing to do, hut it really is not. Suppose this candle should say, “ I must pro¬ tect my light before I do anything else. I must cover it up so that no harm can come to it. (Put the tumbler down over the lighted candle.) I will let this glass shelter it from every draught.” But look, — and look, — and look now again. The flame is sheltered, but it is sheltered too much. It is protected, hut it is smothered, too-. See how it grows red, — and dwindles down, — and now it has gone out entirely. That is what happens to selfish lives. There is a way of doing what we suppose will protect all our own interests which really only smothers the best we have, and puts the light of gladness out, just as the light of the candle went out in the stifled air. To keep the brightness for ourselves, we must not think of ourselves too much. We must hold it up where all that God has given us will shine for others, and then it will shine best for us. 38 “ SHINE INSIDE ” MANY times as you have gone along the streets you have seen a sign which said, “ Shine Inside.” Perhaps it was over a door that you reached by stairs going down from the level of the street, or over some little shop where you could see the chairs inside. It was the sign of a bootblack. What it means is that if you will come inside where the bootblack is, you can get a shine on your shoes. Well, you have all seen that, you say, but what has that got to do with a sermon for children? There is nothing remarkable about getting your shoes shined, and you do not see anything particu¬ larly remarkable either in the sign which says, “ Shine Inside.” It is true that just that sign by itself, and meaning only what it does mean when you see it on the streets, is not very remarkable. But sup¬ pose you should take the same words and make them mean a bigger thing. The bootblack’s sign means simply that if you come inside his place you can get a shine on your shoes. But did you ever stop to think that there are places into which you can go and get a shine all over? You have heard 150 “ SHINE INSIDE” 151 it said of boys and girls wben tboy wore very bappy that they had shining faces. You have seen people who had shining eyes. You know some people whose hearts must he shining, because everything about them is full of the beautiful light of cheer¬ fulness and joy. The finest places in the world are the places which make people shine like that. If it meant that by going in you could get the sort of a shine which makes you glad and bright all through, then it would be a wonderful thing to see the sign that says, “ Shine Inside.” Some homes are like that. There are homes where the mother is so sweet and unselfish and so busy all the time in making everybody happy, that all the eyes and all the faces shine in the family which gathers round her. Sometimes boys and girls do not stop to realize who it is that is making all the happiness they share. Perhaps if it were left just to them, home would not be such a bright place, because it would not be so unselfish and lovely. What every one of us must try to do in the home that we belong to, and in every other place to which we often go, is to try to make it the kind of place of which people can know that their hearts and their faces will surely find a “ Shine Inside.” There was a beautiful play written once which was called “ The Passing of the Third Floor Back.” It was a play about a boarding house where every¬ body was snarly and gossipy and mean, until one 152 “ SHINE INSIDE ” day there came a new somebody into their midst. Nobody paid much attention to him at first. He was poor and unpretentious. He lived in the little room on the third floor back. But wherever he went, somehow people began to feel better, and to be better. He was so kind and gentle, so sure of the best in everybody, and he had such a way of making people feel ashamed of being less good than he thought they were, that after a while he had the whole house which before had been ngly and disagreeable, shining with a new spirit. He made it plain how wonderful a thing it could be to have for the hearts of people a sign on the house which says, “ Shine Inside.” 39 “ KEEP TO THE RIGHT ” THE other day in a gutter near a street corner where a great many automobiles go by, I found this broken piece of board. On it you can see the letters painted — “ Keep To The Right and you can guess what this board came from. It is a part of one of the traffic signs which are put in the middle of the streets where the automobiles turn, so that all the automobiles going in different directions, hut each one keeping to the right, and turning on its own side of the street, may give every other automobile plenty of room and avoid collisions. Somebody one day, or maybe one night, had not paid any attention to the sign. Instead of keeping to his own side of the turn he had tried to cut straight across the place where the streets come together, and had smashed straight into the sign and had broken it all to pieces. Perhaps no policeman was anywhere near, so that he got away without being caught, but I expect that every time he has driven by since and seen the broken sign in the gutter, and knows that he had broken it, he feels guilty and wonders if a policeman will come after him. The whole trouble was that he did not keep to the