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June 5, 1012] THE
such a committee is an impossibility I shall
reply that never before was such a thing as
feasible as it is today. Moreover, I ask "Has
not Protestantism succeeded in organizing an
International Sunday School Committee which
works wonders today." Why then can such
a thing longer be considered an impossibility?
hecond: The right solution of the problem
ought to include a very aggressive evangelical
campaign not simply to meet the demands
of so many millions of foreigners who are
practically neglected by Protestantism. 1 am a
great believer in the Foreign Missionary
Movement. 1 consider such a wonderful enterprise
one of God's greatest blessings on
Protestantism and the best visible proof that
God is with us, as Protestants.
1 can not bear to see how few Protestants
know that we have about thirty million foreigners
whose spiritual well-being receives
less attention here than we give to the Mexicans
in Mexico, the Coreans in Corea, or even
the Africans in Africa.
Let us not make such a wrong discrimination
between Home and Foreign Missions and
let us treat the foreigner at home as we treat
him abroad.
Third: The right solution of the problem
ought to include the evangeliation of the Roman
Catholics here as Protestants undertake this
work abroad.
To believe that the Italian and the Mexican
and the Pole need the Gospel when they are
in Italy, Mexico, or Poland, and that they do
not need it when they enter the United States
is one of the most dangerous inconsistencies
and one of the gravest errors that American
Protestantism can commit.
FOOD AND EXERCISE.
It is patent to everybody that one must
have plenty of suitable food, not only to sustain
life, but to furnish power for physical ex
< n ise. wnen one ceases to eat good food,
even for a few days, he is thereby weakened,
and hence incapacitated for vigorous exercise.
Is this fact any less true in its application
to spiritual life? It may be admitted that
there is a great deal of religious activity in
the churches of the land. Many of the members
are religious hustlers; but such activity
may have 110 connection with true spiritual
life. The Christian must have spiritual food,
if his religious exercises have force and influence
in them.
The late George Muller of England, was a
prodigious Christian worker; but he was also a
constant partaker of spiritual food. He had a
great appetite for the word of God and he
did not cast aside the least particle of it. He
leaated on it with a growing relish. This is
One fPflfiAn urhxr V*o woo "A T ?
?..??? uu n aa gu iiugu llljr ucuvi". Ill
the strength of that food he went onward,
doing more good than a hundred ordinary
t'hristian men did. And it was because of his
leeding on Bible truth that he was so wise a
h-ader of other people. We might consider the
examples of many other men of the same general
type, among them being C. H. Spurgeon,
D|\ McLaren and Dr. Joseph Parker, of England.
They were immense feeders on Bible
truth, never swerving a particle from it. They
were as great in their activities. They fed
themselves to feed thousands. And our own
1*- L. Moody pursued a similar course. He
saturated himself with the living water of the
living word of God, and he exercised himself
accordingly. Many "active members" of our
'hurches need a great deal more of spiritual
fo?d. O. H. Wetherbe.
PRESBYTERIAN OF THE SC
THOUGHTS FOR THE QUIET HOUR.
Is there no danger of our exaggerating the
power of money in these days of increasing demand
for it? Does God measure our love to
Him by the amount of money we give for the
advance of His Kingdom?
The twelfth chapter of 1st Corinthians,
which some one calls her "Comfort Chapter,"
shows that as there are different members of
the body, each having its own part to perform,
so there are different kinds of service to be
rendered by us.
A i ? "
vmr time, our guts ot mmd, and of body too,
even our manners; indeed, if we give our
whole selves, we may not keep back anything
that may affect our influence, directly or in'directly
with others.
What a tremendous difference it would make
in our lives if we recognized our ambitions
as belonging to God! That does not
mean that it must be used only for directly
ivugiuua uni mat any gut, neauty,
voice, the gift of literary taleut?all arc His,
and have been given us "to profit with."
Striving to please God is the very highest
form of ambition, and it is a safe ambition
too, because the divine purpose for us is that
we shall be like Him.
What examples skillful cooks are to us!
Think how to cook a full meal, meat, and various
kinds of vegetables, or breads at one
time, each requiring different treatment, yet
all well-cooked,?and all served in proper condition.
We are too often inclined to persuade ourselves
that we cannot, at the same time love,
pray for, and work for, the upbuilding of
God's kingdom in far-off Africa, in the slums
of our cities, in the neglected neighborhoods
of our country and in our own homes without
neglecting something. Yet it is God's work
and He is pledged to help us. Here is where
the cooks are examples to us!
