Class " BY 48 32, Book . (.-7,, 7 OopyrigM"N? COFtfRIGRT DEPCSFT. Just A Minutei MOMENT- READINGS ON SCRIPTURE PASSAGES, AND A FEW ON THE GREAT WAR BY CHARLES FREDERIC GOSS, D.D. Author of "The Redemption of David Corson," "The Optimist" Etc. CINCINNATI STEWART & KIDD COMPANY 1918 & \ 5\ Copyright, 1904, by The Sunday School Times Co. Copyright, 1918, by Stewart & Kidd Company All Rights Reserved APR 12 1918 ©CI.A494561 Dedication to REVEREND ARTHUR S. HOYT, D.D. Professor of Sacred rhetoric in Auburn Theo- logical Seminary, my bo^Kood playmate, college cKum, and life-long friend, tkis book is lovingly dedicated Introduction NO other phrase in the daily speech of us American men and women falls so fre- quently from our lips as "Just a minute." The telephone girls repeat it a thousand times each day. Mothers utter it in response to the querulous or insistent claims of their children; clerks to impatient customers; nurses and doctors to sick people whimpering for attention; all people to all other people in all the frenzied rush of modern life. "Just a minute, just a minute, just a minute." How different it is from the Un poco tiempo of the Spaniard, which, in reality, is "Never!" We mean exactly what we say, and are straining every nerve to finish up this present moment's task to take the next one up. A single minute! What prodigious happen- ings have taken place in sixty seconds! A single minute has decided the destinies of men and nations. They have signed a treaty, read a paragraph, a text, a single sentence, and a door has opened to a larger life. We do not need to read a book to become wise unto salvation! A phrase will sometimes do. Literature is created by a double method. In the first place, by expansion, in which we take a truth which has been stated in a single sentence and elaborate it into a volume. In the second place, by contraction, in which we take a book and compress it into an epigram. The former method suits our days of leisure, the latter our hours of fierce endeavor; hours in which who reads at all must do so on the run. The fragments in this little volume have been prepared for times like those. They are like the tabloid foods which explorers carry with them on their expeditions and soldiers on their marches. It is a book for callers to pick up from a parlor table while waiting for a hostess; or visitors to glance at before re- tiring in the guest-chamber of a friend. May it offer the bread of life to some hungry soul in that swiftly-flitting moment which is his only opportunity for reading in one of those frenzied days through which all of us have to pass so often in our high-pitched modern life, when " We see all sights from pole to pole, And nod and glance and bustle by, But never once possess our souls Before we die." VI Just a Minute! &{p*k> Daxrid was sitting between the two gates (2 Sam, 18 : 24), Y17HAT was he doing ? Waiting,— that * * was all. He had done everything that lay in his power, —armed the last soldier, per- fected the last plan, given the last command. And now there remained nothing but to sit quietly and helplesslv between the gates and wait while the great events transpired beyond the reach of eye or ear or hand. Ah ! but that is a thousand times harder than action, or even passion. What is more terrible than just waiting ? If you have not acquired the art of patient waiting, you had better learn it at once ; for you will have to sit much of your lifetime between the gates, waiting helplessly while the forces you have set in operation slowly work out their inevitable results. The merchant must sit between the gates, and wait for the people to whom he has sold his goods to earn the money to pay. The author must sit between the gates, and wait for the pub- lishers to accept or reject his manuscript. The sailor's wife must sit between the gates, i and wait for the winds to blow her husband's vessel home. We all reach a point where we can do no more, and then — we must just wait. Alas ! i ' we usually learn to wait only when we have no longer anything to wait for. ' ' Adopt the pace of nature ; her secret is patience. "Upon the heat and flame of thy distemper sprinkle cool patience. ' ' Are you sitting be- tween the gates waiting ? Do it with the noble dignity of a David. If the messenger is to bring you sorrow, receive it with sub- mission. A Wrought great e wonders {Acts 6:8)* J DO not say that to "love and help men and God ' ' will enable you sooner or later to heal the sick and raise the dead. I do not say that to "love and help men and God" will even make you work great signs and won- ders among the people, like those done by Whitefield, Wesley, and Moody. But this I will say, that, in that little circle where God has placed you, the "grace and power" of a blameless life of love and helpfulness will work wonders beautiful enough for any man. Is it no "miracle" to lift the burdens from the shoulders of your old father and mother ? to soothe the heartaches of some unfortunate brother or sister ? to bring joy and hope to 2 the soul of a sorrowing neighbor ? If I had my choice, to be a wonder-worker on a great scale but fail as a son or brother, or to be a good son or brother and fail as a wonder- worker, I wouldn' t hesitate a minute. Fulfil thy ministry {2 Tim. 4 : 5). /COMPLETENESS in character is only a ^-^ little more beautiful than completeness of effort. In fact, it is generally the result of such effort. A life filled full of service ! Can anything be grander ? I wonder why the man who coined the word "fulfil" couldn't have made it just plain, simple ' ' filfull M ! I love to see an honest dairyman