Newspaper Page Text
4 (818) THE
| Family \
"THE MASTER IS COMING."
By Mrs. Emma A. Lent.
They said: "The Master is coming
To honor the town to-day,
And none can tell at whose house or home .
The Master will choose to stay."
And 1 thought, while my heart beat wildly,
What if he should come to mine?
How would 1 strive to entertain
And honor the guest divine!
Aud straight ! turned to toiling
To make my house more neat;
I swept, and polished, and garnished,
And decked it with blossoms sweet.
I was troubled for fear the Master
Might come ere my task was done,
And I hastened and worked the faster,
And watched the hurrying sun.
And right in the midst of my duties
A woman came to my door;
She had come to tell me her sorrows,
And my comfort and aid to implore.
And I said: "I can not listen,
.~?or help you any to-day;
i have greater things to attend to.
And the pleader turned away.
But soon there came another?
A cripple, thin, pale and gray?
And said: "Oh, let me stop and rest
Awhile in your home, 1 pray!
1 have traveled far since morning,
I ftm hnncrv nnH f?lnl ond mcalr
My heart is full of misery.
And comfort and help I seek."
And I said: "I am grieved and sorry.
But I can not help you to-day;
I look for a great and noble guest."
And the cripple turned away.
And the day wore onward swiftly,
And my task waB nearly done.
And a prayer was ever In my heart
That the Master to me might come.
And I thought <1 would spring to meet him,
And serve him with utmost care,
When a little child stood by me,
Confiding, gentle and fair.
Sweet, tout with marks of tear-dro ps.
And his clothes were tattered and old;
A finger was bruised and bleeding,
And his little bare feet were cold.
And I said: "I am sorry for you;
Zou are sorely In need of care.
But I can not stop to give It,
You must hasten on elsewhere."
And at the words a shadow
Swept over his blue-veined brow?
"Some one wlll feed and clothe you, dear,
But I am too busy now.'
At last the day was ended.
And my toll wsb over and done;
My house was swept and garnished,
And I watched In the dusk alone;
Watched, but no footstep sounded,
No one paused at my gate,
No one entered my cottage door,
I could only pray and wait
I waited till night had deepened,
And the <Master had not come;
"He has entered some other door," I cried,
"An/1 arl as\m - nfV. UawiaI"
-*"*4 D.W?*4V"VU DVU1C VIUC1 uuxuc;
My labor had been for nothing.
And I bowed my head and wept,
My heart was sore with longing.
Yet, In sptte of It all, I slept.
Then the Master stood before me,
And his face was grave and fair?
"Three timeB to-day I came to your door,
And craved your pity and care;
Three times you sent me onward,
Unhelped and uncomforted,
And the blessing you might have had was lost.
And your chance to serve has fled."
PRESBYTERIAN OF THE S C
* ? -
headings
?~
"O Lord, dear Lord, forgive me!
How could i know ft was thee?"
My very soul was shamed and bowed
In the depths of humility.
And He said: "The sin is pardoned,
'But the blessing is lost to thee;
For, comforting not the Least of mine.
Ye have failed to comfort me."?Selected.
Z
THE BOY AND THE CHURCH.
BY R. SCOTT STEVENSON.
Chief among the features of the Men and
Religious Forward Movement is the new interest
in the boy. The subject is worth all the
enthusiasm this new zeal has called forth.
Men always have had a practical conviction
that the boy is the live wire in every community,
and if they have failed to do anything
for him, they always have known that something
ought to be done for him, more and
better than to command him to "get out of
the way," or to "be still."
The boy is coming into his own. No member
of human society has a clearer claim to
personal rights, and none reaches out after
them more quickly than the boy. The new
forward movement among the men of the
Church calls aloud to the Church to think
again of these things, and to bring a practical
answer to the searching inquiry of the
boy concerning himself. What will the Church
of to-day do for him? What did the Church
do for him when our fathers were boys? What
appeal did the Church make to the boyhood
of Gladstone, of Luther, of Paul, of Samuel?
What particular effort did the Church put
forth to capture and hold the boy in the boyA
*1-- ?i- *
nuuu uti.ys ui me meii wno are actively engaged
in this noble, God-inspired movement which
is sweeping over the country in this tide of religious
power t
But those days of the fathers and to-day
are different. The world is full of diversions
now that were not dreamed of then. And, too,
we are rooting up statistics, and the thing
seems big in our day because we see it in all
its proportions, written out in figures that
vauiiut lie.
