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4 (1082) T H E
I.
Family 1
ON THE PROMISE.
Kneel on the promise, child!
Ix>w at thy Father's feet;
Only a promise can give thee hope.
At the holy mercy seat.
Kneel on the promise, and then, looking up.
Wait till thy Father shall fill thy pure cup.
Stand on the promise, child!
Firm as the throne of God;
Strong will thy step and thy progress be
If the pra.r.ise path is trod.
Stand on the promise! should all things give way,
Grounded, unmoved, in the wild flooding day.
Wait on the promise, child!
'Patient, until thy flower
Peeps from the chink in its riven side,
All fair in the summer hour.
Drink of the fountain that flows from its rift,
And rest till God giveth the goodly gift.
Fight on the promise, child!
Kun not away in iear,
Then, should the foeman against thee press,
Hide in the refuge near.
Fight on -the promise?on God ever call;
The promise will heal every wound shouldst thou
fall.
D.e on the promise, child!
If ever thou hast to die,
Then in the rock of Gcd's promise sleep,
V.'here the faithful fathers lie.
Till the rock shall rend, and God's chosen first.
From the roik in the resurrection burst.
?William Guff.
THE JOY OF HOSPITALITY.
BY K8TKI.LE M. IIURI.G.
It is a fashion of tiie day to entertain one's
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meilUS, JUKI IlKf1 <111 Ullicr 1 tisiuvjiis, it uaa utcn
so often abused and misunderstood that it is
well to remind one's self of the true meaning
of hospitality. In the highest sense, hospitality
is opening one's heart and home to another.
The two doors must swing open together to
make the welcome complete. If they are allowed
to stand ajar, then will the passerby be
the more readily seen. In proportion to eongeniality
do they open more and more, and to
the few closed and dearest intimates, they are
always flung wide. Hospitality, thus understood,
is a privilege which almost every one
may in some measure enjoy. The outer forms
of entertainment must vary with time, strength,
ini*iifin and manv other eireumstanees. hut a
hospitable spirit finds some outlet under the
most limited conditions. The person who thinks
he cannot afford to entertain misses altogether
the essential spirit of the thing, and loses one
of the finest joys of life.
In modern usage hospitality includes some
sort of refreshment offered to the invited guest.
It ranges from the cup of tea, for a single
caller, to the elaborate feast for a great company.
For the time being your guest is thus
made one of the family. The breaking of
bread together is a sort of mystic rite by which
a friend is initiated into the social fellowship
of your home. All stiffness and formality vanish
hefore the homely occupation of eating and
drinking. Host and guest are brought together
in the simplest and frankest relations.
We are all at our hest in our own homes
*
Here are the surroundings which we ourselves
have shaped to fit our own needs and tastes.
Here we are free from all self-consciousness.
Here we command the situation. It is in the
home that we can hest express ourselves to our
friends, and best share with them the*thoughts
PRESBYTERIAN OF THE 8i
headings
and interests winch are dearest to us. It is here
mat they truly come to know us.
in opening the home to others we multiply
indefinitely our own enjoyment of it. In honor
of the visitors, we don the best elothes we
should not otherwise feel justified in wearing;
for their pleasure we bring forth books, curios,
pictures, collections, which we would not otherwise
take the time to examine; for their coming
the house is swept and garnished till we
axe surprised that it looks so fine; for their delectation
we prepare the extra luxuries which
relieve the monotony of the home dietary. We
seem to see our own home idealized through the
eyes of our guests. They discover new beauties
and advantages in our surroundings to which
long familiarity has made us oblivious. Their
appreciation warms the heart. If they have a
good time, how much more do we! In proportion
to our own giving, do we receive, in good
measure, pressed down and running over.
Hospitality affords one of the most beautiful
forms of ministry. There are so many homeless
folks in the world that we who have homes
ought to give out of the abundance of our
home happiness. The young men and women
or our large cities, who have left their country
homes to join the army of wage-earners or students,
the older people and "derelicts," whose
own homes have been broken up and who fill
the middle-class boarding bouses and small hotels?how
grateful to them is the family dinner
111 a cozy home, where every one may have
a "second helping!" There are the country
people who long for the sights and shopping of
the city, and the tired city folk who sigh for
rest of the country?how delightful for the one
cmsB tue city invitation, and for the other the
summons to the country! With thoughtful dis?
crimination, hospitality tits the right guest into
the right place at the right time and all the
rest is easy. "An atmosphere of friendliness''
is the pretty phrase in which a clever woman
described a newly established home she had
been visiting. Surely no more precious ornament
could a home possess?and it is the quality
which makes for hospitality. For true hospitality
should hit the happy medium -between
stiffness and effusiveness, between frugality
and extravagance?it should be just pure
friendliness.