fill a quart cup full with milk. He makes it run over. It is very dis- gusting to see people overflowing with flattery, affectation, or the like, but what do you think of the man who comes up like a bucket out of your grandfather's well, full to the brim, and spilling over at every turn of the windlass? I know people whose every day is pressed down and running over with devotion, good- ness, generosity, love. Fill your life up to the brim. It will hold as much as the bed of the ocean. Who can measure the contents of a life like D. L. Moody's, running over at the brim like a perennial fountain? Once, after 3 traveling a whole day without a drop of water, I came to an abandoned Texas farmhouse, and let a bucket down into a well a hundred feet deep, and heard it strike a dirt bottom. No wonder the farmer abandoned the ac- cursed spot. And there are lives like this. Is it any wonder that people abandon them ? So Jonathan made a covenant 'with the house of David (/ Sam, 20 : 16). TJOW large a figure such promises cut in * * human life. Civilization could not go forward without them. They enter into all human relationships. The child promises the parent that it ' ' will be good. ' ' Lovers prom- ise each other to be faithful unto death. Men promise to pay debts and to deliver goods. Governments promise each other to maintain peace or to unite in war. Without a high sense of their obligations, business would go to pieces, and society disintegrate. There is little to hope for in the life of a boy or girl who will not keep their word. Your word of honor ought to be as sacred as a most solemn oath. It must be as good as a witnessed bond. Bad promises are better broken than kept ; but good ones must be fulfilled at the cost of prop- erty and life. Who doubts that either one 4 of those magnificent young Jews would rather have died than broken that covenant ! cAccording as each hath recefbed a gift (/ Pet. 4 : 10). '"THANK God for that word "according" ! * There is one thing that human nature never does, which the divine nature never fails to do, — and that is, to preserve true ratios. God suits the back to the burden, and the burden to the back. From him to whom much hath been given, much shall be required; from him who hath little, little. God never demands a ten-talent dividend from a one- talent man. On that wisdom and justice I pillow my head and heart. But the exaction will be ' ' according to the gift ; ' ' and oh, when we see ourselves as God sees us, how pitiful, how contemptible, shall we seem ! For I kriofo my transgressions ; and my sin is ever before me (Psa. 51 : 3). |MO MORTAL man can endure the per- manent consciousness of a great sin without either penitence, moral ruin, or men- tal collapse. It is a fearful dilemma. I be- lieve in teaching children to look their sins in 5 the face. Harrow their consciences. Make them realize their guilt. If you smooth over their vices and extenuate their faults you ruin them. There is hope for Little Bill if he looks pale in the face and black around the eyes until he confesses the He he has told. If he cannot shake off the memory of it, if it pur- sues him like a shadow, if it is ever before him, night and day, thank God and take cour- age. He will come out all right. It is the boys who can kill birds and not dream about them nights that I despair of. It was the tor- ment of an irrepressible vision of his guilt that drove David at last to penitence. Encourage the fainthearted (/ Thess. 5 : 14), I'VE had my share of life's pleasures, and * want to testify as to which is the sweetest of them all. It's "putting heart" into people who have lost it. The saddest sight that Nature holds up to God is a boy or girl who has "lost heart." Poor, dispirited, hopeless little folks ! What can any one do without "heart"? Not to be able to put your 1 ' heart ' ' into a task is to be certain of failure. It is almost as fatal to be only "half-hearted." But how terrible to lose heart entirely 1 And yet in every group of children you are liable - 6 to find some timid, shrinking creature who has already lost the "courage of life." How beautiful it is to " hearten him up, " — to breath e hope into his empty spirit ! And how easy it is — often. Sometimes a single kind word will do it, sometimes even a smile of encourage- ment. You can do a thousand times as much for child or man by putting heart into his bosom as you can by putting either learning into his head or money into his pockets. Having therefore obtained the help thai is from God (Acts 26 : 22). HTHE help that is from God. There are many kinds of help, — the help of money, the help of friendship, the help of health, the help of knowledge, the help of experience. But there is also the help that is from God. It is a very peculiar and wonderful help in- deed. It is a help that people do not believe in until they are in extremity. They want to help themselves, or have some human being help them, until all else has failed. And then they cast themselves on God. No little boy ever believed that the water in the old mill- pond would hold him up until it actually did so. He will grab at a board, or a compan- ion's leg, or at a straw for support, but never 7 lay himself out flat on his back on the bosom of the water. The little skeptic ! I have been trying for two years to teach Little Bill that the water is anxious to ' ' help ' ' him to swim, and he is still positively convinced that it is trying to drown him. It is only after men have cast themselves, in some deep despera- tion, into the "everlasting arms," that they discover their helping and holding power. They are the