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Supper. How ridiculous such an excuse! If a
man did not feel his unworthiness, I should cer
tainly say that he was unworthy. The real atti
tude that one should feel in approaching the Lord’s
Supper is that of• the penitent man in-the temple:
“Lord, have mercy upon me a sinner!”
I never partake of the Lord’s Supper that I do
not feel my proneness to sin.
Others do not partake because they say there will
be those present in whom they have no confidence.
That is the same old trick of the devil. He tells
the man out in the world, “Don’t you join the
church for there are hypocrites in it.”
I have found that the people who are always
hunting for hyproerites are having other folks
hunting for them in the same way. Oh, my broth
er, sister, do not bother about the folks that are
unworthy; think about the worthiness of Jesus
and the unworthiness of yourself.
Some people do not partake because their loved
ones are not present. Here again the eyes are
turned in the wrong direction. We are not told
to commune with one another; we are to commune
with Jesus, our crucified and risen Lord.
But the most hopeless man in all the world is
he who refuses to come to the Lord’s table from
sheer indifference. When I see such turning away,
I always think of the poor Egyptian, when the
destroying angel came and found no blood on the
lintel and door posts. If today the fell stroke
should come for the same reason, I am afraid there
would be many a dead man and woman whose name
is written on the church book.
Oh, brother, sister, this is a great privilege; do
not surrender your place at the Lord’s table. It
is His command. It begets and strengthens our
love for Him; it makes it easier to abstain from
sin; it makes brighter our hopes of heaven.
“Millions of souls, in glory now
Were fed and feasted here,
And millions more still on the way,
Around the board appear.
All things are ready; come away,
Nor weak excuses frame;
Crowd to your places at the feast,
And bless the founder’s name.”
A Beautiful Resignation.
In a short story entitled “An Angel in the
House,” in Harper’s Magazine, Harriet Prescott
Spofford tells about a woman who suddenly became
blind in her old age. Quickly her prayer came,
“Oh, our Heavenly Father, come to us with thy
Spirit. Help us to be willin’. Be with us in the
dark; —oh, be with us in the dark!”
With her husband, whose heart was breaking un
der the affliction, she visited the oculist, who gently
told her that nothing but a miracle could bring back
her lost sight, “And the days of miracles are
gone,” he added. “No,” she said quietly, “it may
not be worth while for me. But the Power that
made this world must still be living in it.”
“And can transcend law? I wish it could and
would. ’ ’
“Perhaps not that way,” she answered with a
loving dignity. “But by cornin’ to me—and helpin’
me to bear. By comfortin’ him,” for her husband
had dropped his head in her lap and was crying like
a child. “Dear, it is the Lord’s will;” she said,
her hand resting on his head. “I would have liked
to see the beautiful world again,—but in the next
life there will be so much to see, p’rhaps it is best
to rest a little first. Dear, dear,” as he shook with
his sobs. “I would let you have your will. Shan’t
the Lord have His will, too, when we love him so?”
“There is no charge,” said the doctor when the
man drew out his ancient wallet. She has done
more for me than I could do for her.”—Teachers’
Guide.
The Hamburg-American line steamer, Rugia, ar
riving from Hamburg, brought 141 cabin and 844
steerage passengers, 666 of whom were from Rus
sia, many of them Jews. This is the Rugia’s first
trip to New York.
The Golden Age for April 19, 1906.
An Unique Phase of Rapid Transit.
Many an anomalous situation has been met with
in our great western country from which glamour
and romance have not been altogether eradicated
by commercialism. In a great part of the South
west, men literally “dig for wood and climb for
water;” dig for wood, which consists of mesquite
roots upon which a large territory depends for
fuel, and climb for water to some of Nature’s
mountain reservoirs where melting snows accumu
late and furnish the only water for many miles
during much of the year.
But in Denver the startling scene is presented of
horse passengers on street cars! Denver has a
splendid street railway system extending miles into
the suburbs which is supplemented by connecting
lines run to towns yet farther away. These priv
ate lines are often old horse cars owned by indi
viduals. One of these does service between Engle
wood, the end of the Broadway line, and Cherre
lyn, a little town nestling in the foothills several
hundred feet above the starting point of the old
time tram way. The dilapidated car which does
service on this route shows the effects of many
years of hard usage. One horse pulls it with its
occasional human passenger, slowly, tortuously,
carefully, around the curves and up, up the steep
grades to Cherrelyn. On the return trip, however,
the motive becomes the passenger. The car is per
mitted to run back down to Englewood of its own
gravity, the conductor applying the brakes, and
the horse wisely, sedately and with all dignity fill-
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■' ■ V.
