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4 (772) I H E
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lly Marianne Furningliaiiu
God sometimes calls those servants home
WhoBe years are in their prime.
But He has better measures than
The pendulum of time;
Some workers quickly do their task
Of service and of love,
So their promotion early comes
To higher work above.
? ...i ?
God loves them, and He spares them much,
Not theirs to wait alone,
And feel the ache of useless years,
Yvith strength and vigor gone;
'lhey are not stranded derelicts
Vvhile tides go rushing by,
They do their part and win the race
And then they gently die.
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Not theirs to lift their fading eyes
And find no comrades left,
Not theirs to dwell among the graves
Forsaken and bereft;
They pass from work to better work,
And rest before the noon,
Ah, God is very good to them,
They do not die too soon.?Ex.
WESTERING.
BY MKS. SUSAN PEKRY.
lii closing the 4' Life and Letters of Baroness
liunsen," those of us who are "westering" so
fast, cannot help feeling that we have been
with a companion whose downward slope was the
most beautiful part of the journey. In September,
1814, when she was eighty-three years old.
she writes: "How can I be thankful enough for
all the blessings that surround my advanced
life? As mild and gradual as the decline of this
Imillltlhll tiosiuim ie ilio donlina nf mw .1 .?tro "
How helpful to the soul that is nearing the end
of the journey, is the companionship of such a
noble spirit, if only for a few hours. The good
lives of others who have passed through the
Great Gates before us, are incentives to us who
are following on, to make our lives like theirs.
Yet the word "old," when applied to us, falls
upon our ears as discourteous, 'and a great indignity.
"I never realized 1 was 'old' " said a
friend, "until 1 stepped off from the cars in a
city where I was a stranger, and was accosted
by a newsboy with the words 'Old gentleman,
want to buy a paper?' You may be sure," the
gentleman said, "that I didn't buy a paper of
that boy. 1 considered myself highly insulted.
But when 1 went home and saw my white hair
and my snowy beard, and realized how much
and how hard 1 leaned upon my cane, I really in
my heart forgave the little newsboy. I knew I
was what the young folks could in truth call
old."
How the words Grandpapa and Grandmama
sound when the first grandchild lisps them! The
first thought that comes is "Can I be old enough
to be called Grandpapa or Grandmama?" Time
steals a march upon us all. Age with most of us is
a fact, but not a felt fact; we only realize it by
reckoning up the number of years that have passed
since our names were registered under the
head of "Births" in the old family Bible. Baroness
Bunsen says: "We have a trick of swimming
down the stream of time too much en
grossed with the immediate objects right and
left, to see how rapidly we approach a mark in
the way to which we have been tending for a
long distance." Our peculiarities, before we are
aware, are intensified to such a degree that they
master us. Every day and every hour as we grow
older, we should cultivate those traits of character
that will make us lovely to those who will
minister to us in the days when our strength
fails us. We must weave firmly into the web of
PRESBYTERIAN OF THE SO
leadings
life the threads that will give strength and beauty
to the whole fabric?threads that after we
have dropped, our children and grandchildren
will take up again, because of their lasting worth
and beauty. Around us let there be an atmos
phere of serenity and peace; an acquiescence in
the will of our Father in heaven, notwithstanding
some of His dealings with us have been very
mysterious. If we have not understood His dealings
with us, it has been because we have "leaned
too much to our own understanding." He does
what is best for each of His children, and in
His own good time He will make it all plain to
us.
In the "Life of Baroness Bunsen" we find the
most noble type of wifehood and motherhood.
We find a beautiful example of the growing love
and sympathy between husband and wife as they
journeyed westward. The Baron was called to
pass through the Great Gates first, and in parting
with his wife, he said "Farewell for a time,
my Fanny, mv first, mv onlv lovo in vnn T
? / ^ - -f V ! * " I J *
have loved that which is eternal." Such was the
love of Charles Kingsley for his Fanny. The
children leave the home, they spiead themselves
far and wide from the parent tree. "Every
young bird flutters away from its nest, however
soft. Every little rabbit quits the comfortable
hole in which he was born, and we think it fit and
right they should do so, even though there are
hawks and weasels about." The old folks are left
alone with each other. How pleasant and lovely
in their lives if they can both say
"Dear Heart, our lives so happily How,
So lightly we heed the flying hours,
We only know Winter has gone?by the flowers;
We only know Winter has come?by thesuow."