only safe refuge for the sufferer and the sinner. cMinistering as of the strength fohich God supplieth (/ Pet 4 : //). TT IS both bad morals and puerile philoso- phy to forget that strength and wisdom and virtue, and life itself, proceed from God. Do you think it does no harm to the son of a millionaire to spend his father's fortune as if it were his very own, and he had earned it with his hands ? It generates egotism. It fosters pride. It darkens the intellect. It degrades the conscience. You never saw the - son of a rich man who forgot that he was using the money that his father supplied, who was not either a fool or a knave. You never saw, and you never will see, men who forget that God supplies their strength, their wisdom, their virtue, and their life, who are not in 3 some way mentally or morally unsound. The sea must not forget the rivers, nor the rivers the clouds. The fruits must not forget the seed, nor the seed the flower. Man, thou art nothing but a derivative ! Make the best of it! A Thanks he to God, who gvoeth us the Wdoiy through our Lord Jesus Christ ( / Cor, 15 : 57), " WICTORY ! " That is the battle-cry of " our holy religion. "Victory" over sorrow, over sin, over death, through our Lord Jesus Christ. Happiness (in the long run) will return from the battle with sorrow chained to the axle of its chariot ; righteousness, with sin ; life, with death. Therefore smile at de- feat, yes, laugh at disaster, exult at death. If death grins at life in the autumn, life laughs at death in the spring. The grave grinned hid- eously at life when they laid the dead Saviour in its cold embrace. But after three days life laughed, for the victor tore himself from its arms. Yes, he has brought life and immortal- ity to light. We see it now. It is life, not death, that rules the universe. This is the supreme power. Its final triumph is assured. Victory is written on its banners. The contest for supremacy is long and terrible, but the issue is certain. Listen to Victor Hugo : 9 "When I go down to the grave, I can say, like so many others, 'I have finished my day's work, ' but I cannot say, ' I have finished my life. ' My work will begin again next morning. My tomb is not a blind alley, it is a thorough- fare ; it closes with the twilight to open with the dawn. It would not be worth while to live at all, were we to die entirely. That which alleviates labor and sanctifies toil is to have constantly before us the vision of a better world appearing through the darkness of this life. ' ' Isn' t that the cry of victory ? The times of ignorance ♦ . . God overlooked; but now he commandeth men thai they should all everywhere repent {Acts 17 : 30). HTHERE is no greater difference between A any two other things in life than "then" and ' ' now. ' ' The responsibilities of yester- day cannot measure those of to-day. ' ' Then ' ■ the opportunities, the knowledge, the power, was so much less than "now." Yesterday you were a child, to-day you are a youth ; yesterday you were a youth, to-day you are a man. "Then" we could excuse, and even wink at, your carelessness and irresponsibility; 1 ' now ' ■ we shake our heads, and frown and condemn. Last Sunday I found a half-grown io youngster hiding in the hallway after Sunday- school had begun. ' * What' s the matter ? ' ■ I asked. " I've got on my first long pants, and I don't dare go in," he replied. He had passed an epoch. He'll never be a knickerbocker boy again. He is a long-pants boy now, and will be so forevermore. Father, mother, brother, sister, teacher, friends, will expect and demand more of him than before. His knickerbocker peccadillos will no longer be " overlooked " or " winked at." Life was one thing then, it's another thing now. There is the same difference between a boy fn knick- erbockers and long pants as between a bird in a nest with a mother brooding over it and in a meadow with a hawk hovering above it. If he commit iniquity, I %& chasten him 'with the rod of men (2 Sam, 7 : 14). TJUMANITY has not yet outgrown the rod. 11 i ( w^om the Lord loveth he chasteneth. ' ' Every rational human being instinctively de- spises a professed moral system in which ini- quity is not followed by the lash. Thieves would not dare to live in communities where theft went unpunished. What could hinder them from being stolen from ? Ah ! It always seems so strange to me that these sentimental ii parents who shrink from inflicting pain on dis- obedient and wayward children are not afraid of being despised for their weakness (as they are morally certain to be) by the young repro- bates whom they weakly spare. When Little Bill faces his father (hair-brush in hand), he has such a feeling of awe as when Moses saw God in the burning bush. He beholds the whole moral government incarnate in that single human personality. Do you mean to tell me he does not respect and love it ? c Da. e vid inquired of Jehovah {2 Sam. 2:1)* \ \ THAT makes us do what we do ? Some- ' * times it is sheer, blind impulse. We do not stop to question or debate. How would you like to be constituted so that you could do so always, and never have to regret it? Wouldn't that turn life into a holiday! It is coming to forks in the road, and having to choose through investigation and reflection, that makes existence a tragedy. The instant we stop to "inquire" we suffer. Profound mysteries and uncertainties confront us. Of whom shall we ask the way ? By what method shall we conduct the search ? Sometimes peo- ple have consulted the leaves on the floors of caves, or the entrails of sacrificial animals, or 12 the flight of birds, or the position of the stars, or