right. Probably he had seen the sign a great 153 154 * KEEP TO THE RIGHT ” many times, and knew perfectly well what he ought to do, hut he did not do it. He tried to cut a sharp corner, and immediately he got into trouble. A sign like this that says, “Keep To The Right, ” is a good sign for us to put up not only on street comers, hut on all the paths of our con¬ science. It means that we must play fair, keep to our own part of the way, and give everybody else an equal chance. It means that we shall not cut corners nor try to take a wrong advantage of the other hoy and girl whose paths may cross our own. Here, for example, are boys and girls who go to school. The teacher has given everybody a com¬ position to write, or some French exercises to trans¬ late, or there is the new arithmetic lesson with some sums in it which are different from those the children have had before, and are hard to work. Suppose one boy or girl has sat down and worked hard on the lesson, and got everything done — the composition written, the sentences translated, the arithmetic worked out right — and suppose some¬ body else has idled away the time doing nothing, and comes to school in the morning with only half the work even tried, and some of that done wrong, and says to the one who has finished, “ Let me look on your book and copy your sentences, and get your answers before the bell rings for class, or else the teacher will be mad with me because my paper is empty.” The boy and girl who do that may make the teacher think that the work has been done when “ KEEP TO THE RIGHT ” 155 it really has not been done at all, but they have cut a sharp corner, and they cannot feel right about it inside. They have tried to get credit which did not belong to them, and they know very well that is not fair. Or suppose some hoys are playing a game — per¬ haps it is football — and one hoy thinks that he can trip up the boy on the other side, or play a rough, dirty game when the umpire is not looking. Or suppose a girl is playing tennis, and she calls a ball “ out ” which she knows was just on the line, but the girl she was playing against could not see it; the boy and the girl may win their game, but they have cut an ugly corner, and the scar is on them just as surely as it is on the automobile that ran into the traffic sign, and when they think of it they will always feel guilty in their conscience. Sometimes you will hear men talk of other men who are in business, and there is hardly anything worse one man can say about another man than that “ he cuts sharp comers.” They mean he is not con¬ siderate of another man’s rights. He will edge in and take the mean advantage if he can. Such a man as that may seem to get around the turn fast¬ est, but after a while nobody likes him nor respects him any more. u Keep To The Right.” That is the sign we want to follow on our city streets, and that is the sign we want to follow on all the roads where con¬ science tells us how to go. 40 WHOSE FACE BELONGS IN THE WINDOW ? NOT long ago I heard a little boy who is seven years old tell his ideas about the church, and so I think I shall try to tell to you, as well as I can remember, just exactly what he said, and he will he the preacher to-day instead of me. He said, “ I do not like the outside of our church. It does not look clean, and it needs more paint on it. The church ought to be the heautifulest place in the whole state. And another thing, — the boys and girls from the Sunday School run around and drop their papers on the street in front of the church. I think if anybody loses their paper they ought not to have any more the next Sunday until they find them, and then they will stop losing them.” Then his mother asked him, “ What do you think of the inside of the church ? ” “ I love the inside,” said the little hoy, “ because that is all light and beautiful. But the people in the church ought to he different from the way some of them are. Some of them wear black, and black does not present the Lord. Black is the devil, and 156 WHOSE FACE IN THE WINDOW? 157 it ought not to be in the church. All the people in the church ought to look bright and have light in their faces like the angels in the windows, and the people with the beautifulest faces ought to sit next to the windows and the doors, so that anybody who is passing by and sees them would want to come in.” Now that is what the little boy said, and I leave it to you to think about and see whether you agree with him. I think almost everything he said is true, just as he said it. The church certainly ought to be the loveliest place in the whole State. People ought to stop and ask themselves whether they have a right to look black and solemn in the church which tells us of Jesus who lived and died and rose again, and teaches us the never-failing love of God, and whether to look like that, as the little boy said, would “ present the Lord.” And cer¬ tainly it would be fine if all of us should try to have a light on our faces like the faces of the angels in the windows. Then how would it be, I wonder, if we could have a beauty test, just along the lines the little boy said, and choose out of all the congregation the men and women and the boys and girls who ought to sit next to the windows and the doors because people seeing them would want to come in