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through your business you can glorify God and bless
the world of need. But so many of us are occupied
about needless things. You have got the time for
some things. Some of you have got time to spend at
least one afternoon in the week at the matinee.
Have you got time to go about and search out in the
places of need for those that you could help ? Some
of you have got time to spend seven days out of
every week in following after the fashions, the fool
ishness and the frivolities of the world’s standard of
life, and all the time there are thousands and thou
sands of people that can not get out, that are shut
in, that are beelouded, heart-sore, troubled, whose
hearts are aching and throbbing and beating with
pain and with anguish, just waiting for yon.
A SHUT-IN.
The other day I just chanced to drop into a place
where there was just such t case; a woman had
not been outside her door in four years, and during
all that four years there had called to see her less
than fifty people; she had seen no one during that
time except her immediate family and a few neigh
bors, and when I went in she said, “I am so glad to
see somebody from the outside again.”
“Would you be glad to see some of our good
women?” I said.
“Oh,” she said, “I would be glad to see any
body; anybody, except those that I see every day, to
drop in and talk and pray with me.”
I believe that is one case out of a thousand right
in our midst if only we had enough of the Spirit of
the Master to give a bit of our time to the searching
out of such cases. Oh, you can now and then come
to me and say, “Is there any place I can put in a
visit that would do good?” Why come to me? Why
not search them out for yourselves? You would
find anything else you wanted. You would strike
out and find a cook if you needed one; or a dress
maker; you can find a milliner; you can find any
thing you want; why is it that you can not find these
cases of need? Let us be honest. It is because we
have not caught enough of the Spirit of the Master;
if we had the Spirit of Christ we would have com
passion enough for the world in need to give our
selves iat least a bit to their discovery and their help.
Put yourself in the condition of these people. Put
yourself in the place of the man or the woman ab
solutely shut out from everything that you are en
joying today 1 If you were bed-ridden for years how
would you like to see somebody from the outside
occasionally ?
Just as you would enjoy these things, think you not
that other people would enjoy them too? And so
today if we have received blessing upon the mount
of privilege in these days let us now be willing at
least to go back upon the earth, for here is where
we have got to live; we can not live on the peak;
there is nothing there for us to do; nothing lives
up there; we only go there for our vacation season
to get ourselves built up and rested, and then we
must come back to the levels where the folks live.
Here is where the needy lives. And all of these days
of privilege will amount to nothing except to curse
us if we do not translate them into blood and muscle
and brain and heart to be used for others.
STRENGTH.
Then we have strength; we can give that. We
have strength to give to other things. The devil has
got <a way of befooling people; he has got away of
telling them that they must conserve their strength
when it comes to serving for others. He seems to
care nothing at all about this in other things, but he
has a tremendous influence upon us when it comes
to the exercise of our religious privileges; there we
must be very conservative about our strength. Os
course, there are times when we have got to con
serve our strength; our Lord Himself did; He had
to retreat from the activities of life to rest, but let
us see to it that these occasions are necessary and
that the devil has not got the better of us, for as we
give of our strength in the spirit of the Master, He
is pledged to give us of His strength.
I have been rather a close student of folks all my
life, and especially during these past ten or twelve
years when I have had to meet with so many people
of different grades and characteristics, and I want to
say to you frankly that I have watched when I have
seen, I have watched in my own self when I have
seen the disposition to yield to my physical weak-
The Golden Age for April 8, 1909.
nesses at the point of holding from the work of
God, and every time it has worked disastrously. Os
course if we are doing this thing just from a human
standpoint, a fleshly motive, Jesus is not pledged to
give us His strength; but if back of it all there is
that longing born out of a desire for the glory of
God and the betterment of the world, which is the
object of Jesus Christ in all that He has ever un
dertaken to do, and if in all that, there is that con
stant, faithful, everlasting realization upon us of
that promise thot if we give He will give in return,
it will come. It is just as much displeasing to God
to fail to exercise faith for physical strength as for
us to fail to exercise faith for spiritual blessing.
Faith is faith, whether applied to the body or the
spirit. Never mind where we find it, it is the same
faith in the same Person. To fail to trust God for
strength for our bodies is as dishonoring to God as
it is to fail to trust Him for our soul’s keeping. My
brethren, do you believe that? I think some of you
do not. Well, Ido with all my heart. I believe to
day that it is just as dishonoring to God to com
mit to Him the health and keeping of my soul and
withhold from Him that same trustful, relying
spirit with reference to the keeping of my body, as
it would be not to commit our souls to Him.
Let us see another thing Jesus did not withhold;
His sympathy. Every man has sympathy; he finds
it not hard to sympathize with those he is fond of,
but, my brethren, if we are only to give this much
needed grace to those we are fond of, pray tell me
what is to become of the rest of the world of man
kind. I think there is great need of teaching along
this line. I became thoroughly aroused during my
first pastorate along this line and it has never left
me. One morning walking down the street I passed
the door of a member of my church where there was
a child who had been taken with membranous croup
and very quickly died. There was crepe on the door,
and I saw flowers simply banked on th feront porch.
No one was allowed to go in the house for fear of
contagion, but I afterwards learned that all that day
and the day before messages were being sent to that
house over the telephone, messages of love and sym
pathy. They were quite wealthy people, and had
many friends. When the time came to carry the
little body to the grave, many carriages were sent
to the house for the use of the family.