the grounds in their teacups. Dunces ! But " David inquired of Jehovah." Strange as it may seem, there is no way so sure to find the pathway of life as to make a silence in the heart and consult the divine Oracle who dwells there. Other guides assist us, — history, science, experience, friends. But often, when all else has failed, we find that strange way of inquiring directly of Jehovah, and out of the unknown he speaks. Nothing is so wonder- ful as this. A flash of light breaks up out of unilluminated darkness. Vague feelings in- stantly crystallize into clear convictions. A wis- dom deeper than our own utters an augury or pronounces a decree, and we feel that it is ex cathedra. It is the voice, not of the soul itself, but of the God within the soul. And, after all, that is the true method of attaining wisdom. This is not to scorn or reject other methods. It is to supplement them by the final method. Go thy orld {Eph. 2 : 2). AX7HICH, by the way, is the gait of most of * * the people you meet. They set their pace to that of the procession in which they are walking, and it is "according to the course of this world. ' ' They do not seem to realize that there is any other world or any other pace. The children who are reared down in the Alleghany mountain valleys do not know that people anywhere move at a different pace from that of the mountaineers around them. The little pickaninnies down in the "Black Belt" do not dream that there is any other gait than that of the trifling people who are the only ones they have ever seen. Put them down in New York or Chicago, and the streets look like a race-course, and all the people seem on a run. Well, there's another "world" than this we live in. Its inhabitants walk in a swifter, nobler "course." What you need to do, my little man, is to catch their gait. It's too hot a pace for loafers and sinners. You 15 must lay off every weight and the sin that doth so easily beset you, and run with a sublime patience the race that is set before you, if you keep the gait of goal-winners like Paul. Icheerfutly make my defence {Acts 24 : 10), TT IS a first-class law of life never to be put on the defensive, — if you can possibly help it. Be aggressive, attack the enemy, do not be driven into a corner. When his pupil complained to the old fencing-master that his sword was too short to enable him to make an attack, he said, ' ' Take a step forward ! take a step forward ! " And yet there are times in every man's life when he has to explain his conduct. Circumstances conspire to put him in a bad light, as they did Paul. But how few people there are, comparatively, who can ' * cheerfully ' ' make their defense ! We have not said or done all that we are charged with, but a little word or a trivial deed has compromised us. We are embarrassed, we are confused, we suffer torture. It is torture ! What sensations those must be that a politician has to suffer when his enemies get hot upon the trail of some indiscretion or sin ! Many a man has been held back from accepting a nomination or an office by that shudder that follows his 16 remembrance of a still undiscovered crime. " Suppose they should digit up," he says, and the cold sweat starts on his forehead. Be sure of this : it is only the honest man who can make his defense "cheerfully." If, like the great Apostle, he has a conscience void of offense toward God and man, he can look his defam- ers and persecutors in the face with a tranquil courage. A The sacrifices of God are a broken spirit (Psa. 51 : 17)* '"THERE are broken spirits and broken * spirits. Do not misunderstand God. It is not a soul emptied of all hope and pur- pose, willing to be trampled under foot by every trouble and thwarted by every obstacle of life, that God loves. Like your heart, and mine, the heart of the Infinite One thrills at indomitable courage, at a spirit that the com- bined misfortunes of all time cannot make quail. If God can despise any one, it is the man who surrenders, and grovels and whines before the adversities of life. But there is a second kind of broken spirit. The world despises it as much as the first. Nothing can make this stupid world see the difference ; but nothing can blind God to it. There is no other moment in its whole existence when 17 a human soul is so beautiful and so lovable as in the moment of contrition. There are hearts on earth that can harden themselves against penitence and contrition, but there are none in heaven. Dives in tears, the tears of penitence, would have found as warm a welcome among the angels as Lazarus appear- ing in the bosom of Abraham. The key to Paradise is a tear. But it is a tear of peni- tence, not weakness. When I have a convenient season, I frill call thee unto me (Acts 24 : 25). T^VID you ever find a really convenient sea- **-^ son for doing a disagreeable task? I have hunted for such seasons, but in vain. There are almost horribly convenient seasons for doing all sorts of meannesses. There seem to me to be always about two thousand agreeable and easy moments in every hour for acts of genuine devilment on my part. But one has to hunt through about two years to find one single second in which it seems as if all nature had conspired to make it easy and pleasant to confess a sin or right a wrong. Other things come, but convenient seasons for penitence — never ! This present instant is the best one that ever will arrive. . 18 ^But abide thou m the things which thou hast learned (2 Tim. 3 : 14). 