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March 27, 1912. ] T II ii *
One day I heard a beautiful thing. I was
visiting at a friend's house, and I found him rejoicing
in the company of his grandchild, a little
maiden of ten years. Iler parents had their
home in a far English city, and she was on a
visit to her grandfather. He told me that she
was going home in a few days. "And I'll miss
her when she goes," he said. "It will be like
death in the house." It would be "like a death
in the house," and the wee lassie was only going
home! And this is what it means when theLord's
people die. They are missed here, but
they have gone home?home to the Father's
House; and it becomes us to rejoice in their joy,
and labor that we may be found worthy to share
it and see their dear faces in the blessed place.?
The Presbyterian, Toronto.
THE SECURITY OF CHRISTIANITY.
The ark of God was never taken till it was
surrounded by the arms of earthly defenders
In captivity its sanctity was sufficient to vindicate
it from insults, and to lay the hostile fiend
prostrate on the threshold of its own temple.
The real security of Christianity is to be found
in its benevolent morality, in its exquisite adaptation
to the human heart, in the facility with
which its scheme accommodates itself to the
capacity of every human intellect, in the consolation
which it bears to every house of mourning,
in the light with which it brightens the
great mystery of the grave. To such a system
it can bring no addition of dignity or strength,
that it is a part and parcel of the common law.
It has not now for the first time to rely on the
force of its own beauty. Its sublime theology
confounded the great Grecian schools in the
fair conflict of reason with reason. The bravest
and wisest of the Caesars found their arms and
their policy unavailing, when opposed to the
weapons that were noWarnal, and the kingdom
that was not of this world. The victory which
Porphyry and Diocletian failed to gain is not,
to all appearance, reserved for any of tho^e who
have in this age directed their attacks against
1.1 i i i i - c i.i r* i i iL . l t
me iasi restraint 01 me puweriui, ami me ia.ni,
hope of the wretched. The whole history of
Christianity shows that she is in far -greater
danger of being corrupted by the alliance of
power than of being crushed by its opposition.
Those who thrust temporal sovereignty upon
her, treat her as their prototypes treated her
author. They bow the knee, and spit upon her;
they cry, "Hail!" and smite her on the cheek;
they put a sceptre in her hand, and it is a fragile
reed; they crown her, but it is with thorns;
they cover with purple the wounds which their
own hands have inflicted on her and inscribe
magnificent titles over the Cross on which they
have fixed her to perish in ignominy and pain.
?Lord Macaulay.
PRAYER.
Once more we face the day that can be dreadful
only to our poor sight and trembling faith.
For Thou hast made flame and pain, the hurricane
and quaking earth to be Thy ministers of
grace. Shall trust depart when shadows fall?
Thou art "in the shadows keeping watch, above
Thine own." As truly in severity as in gentleness,
Thou art the All-Loving and All-Wise.
Shall we fear to go anywhere? Lord, Thou art
everywhere! Defend us only from the blindness
and fear of ignorance and sin. Draw
us nearer to Thee, this day, by any means
in Thy good pleasure, so that at last, truly
Knowing Thy way, we shall rise above the worst
that circumstances may do into joy unspeakable
and peace unbroken. In the name of Him made
perfect through suffering. Amen.?Henry B.
Taylor.
?. ESBYT BRIAN OF THE SO
FIRST AID FOR THE TEMPTED.
HENRY A. STIMPSON.
Men everywhere are discussing Christianity.
The whole problem centres in Jesus Christ.
Men argue about Revelation, about the Bible,
about the fall of man, about miracles and the
like. All is unconvincing. Then men turn to
him. When we come to know him as Paul knew
him when he cried, "W.ho art Thou, Lord?"
and heard the answer, "I am Jesus whom thou
pensecutest," in prompt self-surrender we are
ibovpH tn cav Wliof trilf 4V*am V?o?a 4a Q
...v . vv* VX/ y " nut nut IUVU XIOYC 111C IU U" I
Then we know Jesus Christ for himself. It is
his presence?the Light of God that shone in
his face?that awakens us and makes for us a
new life possible. We can be born again. We
can be set back on the track. The right direction
can yet be given to our powers. Life with
all that it means and with all that we tried to
forget in it once more opens before us. We give
ourselves to him and then everything falls into
line. The Resurrection, the miracles, the mystery
of the Incarnation all are as they should be.
i ney could not have been otherwise. God has
indeed redeemed the world unto himself, and
the glad heart of the penitent sinner cries out,
44Because he lives, I shall live also."
Tt is this awakening of the dead self, the discovery
of one who believes that goodness is still
possible in us, that awakens in our hearts the
conviction that that goodness is still within our
reach. No matter who I am, or how low I have
sunk, or how weak I have proved myself before
temptation, or how completely others have cast
me out, Jesus Christ believes in me. Fie has
come to seek and to save me. He has given himself
for me as truly and as completely as if I
were the only sinner in all God's universe, for he
came to seek and to save the lost, no matter how
many or how few, and as a true seeker of the
lost, he is in search of the one that is lost, and
the joy among the angels of God over the find
mg jo ao uuc uvci mc uue tus uvcr nit; million.