RAPID TRANSIT.
ing the smokers’ platform! This practice is a
matter of some years standing. The horse backs
himself upon the platform and steps off at the
proper time. He is a remarkably intelligent ani
mal and no power can induce him to make more
than the given number of hourly trips to which
he is accustomed between feeding times. Unsuc
cessful efforts have been made in recent years to
have the brute passenger draw the car down hill,
but not for Dobbin! He will draw the car up, but
insists on riding down, and will no more pull down
hill than he will make an extra trip after feeding
time comes.
To My Mother.
Deep in the bosom of the silent woods,
I dream of thee, my mother—mine no more!
The spirit of the brooding solitudes,
Falls on my soul, and grief unknown before
Doth mantle me black as Egyptian night.
How bitter is the fate I now deplore!
Exiled from’ thee until the morning light
Os sempiternal life shall us again unite.
’Tis strange perchance, but as I brood on thee,
And all thou wert to me since childhood’s days,
I ife grows a deeper, blacker mystery,
And overwhelmed I contemplate God’s ways,
Yet yearn to trust Him who thus trusted slays
The holiest love to fallen man e’er given,
And then, like one who in a desert lays
Him hopeless down, I lift my cry to heaven,
And feel as one into long, weary exile driven.
My soul cries out to thee through boundless
space:
No answer comes—thou canst not hear my cry.
Throughout the universe I catch no trace
Os aught revealing thy abode—or why
One of such truth or gentleness should die,
And leave me in this starless wilderness.
0, Mighty God, who reign est supreme on high,
Didst thou ordain this grief and bitterness
Should, for all time, upon my burdened spirit
press ?
0, Death! thou ebon angel of despair,
Thou brooding nightmare of mortality,
Thou arch assassin of the good and fair,
Thou grim tragedian of life’s mystery—
’Tis vain man lifts his futile cries to thee!
Thine is a kingdom where no mercy smiles,
Thine is a reign of Sphinx-like cruelty,
Thy home is fixed midst pestilential piles
Os ruined cities, where no faintest hope be
guiles.
Thy smile is in the lightning’s fatal flash,
Thou walkest with the earthquake where it rends,
Thy voice is in the ocean’s roar and crash,
■Commingled with the fury of the winds,
Thy breath with the volcano’s lava blends,
Thy cachination is the thunder’s roll,
Thou dancest with the simoon when it sends
Its fiercest blight upon Sicilian fold—
With these thou scrawlest Finis on Time’s rug
ged scroll!
’Twas worse than cruel to have swept her hence
Beyond the reach of all my mortal years;
Ah! is it thus thou wouldst vain man convince
That life is but a threnody of tears;
Or dost thou seek to fill my soul with fears,
Which all earth’s sunshine never can dispel?
Thine was a cruel stroke which blights and sears
My soul with grief no human speech can tell—
If woe like this must strike where is man’s need
of hell!
But I must not forget! My mother taught
The pathos and the beauty of God’s love.
She told me how His yearning heart was fraught
With such compassion, that no calling dove
In springtime ever a soft love-song wove
To its lost mate but He did hear the cry;
And somewhere from the balconies above
Her angel spirit heaves a longing sigh
That I should call to heaven with this weak,
human Why.
And so to thee a long and last farewell—
0, gentle spirit of a vanished past!
Time—the-physician—may have power to quell
Some of the grief that o’er my life was cast
When I beheld thy placid form the last,
And saw the smile of death sit on thy brow
As if thou hadst been dreaming. But the blast
Os stormy fate hath swept me. I must bow
Beneath the stroke which rends my bleeding
bosom now.
Wait patiently, ’neath the architrave where
looms
The jeweled gate of Heaven’s city fair.
Wait 0, my mother! ’till life’s gleams and
glooms
Have ended. I will meet thee smiling there.
And, kneeling at thy feet, will lisp the prayer
I used to say in childhood. I will come
And greet thee with a radiance as rare
As sunlight sleeping on old ocean’s foam,
And we will sepnd the sweet, unending years
at home.
—ARTHUR L. HARDY.
The New York branch of the National Red Cross
announces that a total of $7,870 toward the Japan
ese famine fund has been forwarded to the national
treasurer. Jacob 11. Schiff, treasurer of the state
branch, acknowledges contributions of $675 since
March 1.
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