'T'HE thoughts that we receive from noble * men and women ought to become a habitation for our souls. As a matter of fact, every man's ideas are a more real dwelling- place than his own home. I consciously retire into mine a thousand times a day. Sometimes I go into this structure of thoughts (that I have woven as a bird does its nest) for quiet, sometimes for consolation, and sometimes to shut the gates and make a fight, like an old baron in his castle. There are temptations to leave the old abode, of course. There is a wild impulse in every heart to run away from home at times. We get tired of seeing the same old furniture, and the stupid patterns on the wall. We see other houses finer than our own. It is so with our thought- houses. They seem weak, inadequate, and dreary. We sigh for other and looser and more dazzling ideas of existence. But "stay, stay at home, my heart, and rest: home-keeping hearts are happiest. ' ' Only we must let our houses grow with our growth, like a snail's or an oyster's. Do not build them too rigid and inflexible, or they will burst. Say what you will, nothing is better about our thought- houses than the ' ' assurance that comes from knowing of whom we have received them." 19 Thoughts that sheltered Jesus Christ, Paul, Martin Luther, and my parents, are good enough for me. behold, I tell you a. mystery (/ Cor. 15 : 51). I TNDOUBTEDLY the resurrection of the ^ body and the immortality of the soul are "mysteries." And, because they are, thoughtless people reject them. Now, if this is a good reason, let us reject everything. For, at last, everything is an insoluble mys- tery. When we want to express our idea of the absolute simplicity of an idea, we say, "It is as plain as two sticks." But nothing can be more mysterious than those very sticks. Once they were living trees, and you can no more understand what that life was than you can understand infinity and eternity. Mystery hovers over all things here below. All are shrouded in a veil. " Every grain of sand is a mystery; so is every daisy in summer, and so is every snowflake in winter. But upwards and downwards and all around us science and speculation pass into mystery at last. ' ' The presence of mystery is no ground for unbelief, it is rather a reason for faith. The common- est facts and laws of nature, the daily provi- dences of life, are as full of incomprehensible- ness as the deepest doctrines of religion. A 20 religion without mystery would be as repugnant as a seed without life or a body without a soul. There is no religion without mystery. God himself is the great secret of nature. To me the beating of my heart, the expansion and contraction of my lungs, the ceaseless flow of thought in my brain, are as staggering as the resurrection of my body after death. It is these very mysteries that are the fuel of faith. ShQyw therefore let your hands be strong, and be ye Valiant; for Saul your lord is dead (2 Sam* 2 : 7). T^HERE seems to be a "therefore" to everything. How tired we grow of these " therefores ' ' ! How imperative and implaca- ble they are ! "Saul is dead, a new king is on the throne, and ' therefore ' you must be strong and valiant." You are rich, and "therefore" you must be benevolent. You are poor, and "therefore" you must be economical. You are a master, and ' ' there- fore ' ' you must be considerate. You are a servant, and "therefore" you must be faith- ful. You are a teacher, and "therefore " you must be held accountable. You are a pupil, and "therefore " you must be respectful. " Every why hath a wherefore," and every circum- 21 stance a "therefore." New duties are in- volved in new situations, just as plants are involved in seeds, and seeds in flowers. Little Bill, yesterday you were in kilts, and "there- fore ' ' you had a right to play from morning till night. To-day you are in knickerbockers, and " therefore " you must go to school and study. To-morrow you will be in trousers, and "therefore" must begin to be a man, and bear "the white man's burden." The whole moral system lies in that word ' ' there- fore. ' ' The possession of power, or virtue, or knowledge, involves responsibility in its use. You can no more sever the latter from the former than you can detach a quality from a substance. Slight become such as I am, except these bonds (Acts 26 : 29), TT TAKES a profound conviction that one is * right to sustain one in that wish. Could you wish that your dear friends were such as you are ? Are your convictions and ideas and faiths so sweet and satisfying that you could say, as Paul did, "I wish that you might be- come such as I am" ? If not, of course you have no power in the advocacy of your phi- losophy of life. Get right with yourself, get right with your fellow-men, get right with God, 22 get a clear conscience, get a happy heart, and then you will also get persuasive power. A captain who knows that his boat leaks, puts up a weak-kneed plea for passengers. It is not an easy thing for a father to urge his boys to be such as he is, if he chews tobacco and drinks beer. Render to all their dues {Rom. 13:7). DERHAPS no man ever yet realized the • extent of his obligations. Your obliga- tions are not limited by your appreciation of them. They are limited only by your powers to do good. It is the duty of every tallow dip and of every electric light to throw its beams as far as it can. We know all about the obligations others owe to us. How exact- ing we are of those courtesies and duties ! pitifully and contemptibly so, I think. How little our Saviour had to say about our "rights," and how much about our " obliga- tions." He did not demand his "pound of flesh ' ' from his creditors, but gave his whole body to his debtors. However much one may sympathize with the wage-earners in their clamorous