where they were? It would be a different sort of beauty contest from the ones we sometimes think of. The people who fix up their faces most, and like to have 158 WHOSE FAGE IN THE WINDOW? their photographs taken, and are very proud of their regular features might not be the ones to win at all; for they might not have in their faces the sort of look which would make other people want to go where they were. And perhaps some people who had thought of themselves as almost ugly, and did not have any beauty of the picture-gallery kind, in this contest might be the very most beautiful of all, because there is a light in their faces which makes other people think of God and hope to find God where such faces are. In one of the psalms it is written : u Elessed are the people that know the joyful sound. They shall walk, 0 Lord, in the light of Thy countenance.” It means that the peo¬ ple who have in their hearts something which makes them glad to hear the church bells ring, may reflect in their faces something of the light of the face of God. And they who are truly looking up into God’s face will have thus a light upon their own which will make them seem beautiful to all those who look and understand. 41 “ WEIGH YOUESELF ” VEEY often in stores, and particularly in railroad stations, you will see those tall scales with a platform on which you stand, and there, above you, a big circle like the face of a clock, and an arrow that will turn about when you put a penny in the slot, and point to the num¬ ber which shows how much you weigh. At the top of the scales there are generally two words, “ Weigh yourself.” When people read that, it stirs their curiosity. They wonder how much they do weigh, and so they get on the scales to see. Sometimes boys and girls get so eager about weighing that it is like a game to see which can beat the other. In the summer camps to which so many go, there is very often a list put up on the wall somewhere showing how much each boy or girl weighs when the camp begins. Then every week everybody is weighed again, and the new figures are put up to show whether they have gained, and if they nave gained, how much. Of course, everybody is very eager to gain a half pound this week or a pound another week, and to have a fine record be¬ fore the summer is over; for when anyone weighs 159 160 “ WEIGH YOURSELF ” more it means that he is growing, and he feels stronger and healthier all the time. But those words, “ Weigh yourself/’ have an¬ other meaning also which it is very helpful for us to remember. It is not only our bodies that we are concerned with, hut our characters, too. A per¬ son might he very fat, and yet not amount to much because there was a very small somebody inside. Sometimes you will hear the expression used, that so and so is a “ light-weight.” This means that that person does not amount to very much. He does not seem to have much sense, or if he starts to do anything, he does not do it in the way that really counts. And then you hear it said, on the other hand, that such and such another person is a real “ heavy-weight.” When you say that, you mean that when he gets hack of anything, you know that somebody of consequence is there. He has push, and perseverance, and power. One of the psalms speaks of people who are “ lighter than vanity,” and are “ deceitful upon the weights.” Whoever wrote that psalm long ago, was thinking of the same sort of people whom you and I can see to-day. He was thinking of people who in their appearance make a large show, hut really amount to very little when they come to the test, — like big, flabby children who climb upon the scales, and you would think that they weigh a tremendous lot, and then you are astonished to see how little they weigh, as compared with their looks ; for they « WEIGH YOURSELF ” 161 are all flabbiness, and not solid with muscle and bone. The people who are “ deceitful upon the weights ” puff themselves up, and look large, and pretend to be important, but they have no strength in them when real work is to be done. In the book of Daniel there is a story of a king named Belshaz¬ zar, who had such a high opinion of himself that he thought nothing could ever hurt him or over¬ throw his kingdom. But he was a wicked, selfish man, and God’s eyes, looking upon him, knew it. So one night while he was in his royal hall and a great feast was spread before him, there appeared a hand which wrote upon the wall, and the words it wrote were these : “ Thou art weighed in the bal¬ ance and found wanting.” And then, on the other hand, there are those whom all fine-spirited boys and girls will want to be like— the solid people who can be counted on through and through. They do not have to depend only upon the judgment of men to show what they are worth. They know that “ the Lord weigheth the spirits,” and they are glad to have Him weigh them on His just scales and prove the real integrity of their hearts. They know that their purposes are true and their desires are sound, and that these are what count in the balances of God. 42 THE REAL WAY TO BE HAPPY SOME time ago there was a great deal said in the newspapers about a very famous physician who had come to Hew York and whose name is Dr. Lorenz. He does not live in Hew York, or in America at all. His home is in Austria, but he had come across