"Westering" is indeed the most beautiful
pait of our journey, if we will only travel along
with the setting sun shining brightly into our
f<aees and our hearts. "Westering" is traveling
toward the Beulah land, where "They heard
the continual song of birds, and saw every day
the liowers appear in the earth, and heard the
voice of the turtle in the land. In this coun
try the sun shineth day and night. Here they
were within sight of the city they were going to,
also here met them some of the inhabitants thereof;
for in this land the shining ones commonly
walked, because it was on the borders of heaven.
Now, as they walked in this land they had more
rejoicing than in parts more remote from the
kingdom to which they were bound." So for
us "In the evening time it shall be light."?Ex.
FRIENDSHIP IN CLOTHES.
"Your old suit is getting rather shabby, Harold,"
said his mother; "perhaps you had begin
to wear your new one to school." Harold hesitated.
He did like to appear well dressed among
a school of well-dressed boys. But in a moment
he replied slowly: "No, I guess I won't, thank
you, mother. It might make George feel bad.
You see, his dad's been wanting him to stay
out of school to work, and he promised that if
he could only go to school, he wouldn't ask for
any new clothes this year. So he's got to wear
his old ones, and I think I'll wear mine. But
don't you peach a word, mother," and Harold
went off whistling.?Wellspring.
By the stubble you may guess the grain.?
Homer.
g
U T H [August 16, 1911
TRUTHFUL SINGING.
"Ella," said Julia to her friend as they walked
home together from a Wednesday evening
lecture, "why didn't you sing that last hymn?
It would have suited your voice exactly."
Ella was silent a moment, and then replied,
"To tell the truth, Julia, I could not sing that
hymn; I wish 1 could. I wish I felt such ardent
longings for heaven, such an assurance of reaching
there. 1 know such feelings are right, but
I'm afraid I do not possess them, and I dare not
sing such words without feeling them."
"But do you never sing words that you do
not actually feel?" asked Julia, adding, "The
hymns are all good; we ought to feel what they
express; and it does not seem as if it could be
wrong for anybody to sing them."
"But, Julia, would you be so insincere as to go
to one for whom you did not really care at all,
and tell her how much you loved her; or to profess
to another how much you wished to visit
her, when you would be sorry to receive an invitation
from her?"
"Certainly, I should call that very deceitful,"
answered Julia, who was a sincere girl.
"Well, then, dear Julia, it is just for this reason
that I cannot sing all hymns; it is not sufficient
that I ought to feel so. I cannot sing,
I'm fettered and chaimed up in clay,
I struggle and pant to be free;
I long to be soaring away
My God and my Savior to see.'
because it would not be true in my case, and I
should add to the sin of lacking a right feeling,
the worse sin of professing a feeling which
I have not. I hope I am a Christian; I feel that
I love the Savior; I am trying to follow him;
if it were God's will, I trust, I should be willing
to go; but I cannot sav 1 lona to he taken awnv
now; and I dare not say, in the presence of theheart-searching
God, who 'desireth truth in the
inward parts,' words which I oannot say from
the heart."
Ella stopped, having already said more than
was her wont; and Juli'a, to whom all this seemed
to be a new idea, was silent until they reached
her home. She was not, like her friend Ella, a
Christian, tho' she was a girl of good principles
and religious education. She had sung without
much thought the hymns given out that evening,
although they expressed the ecstacy of Christian
rapture, the utmost intense longings to depart
and be with Him. The tunes were sweet, Julia
loved to sing, and that was all; but now, what
Ella had said struck her with force. That very
evening she had sung,
"Jerusalem, my happy home;"
"Sweet land of rest, for thee I sigh,"
and she shrank from the thought, that God
might, perhaps, answer her sincere prayer, and
take her away from earth. "Oh," thought she,
"if Ella does not feel as if she could sing such
hymns, how dare 1 sing them? I am sure she
would go to heaven if she died, but if God should
take me, what would become of me?"
Julia rested not until she could sing of love to
Jesus, and praises to God from her heart, nor until
she could say, that, though she "had not already
attained, neither was already perfect,"
she was "following on to know the Lord."
There is another elnss r\f Viittv^o ?v:
~ vrjt UJUUIO^ 111 WII1UI1
hardly any child, whether a Christian or not,
can join ; such as?
This world'8 a wilderness of woe,
This world is not my home."
"No tranquil joys on earth I know,
No peaceful, sheltering home;