demands for their "rights," it makes him sick at heart to hear so little from their lips about their "duties." Chris- tianity is a steady and determined will to give 2 3 to others what belongs to them, not to exact from them what belongs to us. Good neigh- borliness does not consist in the determination to keep your neighbor's hens out of your garden, but to keep yours out of his. Duties are reciprocal, — oh, yes ! But we have no need of a gospel to teach us to exact our ob- ligations, but only to fulfil them! cA.ga.inst thee, thee only, have I sinned {Psa. 51 : 4). T DO not myself know just what sin is against God — alone. All the sins that I know, besides being against God, are also against some other person or our own selves. But it is easy to understand how, in some impas- sioned moment of clarified vision, all con- sciousness of any other wrong is swallowed up in that of wrong against God. Mark you, though, that it takes moral natures of the highest order to attain this knowledge, the products of the most thorough spiritual education. What insight, imagination, illumi- nation, are required to trace the effect of our sins on the heart of God! It is like being told that the waves from a pebble break on the farthest shore of ocean. Both waves and sins seem dissipated and lost before reaching their 24 destination. And yet, as every telephone message passes through the central station, every evil deed and word and thought passes through the heart of God. Every wire runs into his bosom. Little Bill, you are listening to me incredulously. You do not see how your evil deeds can sadden the heart of God. Well, you did not see how they could sadden mine until you saw me break down and weep, the other day. Why should I care what you do? Why should a pang shoot through my heart ? I do not know, but it does. And it is no more wonderful that this pain strikes through the heart of your other Father. Uzzah put forth his hand to the ark of God, . . . And God smote him there for his error (2 Sam. 6 : 6,7). T^HERE is a skeptical distrust of God's abil- ity to carry his church over the rough places in the journey that results in immeasur- able harm j for, in trying to keep it from fall- ing by the way, men stretch forth their hands to deeds of actual impiety. In this present period many a good man, troubled and scared by the prospect of the church's overthrow, has tried to prop it up with sensational preaching, or questionable methods of business, or alien 25 institutions. All such things are extraneous. They become a hindrance and drag to the progress of the kingdom. There is a sense in which the church of Christ cannot prosper without the support of the hand of every child of God, but there is also a sense in which it will go forward on its way as surely as the revolving earth itself, — which we ride on, and cannot sustain by lifting nor hasten by push- ing. Perhaps a good motto for the church of this age would be, "Impious Uzzahs, hands off!" A Inquired foho he itt not forsake his oeople (/ Sam, 12 : 22), ]M OT so long as there is a single purpose in the heart of man for him to hold on to! I think, myself, that the grip of God on the human soul is like the grip of gravity on mat- ter, — not an atom of which ever gets away. It is ground to imponderable powder j burnt into impalpable smoke j melted into invisible vapor ; it is tossed about and hidden and ?7 transformed ; but it never gets away from the grip of gravity. Samuel seemed to feel that way about the souls of men, and I do top. God will never forsake them. So don't get discouraged and let go your hold of him who never lets go his hold of you ! Neither do your true friends ever forsake you. You for- sake them, — that is the trouble. You may not believe it, but there are more people in the world like this good old Samuel than you know anything about. & *But lighting upon a place where t e o>o seas met, they ran the vessel aground {Acts 27 : 41). T^HIS is what the doctors call " heroic treat- ment." But nobody can deny that, in many of life's most significant ventures, the only way to save the crew is to scuttle the ship or run it on to the shore. Many a man is be- ing dragged down to financial ruin by a bad business location which he hasn't the courage to desert. Perhaps the waters of a river run into his cellar j perhaps the business center of the city has moved. He hangs on and on, in hope of changes that never come, and finally goes down under the ruin. He had better have run his vessel aground, and begun life 38 over again. Perhaps he has engaged in a business whose immorality he did not perceive at first, — as so many get into saloon-keeping or distilling when they are young and ignorant. At last his conscience has been enlightened, and he clearly perceives that his business will wreck him morally. But the question of bread and butter for his family paralyzes him when he tries to forsake it. He holds on and holds on, day after day, year after year, until he has grown hardened or discouraged, and the good dies out of his soul. How much better it would have been to have run the vessel aground in the place where those two seas of good and evil met ! It's a last resort, a desperate remedy, but it's often the only one. So slip your cable, unship your helm, run your vessel on the rocks ; then go and cut down trees and build a better one. cAnd all ay, and the angels of God met him (Gen. 32 : /)♦ OOMETHING like that will happen to every *** man who goes on his own way, — not on the path marked out for Napoleon or Wash- ington, but for him, plain John Smith. Not on the way chosen by himself against