the seas to help sick children here, and especially to help little crip¬ pled children. He is one of the men in the whole world who knows most about that — most about how to straighten crooked limbs, and to help lame boys and girls learn how to walk again, and heal the bent backs, and so make many little children who might have been helpless and pitiful all their lives be strong and well again. It was nice to think of his coming so far from home to help the children here in America, and best of all was the reason why he said he came. After the war the people in America had been very kind to the boys and girls in Austria, which is his home. They had sent money, and food, and clothing for those who had been made poor by the war, and Dr. Lorenz thought that he must do something to show his gratitude on behalf of those children. He would come and make a thank-offering by his healing skill. 162 THE REAL WAY TO BE HAPPY 163 To do something for other little children would be the best way to show how grateful he was for that which had been done for the little children in the land he loved. It is fine to remember that, and fine to think how happy that good physician must have been to see how many people he had helped to make glad. Boys and girls were brought to him from every quarter, hobbling on crutches or carried in the arms of fathers and mothers, — all sorts of little twisted, crippled children, with eyes full of wistfulness and full of hope. He could not heal them all, but there were many whom he could heal. And think how joyous they must have been, and their fathers and mothers with them, as they went away and began really to believe that they would not have to be sick and feeble all their lives. If you and I want to be happy, we must be learn¬ ing what that good physician teaches. The way to happiness is to try to help somebody else. Every time we remember how much God has given us — all the blessings of home and friends and clothes and food and happy pleasures — we must be asking, too, how we can show our gratefulness to Him by making the thank-offering of our loving help to someone else. One of the nicest parts in the story of Little Lord Fauntleroy is the chapter which tells how Mr. Faversham came from the great, rich Earl who was the little boy’s grandfather, — though the little boy did not know it then, — to tell him that 164 THE REAL WAY TO BE HAPPY he was to go across the seas and live in a castle, and he very rich and great, and grow np to be an Earl himself by and by. And then Mr. Eaversham told him that his grandfather had sent him some money to do whatever he wanted with, and you remember what little Lord Fauntleroy began to think. He did not begin to plan to spend the money on him¬ self, because there was something else that he wanted to do, and was the very first thing he thought of because it was what made him happiest. He would go out and give some money to the old woman who sold apples on the corner ; and he would buy a new lot of brushes, and a new stand and everything for his friend Dick, who was a boot- black. And he would help the cook’s sister who had a sick husband and a whole house full of little chil¬ dren at home. That was what little Lord Eaunt- leroy did, not because somebody told him, but be¬ cause he wanted to, and his eyes just danced with pleasure at the thought. There are a good many boys and girls, and men and women, too, for that matter, who set out to be happy by the wrong track, and so they never arrive. They think that the way to be happy is to get every¬ thing and keep everything for themselves. They are suspicious of their sisters and brothers and other children, and always on the lookout to see what they can snatch first, and jealous of every¬ body who has something which they think they ought to have had instead. But they never get to THE REAL WAY TO RE HAPPY 165 be happy by that method. Instead, they are bad- tempered and restless all their days. There is al¬ ways something else which they want that they can¬ not get, and so they are forever discontented. But boys and girls who find their happiness in thinking about how much they have already, and trying to make a thank-offering by their kindness to some¬ body else, never need to be discontented. The thing they want is something they can always do, for the chance to be kind to others is never lacking. That is the way Jesus made His life so beautiful and glad, and we can try to be like Him. We may not be able to heal the bodies of other boys and girls, like the physician whom I told you of first, but we can heal by kindness the little wounds which ill-temper and unkindness make, and we can straighten out wrong things, and help the spirits of others to grow up clean and true. That is what Jesus did, and that is what He would have us do. 43 A BOY WHO IS A PREACHER IKJSTOW a little boy who is very much inter¬ ested in children’s sermons, and he is a good deal of a preacher of children’s sermons himself. One morning I was standing with him at a win¬ dow on a winter’s day when the deep white snow lay on the ground. He looked out over the space where the snow lay smooth and unbroken, and he said, “ I see a children’s sermon that you can preach.” “ What is it ? ” I asked. “Well,” said he, “you see that snow? If you step into it you will make an ugly print with your feet where it is all so white and smooth. And if you say mean words and do mean things, you make a print in your heart.” Then he was silent a moment, and presently he said, “ I know another children’s sermon. If you drive an automobile around the streets and don’t look where you are going, and run into something, you damage up your automobile; and if you do things you ought not to do, you damage up your heart.” 