Possibly the boy is drifting from the Church
more certainly and alarmingly than in former
years. If this is true, why is he drifting?
What should be done to prevent such a calamity?
Should things be done in the Church that
never were thought of in our father's boyhood
days? Should the attractive influences out in
the world be counteracted by instituting under
the eaves of the Church a gymnasium,
game rooms, reading rooms and work shops?
The entertainment idea would lose out with
the boy in time, as the old doll loses out with
the growing girl. And as the boy turns away
from the game room, he tu?*ns from the Church
too, for, in this instance, it was the game room
the Church gave him to hold him within its
folds.
To hold out to the boy the bait of entertainment?something
as good as the world furnishes
to meet the boy's peculiar proclivities?
is to injure his respect for the Church. The
boy is clever. He knows entertainment is not
t li n miooiAt* a ? CI L. * *' ' '*
niisniuu ui me v^uurcii. ne Knows that the
Church is given among men to teach them to
worship God and to reverence God's Book, his
house, his day. If the Church's effort at entertainment,
sufficient to come anywhere near
equalling the world's forms of entertainment,
is substituted for or added to these exalted and
) U T H [July 10, 1912
true purposes of the Church of God; the latter
purposes are minimized.
For some time an effort has been made to
bring the world to the Church by giving the
world to the world in the Church, and the
natural and constant dunger is that the Church
will shift out into the world?and, indeed, to
some extent, and for these reasons, the Church
is shifting.
But the boy is aruting?fast! Why is he
drifting, and what can be done to prevent his
drift f From the nature of the whole nneoH
it is not because of the lack of entertainment
in the Church, more than in the days of our
fathers. The boy has his Sabbath school class,
his work with the young people, the preaching
services, and in all of these he is taught to reverence
God and worship him, and to proclaim
the Gospel to others, and this is the sole purpose
of the Church of Christ.
Entertainment in the Church would not help
the boy in any of these, and it would not hold
him long within the pale of the Church. God
has given us six days to do things that need
to be done for our daily bread and our pleasure.
Some pleasures are questionable for
Christian people. And those that are not questionable,
even though they are maintained in
or by the Church, will succeed poorly in keeping
the boy diverted from the world's unholy
pleasures. The Church, kept in its own sphere,
is the only instrumentality that can hope to
fortify the boy against unworthy fun out in the
world. If the Church fails in this, all the entertainment
the boy may find in the Church
will ?nf OOUA UirM ^ Al 1 J "
uv>b OUTC uuu JL1UU1 Lilt: net UJ. LI1C worm,
and will not keep him in the Church.
But how bring back the drifting boy! By
undoing the evil, which more than any other
has caused him to drift so alarmingly, namely,
the desecration of the Sabbath, and the decadence
of the Church in the home!
This is another keynote of the great Men
and Religion conventions. Do you travel on
the Sabbath day, and then come into the
Church and ask what the Church is doing for
the boy! Do you get your mail from the office
on the Sabbath day, when Uncle Sam is
trying to keep the Sabbath by endeavoring to
close the office on the Sabbath! And then do
you want to know what the Church is doing
.or the boy!
Do you fail to sit down with your boy and
famil,. A J i
. ttiiu i cau uuu a wuru ana pray in your
home, and then do you come to the Church
and inquire what the Church is doing to save
your boy?
Aside from the native bent which afflicts us
all, it is the gripping influence of other fathers
who fail in home religion and Sabbath
keeping that has caught the son of faithful
parents and swept him off into the world.
But what about the boy who never knew a
Christian home? We have them in the Sabbath
school, and many of them are coming into
the Church. Many of the noble men in this
great movement never knew the blessedness of
a Christian home when they were boys. The
boy, either from the Christian home or from the
benighted world, finds plenty to do in the
Church. He sings in the choir, or plays the
urgan, lanes ms turn in tfie offices and leadership
of the young people's work, takes the offering
in the Church, or engages in some more
suitable task. And there in the Church, he
learns "to reverence God, his word, his day, all
of which is more important a thousand times
than any entertainment the Church possibly
could afford him.
The Church, or churches in any community
can bring the boy a great good by building
and maintaining $n amusement house and
thereby supply the boy with all he wants and