the will of God, but chosen by God's will for him, — the strait, narrow, individual path to the goal of his own personal life. Yes, on that path God's good angels will meet him ! There he will encounter the angels of his household, — his wife and little children. There he will find his true friends. There he will meet his joys and his sorrows, his failures and his triumphs, his losses and his gains. There he will catch more than passing glimpses of the divine pres- ence that hovers about him always. Nothing is so sweet, nothing so satisfying, as to be in 4* the "way" your feet were made to travel Do not leave it for an instant. A / send you forth as lambs in the midst of wolves {Luke 10 : 3), T^HERE may be more kinds of animals in * the human race than just lambs and wolves ; but these two varieties predomi- nate. I think it is probably right to try to be something else, but, if you are shut up to the choice, be a lamb every time. Be bitten rather than bite. Oh ! I know quite well that is not the kind of advice you will hear in "Wall Street," but I stick to it. Die rather than wrong or rob any one. Patience, gentleness, love, — these are the powers that will save the world. The lambs will "win out " in the long run. I am one of those who think that sometimes the wolves have to be hung up by the heels. I rather think that it may be all right to offer a reward for their scalps. Saloon-keepers must be brought up with a sharp turn. Robbers must be shut up in the "pen." Murderers must be electrocuted. But, after all, it is the lamb, and not the lion, who is to win in the fight against the wolves. It is more often by being eaten than by eating that we bring men to 4* their senses. We must suffer injustice, if we want to help save the world. It is " heaping coals of fire on heads" that restores brains to reason. Kill men with kindness. It was the unresisting submission of Jesus that at last broke the heart of humanity. blessed are the pure in heart {Matt* 4 : 8), COME things can be seen through the brain, ^ but others only through the heart. Sup- pose you had no heart. Do you think you could see your mother ? Do you think you see her with the same faculty with which you see the multiplication-table or the rule for cube root ? I do not. If you should come home from school some day with your temper all roused, and your heart so full of mad that you could scarcely speak, you would not see your mother at all. You might look at her, but you would not really behold her. You could not even see the baby. The little thing that crawls up to you, and that you feel like slapping, would not really be the baby. It would be something else. The real baby would be invisible to you until you got over being mad. That is why we say, "I was so mad I could not see." Something really blinds the 43 eye of the soul. When the anger all runs out of your heart, then you can see again, just as when the frost melts from the window-pane. No man ever saw God when he was mad. No man ever saw God when his heart was full of vanity, or envy, or impurity. He sees something vast, awful, ugly, and repellent, but it is not God. c4nd he dreamed, and behold, a ladder {Gen. 28 : 12). 1VTOTHING could be more true or more beautiful. Just as every road in the Roman Empire led to Rome, every line erected on earth runs straight to heaven. Any sun- beam, followed to the end, will lead us to its effulgent source. Just as any little Roman lad could step out of his door and strike the high- way with absolute certainty of reaching the palace of the Caesar ; just as his eye may travel on the sunbeam from his own bright eye to the sun, he can find the foot of a ladder on the spot where he stands that will lead him straight to heaven and God. You do not have to go to Jerusalem or Mecca or Rome to find the first round of it. Try it now. Be very still a moment. Close your eyes in order to con- centrate your thought. Now lift that thought 44 to God. Straight as the sunbeam's track, swift as its flight, you are in the divine pres- ence. God has a telephone in the heart of every one, and you need not call a central office to reach him. How like the angels go- ing back and forth are our thoughts and his ! Every tree therefore that bringeth not forth good fruit {Luke 3:9), TTHAT is a solemn and momentous hour * when this conception of life bursts into the sluggish, selfish soul of a man. To every earnest man it comes. He hears a voice say- ing to him : " The hour has struck when thou must stand forth and show what is in thee. Reveal thyself. Thou canst no longer skulk in the rear. Draw thy sword ! Show thy hand ! Bear fruit ! If there is anything in thee, go forward and upward ; if not, descend, retreat. Make place for better men. You have sat in that professor's chair, or stood in that pulpit, or edited that paper, or headed that party, long enough without getting anything done. Step down, laggard ! ' ' When these thoughts thundered in the soul of John, he left the desert for the haunts of men. This is the trumpet call we need. More men need to be aroused than comforted. 