That same day I had occasion to go to another
house where there was death. This time it was
down a little back street; and this time there were
two little lifeless bodies, for the little twin boys of
this widowed mother had been smitten, first one and
then another, with the same disease —membranous
croup.- Did I find flowers banked on that front porch
or offers of corriages, and loving messages of sympa
thy? No, I didn’t. A few neighbors around had
done what they could, but they were almost as poor
and could do nothing much. There was not a flower,
not a carriage, and the poor mother had been forced
to arrange to have her precious little boys carted
away in a wagon that the city would send to the
pauper’s field. And that woman was a member of
my church. Os course things changed. A hearse did
come to that house, and there was a bunch of flowers
and a carriage for the mother.
I went to my church on the next Sunday morning
filled with righteous indignation. Do you know that
you give your sympathy and your love, for the most
part, where it is not needed? That rich family did
not need all that mound of flowers; they did not
need all of those carriages. Os course they felt the
pang of their loss as keenly as anybody, and yet all
those things were not needed. Yonder was where
they were needed, in that alley. Do you think Jesus
would have done a thing like that?
A GIFT OF FLOWERS.
But let me show you the other side. The other
day I talked with a man about a certain death that
had occurred in the home of a relation of his. He
said to me, “Do you know, tluf thing they appre
ciated more than anything- else was a bouquet of
white roses sent by the ladies of your Ladies’ Aid
Society. And the reason that they appreciated it
so much was because none of them are members of
your church.”
I said, “Thank God for our women! and for
every bunch of flowers that thye have ever cent.”
Some of you may think it is a waste of money to
buy a bunch of flowers and send where death has
come or where sickness, sorrow and suffering lurk,
but I want to tell you, my friends, that of all the
investments that you have ever made, no investment
will ever be like that. I wish to God you were about
to send a bunch of flowers to every sorrow stricken
home in your city.
And I say again, in our own church I have found
things of this character that have pained me. Igo
sometimes into a home where there is death, and it
is a home where there are a great many friends, and
1 find plenty of people. Igo to another place where
another member of the church has had death, a
home of very few friends, perhaps not known more
than a square or two from the house, and I find very
few people gathered. Is it not true that we are
living too much for our friends and forgetting in
our living that there are others that call for unsel
fish service in the region of human need. The Mas
ter’s life from first to last was always lived upon a
plane of unselfish generosity. There is no generosity
so long as there is the slightest element of self in it.
It is that service that we render where there is no
possible opportunity of receiving reward; that is
when we have a right to claim the blessing of that
text.
Then there is our love. Oh, how the world needs
our love. Jesus Himself wanted it. I often think
of Jesus as He stood talking with Peter; feeling
that Peter had grown a bit indifferent to Him, He
arrested him with that searching question, “Peter,
Invest thou me more than these?” Jesus never
meant to find out whether Peter loved Him more
than he did the other disciples. This is what He
meant, “Have you a greater love for me than the
rest of these have?” Peter was the man who on a
former occasion had talked the loudest and made
the strongest professions of love for Jesus, and Jesus
was now calling into his remembrance that profes
sion of love, saying, “Do you love me better than
these do?” The idea of Jesus asking a poor man
like Peter, a rough fisherman, such a question. It
brings Jesus very close to our own hearts. How
close akin, after all, Jesus was to us —wanting the
love of Peter. “Lovest thou more than these?”
And men and women, if the human side of Jesus
longed for the love of friends, think you not that
humanity is not longing for the same thing? Oh,
the hearts that need some one to say to them, “I
love you. My heart goes out to you. lam remem
bering you in your trouble; I am thinking of you in
your trial. I can not be with you. I can not do
what I would like to do for you, but I am thinking
of you. I love you.”
HE GAVE HIMSELF.
My last thought is that of our salvation. Jesus,
after He had given everything else that He had for
us was not content. Most of us would have been
content with stopping half way, but Jesus was not
content until He went the whole way and gave Him
self. I often think of that story in connection with
the life of Dr. A. J. Gordon, which he tells himself.
He says that on one occasion when they were living
out from the city, he had promised his children that
when he returned home the next time he would bring
them some dolls. But in the hurry and strain of the
day he forgot it until he got off at the station and
found his children waiting to receive him. The first
thought that flashed across his mind was the dolls,
and he immediately began to make excuses about it.
He began to tell them how busy he had been and as
the result of that he had forgotten the dolls, and
that he was awfully sorry and he would get them
the next day the best dolls that he could find. Just
then his baby girl slipped up close to him and put
her arms around his neck and kissed his cheeks and
said, “Father, I had rather have you than all the
dolls in Boston.” That was the way Jesus was
about the world. He knew human hearts. He knew
them better than any of us know them because He
had o human heart, and then He had a divine heart,
a God heart, and He knew the throbbing of the
human breast, and that the world appreciated the
gift of His friends, of His time, of His thought, of
His strength, of His sympathy, of His love, but He
He knew that there was something else left yonder
that the world would appreciate more than anything
else, and that was the giving of Himself. He knew
that after all the world had rather than to
have every gift that He had, and that He might
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