166 A BOY WHO IS A PREACHER 167 I thought those were two very good children's sermons, but I was sorry all his sermons seemed to be so gloomy. It would be too bad if the only things we could remember should be that perhaps we are putting in our souls ugly prints which will never come out, and running about in foolish, reck¬ less fashion and damaging our hearts until they look like automobiles which have been in a collision, scarred and crippled, and with all their freshness gone. And so I was glad when he went on to say, “ I know another children's sermon." And when I asked what it was, he told me this, which I am sure you will think was the nicest one of the three. He said, “ If you have a vase and put a flower in it, it makes the vase look prettier, doesn't it % " And when I answered yes, I thought it surely did, he added this : u And if you have good, kind thoughts, it is just like putting a flower in your heart. It makes it all look prettier and smell sweeter." That is a good sermon for all of us to remember all the time, for by themselves our hearts are like empty vases, depending upon what sort of things we shall put in them. We should think any one was very foolish who in a lovely vase on a table in his room put ugly, ill-smelling weeds. Yet that is what some of us do with our hearts. We put in the little weeds of ugly gossip, or weeds of false* hoods and spiteful outbursts of ill-temper. But if 168 A BOY WHO IS A PREACHER we want to, we can do what the little boy recom¬ mended — we can put into our hearts only the good, kind thoughts, and the echoes of gentle words which will he like flowers, making all within us and around us fragrant. 44 CLIUKEKS DO you know what is this that I have in my hands, hard and rough? It is a clinker, and any hoy who knows anything about furnaces knows what a clinker is. It is a mass of stuff which melts up from the dirt in the coal and clogs up the grate of the furnace so that the fire will not burn. If you look at this clinker closely, you will see what sorts of things have made it, — little bits of slate and rock and other impurities which came with the coal, and ashes that sifted down and melted with the slate in the fire. The big clinker has become hard as a rock in the midst of the flame. One thing which helps to make clinkers is a lack of draught. Underneath every furnace you know there is a little door which lets in the air, and the air blowing up through the grate, and through the coal, keeps the fire burning hot and clean. If the draught is shut off too much, then the coal smothers and only half burns, and that makes clinkers faster. Another cause which makes clinkers is a mis¬ taken thing which people do when they are tending 169 170 CLINKERS furnaces. At night they want to keep the fire low, and so they think they will cover it on top so that it will hum only very slowly. Instead of taking coal dust, they take some ashes which have fallen through the grate and throw these on top of the coal to smother the fire down; but the ashes will never burn again, and what they do is to sift presently through the live coal, and the part that does not drop through the grate helps to make more clinkers. Did you ever think of the clinkers which are in people ? “ What is the matter with that boy and girl ? ” somebody asks. u They are indifferent about everything. They do not seem ever to do their best. You cannot get any enthusiasm out of them. They never warm up to the fine duties and the work which they ought to be glad about. They are like fires which only half burn.” The trouble is that they have got the clinkers of indifference in their hearts. These have formed there because they did not let the draught of the thoughts of God blow enough through their hearts. They have let the fires smother in the close air of their own selfishness. Or they have made the other mistake which people make with furnaces. They have put ashes on top when they ought to have put coal. They have thought, when they did not have anything very hard to do, that any sort of stuff would work to keep the fire going, and instead of putting their best strength into the new duty, they CLINKERS 171 have put only some burned-out part of themselves which is left after they have finished doing the things they wanted to do. So the fire is smothered, and the fine enterprises which they ought to help keep warm are chilled. The only thing to do with clinkers is to rake them out. Every once in a while the man who tends the furnace must pitch in and clean the grates, even if it takes a lot of time and trouble. So once in a while we must clean the grates of our hearts. We must get out all the old clinkers of indifference and don’t-care, so that the fires of strength and gladness will burn clear and bright. 