45 If ye then, being cfbil, knom> ho e a> to give good gifts (Matt* 7 : //). A LL the love and generosity and bountiful- ** ness of a father's or a mother's heart comes from God as surely as all the luster and glory of a diamond or a dew-drop come from the sun. If they are kind, it is only because God is kind. If you trust them, that is the reason for trusting him who made them. But do not forget that love sometimes reveals itself by withholding as well as by bestowing. The eagle shows her love as much by not giving her young ones a fresh rabbit every hour or two as by giving it. Perhaps more ! Perhaps I would rather give my boy ten dollars than see him get down into a ditch and dig it out. But I should show my love more by letting him earn it for himself. He *h>as mdbed %>ith compassion (Lake 10 : 33), \17HAT kind of compassion is it which does * not move a man ? What kind of a mainspring would it be in a watch which did not move the hands? What kind of steam would it be in a boiler which did not move the piston-rods ? All the great emotions of the soul are "motor powers." But in some souls these emotions are about like a little 4 6 trickle of sap running out of a maple-tree try- ing to turn the water-wheel of a great big mill. You say you feel compassion? Well, why doesn't it drive your feet and hands? Feet, hands, heart, head, — everything, ought to commence to jump and whir (just as things do when the motorman turns on the current), if the compassion is genuine. Compassion is a motor power or nothing. Don't ever say you are a kind man unless your kindness moves you. What God hath cleansed, make not thou common (Acts 11 : 9). IT ERE lies one of those holy mysteries of A * the spiritual world, which I, for one, approach with the same wonder and reverence as the blooming of a century-plant, the break- ing of the egg-shells when the birds come forth into life, the birth of a little child. The in- stant that a man obeys a divine command, that moment the duty ceases to be irksome. What a transforming touch hath this sublime virtue, obedience ! The dark and sombre tasks of life are flooded with light ; the arduous and repul- sive ones are made easy and sweet ; drudgery becomes beatitude, the common becomes both clean and holy, by a divine magic. I wish I could cram into a single word my profound 47 conviction that the most common things of life are the most sacred. The tasks we most in- dignantly spurn, — these possess, in a superla- tive degree, that holy, blessed element. Dirt is as sacred as sunlight, — is it not? In what respect does the digging of a sewer, to drain off the poisons which threaten human life, fall so far below, in dignity and sublimity, the writing of a book or painting of a picture ? The "commonness" is in the mind that scorns. & Thou shatt not kitl {Exod. 20 : 13). CVERY moral obligation rests back finally ' upon the principle that life is sacred. All life has a certain celestial character, and never ought to be taken without some great and good reason. The lowest forms are the least sacred, the highest the most sacred. Even the life of a weed, of a mosquito, of a snake, ought not to be taken without reason. The increasing sense of this sacredness is one of the great hopes of the modern world. Boys are getting more incapable of killing birds and squirrels than they used to be, thank God ! The most sacred thing in the world (because the noblest form of life) is a human being. To rob it of its life is the consummation of evil. And now listen to this : Murder is the logic of all vice. 4 8 If you do not wish to be a murderer, do not cherish any vice. Ambition, avarice, lust, jealousy, bitterness, — there is not one of them that has not led to innumerable murders. Give them full scope in your heart, and sooner or later you will find them hurling you in some uncontrollable passion against a fellow-creature. What a mysterious tendency ! Who can ex- plain that infernal gravitation of every vice toward murder ? Little Bill, if you don' t con- trol that temper, you (yes, you, dear, sweet little Bill ! ) may get so mad some day as to kill a man. A 'Being sent forth by the Holy Spirit {Ads 13 : 4). THERE are times in the lives of men like Paul and Savonarola, like Moody and Lincoln, when the sense of being flung forth by the mighty hand of God upon their mission is like that of an arrow's feeling the thrust of the bow-string, or the cannon-ball the impact of the powder. When Livingstone plunged into the heart of the Dark Continent, he felt himself thus sent forth by the Holy Ghost ; and there isn't one of us, from the oldest man to the youngest child, that may not live so conscientiously, so earnestly, as to feel that Holy Spirit speeding us on our way. Just you 49 do to-day (to the last point of accuracy) ex- actly what you ought to do, and you will feel like a ship under full sail, — joyous, bounding, exultant. & Let me cast out the mote out of thine eye! {Matt. 7 : 4.) r\¥ COURSE, there have to be critics in ^^^ human society, just as there have to be fly-papers and rat-traps in houses. But sharp- ening the eye to look abroad blunts it for look- ing at home. The " watch " on the masthead sees other vessels, but not his own. Do not be a critic unless you are called to it by some spiritual necessity, and even then you will need to pray twice as often and as hard as any other person in the world. What doth hinder me to be baptized? (Acts 8 : 36.) M OTHING ! There is no hindrance to the performance of duty, outside of one's own soul. Believe that. If a duty is impos- sible, it is not a duty. God never puts a man in a situation where he cannot fulfil the behests of his conscience. Trust him for always put- ting water within reach of the man who feels that he must be baptized. The hindrances to 5o the divine life are always and only in the soul itself. Do not blame your dereliction in duty on other people or on Providence. What is it that hinders you from confessing Christ ? Your pride, your cowardice, your selfishness, — nothing else. Do not be deceived. Face the music. "If you are not satisfied with the face you see in the mirror, do not blame or break the glass." A cAnd Abram