"Thy word have I hid in mine heart that 1
might not sin against Thee." If we had God's
word hidden in our hearts, would we not love
people more? Of course we must love Him
more if His word is hidden in our hearts, but
would have to work the other way too, lor He
said: "This is my commandment that ye love
one another as I have loved you!" To fail in
this is to sin against Him, and we are not to
love in a general, indefinite way, or to pray
for others that way either, but in that patient,
definite Christlike way that makes us think
kindly, and even tenderly of our brother even
when he is not particularly fond of us.
O. D.
THE POETRY OF RELIGION.
BY REV. S. W. ROGERS, PH. D.
Michael Angelo, the great sculptor, was gazing
on a rough stone that had been discarded as useless
by a fellow craftsman.
"Ah!" said he, "there is an angel in that
stoneand, under the magic touch of the master
painter and sculptor, the beautiful form and
radiant features of the angel glided into view.
The Master can bring forth into symmetry
and beauty the rough angularities of character
until our angel side beams from lives all broken
and marred by sin.
According to Webster in one of his definitions,
poetry is the "art of idealizing in thought and
in expression."
According to $ts Greek derivation, a poet is
one who makes; whether he be a maker of Corinthian
columns; whether a fashioner of Apollos
and Venuses and Cupids from Pentelic and
Parian blocks of marble; whether he has caught
IUTH (607) 3
the divine symphonies of the muses and woven
them into threads of divine harmony; whether
his architectural genius has planned such a noble
cathedral as to call forth the inscription, "Si
quaeris monumentum, circumspice whether
as a landscape gardener he rears hanging gardens
with their aerial fountains and lofty sheens,
or whether, under the never-failing tuition of
uie supreme Architect of the universe, he takes
the broken shards of a mined life and shapes
them into forms of Christian character excelling
the noblest creations of Phidias in his prime.
Vergil and Homer sang in dactylic hexameters
their great epics of Roman ancestry and Grecian
prowess. They made their ideas into ideals, and
the result was two great poems.
To take the rough, uncouth thoughts of sin
and change them into ideas of holiness is poetry
of the highest order.
It is not merely to find
"Books in the running brooks,
Sermons in stones nnrt ornnrl
?
but it is the art of expressing its ideal in the
human soul.
Take the case of Saint Paul. Under the tuition
of the Poet Laureate of the universe,?the
Divine Poet, who inspired the sublime strains of
Job, the poet under whose inspiration the
rhythmic melodies of the Psalms were harped,
the poet whose influence breathes through the
epigrammatic thoughts of the "Preacher" in
Proverbs, or empowered the exuberant floral
decorations of the Song of Solomon,?under this
poet , the Holy Spirit, Paul took the sum of existence
and idealized it into one word, Christ.
The whole life of Paul is a grand poem, read
of all men in the expression of this ideal.
Life meant nothing to him but Christ. Said
he, "For me to live is Christ; to die is gain."
From the time that Saul, the hot-headed persecutor
of the Christian religion, was converted
under a stroke of lightning from Jesus whose
faith he had scorned, his life moves on with epic
grandeur until we hear him say, "I have fought
a good fight. I have finishph mv mnwo t
^ . _ WUIOV/J X lid V C
kept the faith: henceforth there is laid up for
me a crown of righteousness, which the Lord,
the righteous judge, shall give me in that day;
and not to me only, but unto all them also that
love his appearing."
Let our lives be epics whose episodes treat of
conflicts won from the powers of darkness;
where our thoughts are fired with words that
burn under the sacred baptism of the Holy
Ghost and fire; where we exhibit in those lives
poems of beauty, read of all men; and where
Christ our ideal becomes so incarnated in our
characters, that, like the man who took the great
rr* ? 1 ' ' i * -
uiuiie j.' ttcu as his iaeai and whose own features
became a representation of the Stone Face, we
shall receive the fruition of our cherished hopes
in that "we shall be like him; for we shall see
him as he is."
Florala, Ala.
BUILT TO CLIMB FENCES.
Jack had been sent on an errand, runs the
story, and he came to a fence across the lane that
he traveled. "I am put here to stop boys," said
the fence, "you must turn back or go around."
< i T5..A T ' ... -
nut x am Duut to climb fences," responded
Jack, and he went over the fence and on his way.
Fortunate Jack. He had come to have a clearcut
conviction of what he was built for?to overcome
obstacles, not to be daunted and delayed by
them. Have we all learned what he knew? Obstacles
are sure to appear in the way; but man
was not built to go back or to go around, but to
go over or through them. Difficulties in the way
of your church work, of your Christian life?
Certainly: but you were built to overcome them.
?Presbyterian Advance.