With the finding of the lost and the revelation
of the redeeming love, comes the gift of the
new power. The life that he bestows is a
genuine life. It continues. It unfolds from
within. It reproduces itself. It bears a fitting
fruit. Joy and peace and self-control and
strength come with it. One who but now was
dead is alive again. The fear of death vanishes.
He has confidence in the life beyond he has the
assurance of the life that now is. Paradise is a
reality because it has already begun in the soul,
and all because the revelation of God in Jesus
Christ is the revelation of One who believes in
us long after we have ceased to believe in our
DtlV CO.
Here then is the commission for every disciple
of Jesus Christ. It is to get goodness back
on the track, to help ram believe in what is still
in themselves. They have tried to destroy it.
It is buried under the consciousness of what
seems a burntd out life; though it is deep beneath
the ashes it is a live coal still. They do
not know it. They do not believe in its possibility,
only because they do not know Jesus
Christ. The business of the follower of Jesus
Christ is to be Jesus Christ to them to show
that he believes in them by believing in them
first ourselves. As we are able to do this, Christ
speaks through his disciples to those who are in
need of him, and the Unseen Christ reveals himself
in the faith and the love of his disciples.?
The New Things of God.
If there be?g^pd in that I wrought,
Thy hand compelled it, Master, thine;
Where I have failed to meet thy thought,
I know, through thee, the blame in mine.
I U T H (391) 5
FIFTEEN YEARS WITHOUT A BIRTHDAY.
There is a young mail in Washington, now in
his sixteenth year, who some months ago began
preparations for the celebration of his birthday.
The reason is that it will be the tirst birthday
he has ever had; he wants to make it a memorable
occasion. It is strange that a youth should
be in his sixteenth year and never have had,
since the time of his biitli, a natal day to celebrate;
but tb is is the way the Fate-; have treated
him:
He was bom on the twenty-ninth of February,
J 896. Of course he could not have another birth,
day until another leap-year rolled round?which
would bring him to his fourth year in 1900. But
it will be remembered that, according to the Gregorian
calendar, in use throughout mast of the
civilized world, the last year of every century
skips the leap-year day, so that there was no
twenty-ninth of February in 1900. Ilence the
young man was cheated out of that first birthday.
In 1904, the next year in which he could rightfully
claim a birthday, he was in Russia with his
father until the twenty-fifth of February, according
to the Russian calendar, on which day
they left that country for home. But on arriving
in Paris two days later, the hoy found that
the calendars marked the fifth of March instead
of the twenty-seventh of February, due to the
fact that the Russian calendar is several days
behind the Gregorian. . Thus he had to swallow
his disappointment a second time, and look forward
to his first birthday in 1908.
Put alas! those tricky Fates! Early in 1908
his father, who is a United States army officer,
was ordered to the Philippines, and sailed with
his family from San Francisco to Manila about
the middle of February in that year. As is well
known, there is a point, or rather a meridian
line, in the Pacific Ocean, which marks one hundred
and eighty degrees of longitude, where all
vessels bound toward the setting sun have to
drop a day from their calendar: and as luck
would have it, the .steamer conveying this birthdayless
boy, crassed this line 011 the twenty-eight
of February, and the captain had to drop out
the twenty-ninth.
Thus the youth who is now verging on to sixteen
years of age, has never had a birthday!
But as his family seems to be rootrd in Washington
indefinitely now, and as the mathematicians
tell him there is no freak of calendar or time
that can defraud him of his long-deferred rights
on the twenty-ninth of February, 1912, he has
already begun preparations for a very special
celebration.?Youth 'a Companion.
RELIGION COVERS ALL.
You can not draw any lines whatever when
you are dealing with the religious life. There
are no provinces outside of it. It covers the
equator and the poles, and thrusts its root into
the core of the world of personality. If it does
not go through and through a man, it does not
!_ _ _ 1 .11 mL-1 11 -x? n
go imo nun at an. i nai 13 me nature 01 religion;
it is as thorough-going, as permeating,
as life itself. It passes into and suffuses the
least things?as the life-blood warms the very
finger-tips?and says: "These are mine; these
are sacred things. Make them so." Nothing is
too small or remote to have a vital religious
significance. If we really and truly believe that,
we will make an end of drawing those futile lines
between what we call -secular and religious, commonplace
and sacred. There are no such distinctions
in the new life which the Lord Jesus
Christ brought into the world. Like his own
1 L. M -11
garment, uiat roue 01 uxe jb an one piece, seamless,
inseparable, and every thread that enters
it runs straight through warp or woof, and intertwines
with every other thread to form the entire
fabric of character.?James Ruckham.