45 THE LOVE OF GOD, AFTD CHRISTMAS A LITTLE while ago I heard of something nice which a little boy said to his father, and it was such a nice thing to say that I think a great many other boys and girls will want to go and say it to their fathers and mothers, too. The little boy was playing one day in the room where his father was, and of a sudden he left his toys and came and climbed up on his father’s chair. “ Daddy,” he said, “ I love you and I want to do something about it ! ” The little boy was exactly right. All at once it had come to him what love really is. It is not just saying words. It is not an idle feeling. It is knowing that somebody else is so dear to you, and being so thankful that somebody else is so good to you, that you must “ do something about it.” Perhaps the little boy had begun to think of the sort of ways in which other people loved him. There was his father. His father loved him, and his father was always “ doing something about it.” Didn’t his father go down town every morning and work hard all day so that he could make a living for his family, and have the money to buy the food, and clothes, and all the nice things with which the little boy was surrounded ? Didn’t he every once in 172 \ LOVE OF GOD, AND CHRISTMAS 173 a while, when he went off on a trip, bring back the wonderfulest surprise with him — that big toy boat with the sails that went up and down, the Robinson Crusoe book with coloured pictures in it, and the other things which he knew a boy would like ? And didn’t his father play ball with him in the evenings if he got home before supper, or in the winter read to him before the fire ? He did not have to wonder whether or not his father loved him, because his father was “ doing something about it ” every day. Then it was the same way with his mother. Didn’t he remember how once he was sick in bed a long, long time, and how whenever he woke up at night, ail hot and restless with the fever, there was his mother’s face bending over him and his mother’s touch so comforting and cool? Who was it but his mother whom he ran to that day when he cut his hand on the broken glass? And didn’t he go to her about every single thing he needed, and get her to help find the toys that he couldn’t find ? And wasn’t she always teaching him new games to play, and didn’t she give him that party on his birthday — and was there really anything at all, anywhere, which made him happiest that she did not have a hand in ? All the time she was lov¬ ing him, and all the time she was u doing some¬ thing about it.” So that is what made the boy of a sudden climb upon his father’s chair and tell him — and when his 174 LOVE OF GOD, AND CHRISTMAS mother came in I suppose he told her the same — that he wanted to “ do something about it ” to show his love for the ones he loved. What could he do ?, he asked his father. What could he do to show his love to him? And his father told him that the very best thing his boy could do for him was to be very loving to the one that both of them loved best, which was his mother; and his father taught him some of the ways in which he could do something about that. He told him how he could stop and think and plan what would make his mother hap¬ piest, and be considerate in the little things that would keep her from getting tired. He told him how he could always go to where his mother was when he wanted to ask her anything instead of calling for his mother to come to him, and how he could find her a chair and persuade her to sit down when she needed rest, and be glad to run errands for her and take all sorts of trouble for her? and keep a happy face, because that made her glad. All that would be doing something about the love the boy had for his father, because it would be making his father know that his boy wanted to be like him, and to do the things his father would want to do. Then there was another thing his father told him. He said that the love of God is just like the kind of love the little boy wanted to show. It is a love that is always “ doing something about it.” At Christmas time especially we remember that. For the Father in heaven saw that His children LOVE OF GOD, AND CHRISTMAS 175 here on earth needed someone to teach them to be good, and so to be glad and happy; and He gave the one greatest gift He had. He gave His own best beloved Son to come down to he a little baby in Bethlehem, and to be a boy in Nazareth, and to grow into the Man who went about doing good everywhere — helping people who had done wrong to w7ant to be good, helping the poor to feel rich because He loved them, helping everybody to learn how beautiful life could be when they lived it in His way. So God, who loved the world, u did something about it,” and Jesus, the Son of God, went everywhere making men remember that love because He remembered it too. And at Christmas time we must learn the lesson of that love of God. He has loved us and given us all the beautiful gift of the life of Jesus. And we must u do something about it.” We must try to make other people happy. We must not think only of what we hope other people will give us, but think of the poor, and the unhappy, and the little, friendless children to whom we can carry gifts for the sake of Jesus. “ For dearly, dearly has He loved, And we must lave Him, too.” And the best way of all to show that we love Him is — “ To try His works to do.” Printed in United States of America 4 : Date Due