The method of entertainment should accord
with the whole scale of living. Nothing is
more vulgar than the attempt to overdo. It is
a precarious undertaking to depart too often
from the usual customs of the household'. Even
the most carefully instructed husband mav
blunder, and the small boy of the family can
never be depended upon. Where dainty food,
pretty accessories and convenient service are
everyday matters, as they may and should be
in every modern household", no hostess need
ever fear to entertain a guest.
The last test of hospitality is the welcome
to the unexpected guest. To receive the newcomer
heartily, and without apparent inconvenience,
to give him the freedom of your
home, to treat him as one of the family without
any ado, to save him the mortifying sense of
being an intruder?this is thp
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form of hospitality.
Tt. is indeed an essential feature of the hostess's
tact to allow every guest, whether invited
or unexpected, an opportunity *to give as
well as to receive. Have we not all experienced
the misery of visiting people who "made com
BUT? [September 25, 1912
pany" of us, never letting us lift a linger to
share the household tasks, never leaving us a
moment to ourselves, and completely wearing
us out with "amusements"T Nothing can make
a guest more wretched than the sense of being
a care and a burden. True delicacy makes the
sense of obligation mutual.
O 1 i-i* ? *
ocureeiy any goou rning nas neen so mucli
imitated as hospitality, but it is never difficult
to distinguish the genuine from the perfunctory.
Hospitality to pay social debts or to secure
social advancement; hospitality for business
motives or professional purposes; hospitality,
in short, for any reason whatever but
true kindness of heart is an empty and joyless
form. Cultivated as a social grace, it becomes
one of the finest of the fine arts; incorporated
in the essential tissue of the domestic fabric, it
is the crowning glory of the home.?The Congregationalism
A TREASURE WHICH ENDURES.
BV 1HE REV. H. ARNOLD THOMAS.
Of all beautiful things a beautiful character
is the most beautiful. That is not a thing that
you can prove. It needs no proving. It is
what we acknowledge in our hearts. And if it
is the most beautiful tlung in the world, it is
also the most useful. It is character that tells
more than anything else in the long run, and
that secures for mankind the wealth that is
most worth coveting. There is not very much,"
perhaps, that we can do for our fellow men in
what we call practical ways, but we can help
them enormously by being just good men. It
is more useful to be a great saint than to be a
great inventor. Moreover, this is a treasure
which endures. Many of the things that we
build up with so much labor and care disappear
and are forgotten like the towers we built with
bricks when we were children, or the brave
structures by the seashore that were swept
away by the incoming tide. Our riches take
wings and fly away, and we, too, fly away and
are forgotten, and it seems as if all the toil of
our life were for nothing. We go out of the
world and carry nothing with us. But there
i<j sninethinrr that wp cnrrv wit.li 11s Wr? tnlr??
ourselves. We (lo not lose the character that
we have heen building up with so much patience
and selfdenial. That is ours to keep and
ours to keep forever.
There is this to remember, too?that there is
nothing that gives so much interest to the closing
years of our life in this world, when much
of our work has necessarily to be abandoned,
as the belief that through those years of sadness,
and weakness, and loneliness, it may be,
God is still carrying on His own great purposes
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in un, nuu jn cpmus iur me neiier trunks
that await us beyond the grave.
As to the means by which the work may he
done, I think we know pretty well what are the
"means of grace," to use the old phrase. Wo
know that we can do something, and we know
what we can do if we are so inclined. We
know that we can "pray in the Holy Ghost,"
and that we can "keep ourselves in the love of
God," and that we can be "looking to the
mercy of our Lord' Jesus Christ," and so coming
under the power of the endless life. We
know that there is a certain attitude that wo
can assume, and certain habits that we can fall
into, by the help of which we may ever be growing
in all goodness and wisdom. There are
many little things we could do if we would.
We know how, in the ordinary business life, we
can get into the way of doing things. We do
a thing once, and then we do it a second time,
and a third time, and thus we get into the way
of doing it. It becomes a habit and is done
unconsciously, and habit determines character.
?From The Home Messenger.