"THOU shalt not bear false witness against thy neighbor."
To whom does God speak in His law?—To His servants. How many of the people of God have doubtless thought that God spake to sinners alone when He gave His law; but no, He speaks to His own people. When He says, "Thou shalt not bear false witness," is it not evident that they are to bear witness of some kind?—Yes, they are to bear true witness unto God and His divine love, they are to be witnesses before their neighbors of the true character of God's government.
"Ye are My witnesses, saith the Lord." Isa. 43:10.
"And ye shall be witnesses unto Me both in Jerusalem, and in Judea, and in Samaria, and unto the uttermost part of the earth." Acts 1:8.
The above scriptures, with many others, show that God designed that His loyal servants should be His witnesses. Christ came as our example, and He is called "the True Witness." "These things saith the Amen, the Faithful and True Witness, the Beginning of the creation of God." Rev. 3:14. "And from Jesus Christ, who is the Faithful Witness." Rev. 1:5.
Jesus is the TRUE WITNESS; He is also the Faithful Witness; and He says unto us, "If any man will come after Me, let him deny himself, and take up his cross daily, and follow Me." Luke 9:23.
But some one will say, "I thought the ninth commandment forbade the telling of falsehoods about our neighbors." So it does, but that is only the negative side of the commandment, the grosser form of the sin condemned. This, like all the other commandments of God, is broad and deep, and embraces much more than simply the gross sin that appears so plain to the casual reader. Notice it does not say, Thou shalt not tell a falsehood about thy neighbor, but, "Thou shalt not bear false witness against thy neighbor."
Anything that a servant of God would do that would stand in the way and hinder his neighbor in developing a righteous character, would be against his neighbor, because it might keep him out of the kingdom of God. How often we hear those who make no profession of religion say of some one who does profess to be a Christian, "Why, he is no better than I am; he will cheat a man in a deal just as quick as I would; in fact, he will do things I would not." Dear reader, have you not heard such remarks?—Certainly you have. We must admit that many times such remarks are too true. When a professed Christian takes advantage of his neighbor in a business transaction, what has he done?—He has borne false witness against his neighbor, for he has misrepresented the God of heaven to that man; and that very act may keep the man out of heaven.
Let us remember that the law of God not only condemns sin but it also witnesses to righteousness, even the righteousness of God. Rom. 3:21.
We have seen what it is to violate the ninth commandment; now we will consider what obedience to it would embrace.
The righteousness of God is the right-doing of God; therefore, if we understand the commandment, it teaches us just what God would do were He in our place. God sent His Son Jesus into the world to show us by a living example what His Father would do if He occupied the position we do; therefore in Christ we are able to keep the commandment and bear true witness which will be in favor of and not against our neighbor's eternal interests. This means to us, then, that in all the walks of life we shall show a deep interest in our fellow-man, that we will always in every place be careful not to do or say anything that would cause any one to feel that God's government was not the best of all governments, and His character the most lovable of all characters; thus our influence upon our neighbors would lead them to see that the grace of God will transform the characters of men and make them like the character of the MOST HIGH. All this is what it means to bear true witness unto God. If we are thus living, we shall have no disposition to take advantage of our fellow-men in any way, neither to magnify their faults or assist in circulating false reports about them. No, we shall leave all such work for the devil to do, to whom such work properly belongs. The children of God can not afford to bear false witness, for this is contrary to the character of heaven and the heavenly beings with whom we expect to associate throughout eternity.
May the Lord help us all to be true witnesses, and to behold wondrous things in His law. J. W. WATT.
W A R.
By F. L. Favour
PASSING along the streets of Baltimore, my eyes fell upon words like these: "Your country calls you." But the Spirit within me answered, God has called you first. Therefore I passed along contented and glad that I am in the army of the Lord, and His Word is the sword I use.
Many ministers and church people believe that you can be a follower of Christ and at the same time you can fight with swords, rifles, cannons, and other instruments of war; but this can not be so, for we are not called upon to destroy men's lives, but to save them by pointing them to Christ. The Mohammedan religion is a religion of fire and sword, but the Gospel of the Lord bringeth peace and salvation to men.
There were wars during the apostles' times, but have we any record where they fought and slew their enemies?
At one time Peter "drew his sword, and struck a servant of the high priest's, and smote off his ear. Then said Jesus unto him, Put up again thy sword into his place; for all they that take the sword shall perish with the sword." Matt. 26 : 51, 52.
I know that there shall be wars and rumors of war until the end of the world, for "there is no peace, saith my God, to the wicked;" but let us keep ourselves clear of these things, for we are not of this world, but Christ has called and chosen us to follow Him to glory.
At the end, all the armies of the nations shall be gathered to fight against the Lord and His army. (For a proof of this read Rev. 19:11-21; Zech. 14:1-15.) As you stand now so shall you stand then. "When thou criest, let thy companies deliver thee; but the wind shall carry them all away; vanity shall take them; but he that putteth his trust in Me shall possess the land, and shall inherit My holy mountain." Isa. 57:13. F. L. FAVOUR. Baltimore, Md.
WISDOM AND HUMILITY.
By Fred T. Elkin
MASTERFUL wisdom of our day, behold
His star ascendant in the lightened East;
Haste ye to worship, as the wise of old,
The Saviour of the greatest and the least?
Come ye according to the talents given
To make accounting to the Son of heaven?
With souls aflame and void of all pretense
Bear manger-ward the offerings designed—
Long-suffering Mercy's myrrh and frankincense,
Fragrant of loving service to thy kind;
Yea, rob the thrice-fired gold from the heart's hoard
To pay a tithe of tribute to the Lord.
From that rude manger emanates all light—
The light that waketh Fear and Hope at heart,
That spurreth Science to the bounds of night,
That whispereth, "Perfection!" unto Art—
Bright pentecostal cloven tongues of fire
Responsive to the striving soul's desire.
We walk an Eden fruited and beflowered
With all the thoughts the centuries have known,
From genius of the quick and dead empowered
To pluck, to taste, to use as tho our own.
O, have a care! Pluck wisely, prayerfully.
The angel with the flaming sword stands by.
Knowledge, thy free power mocketh kings' control;
Time, taking toll of scepters, passeth thee;
Crowned dust can kill but dust; ye mold the soul
And make or mar it for eternity.
Say, shall the glorious spark pent in our clay
Be but a brilliant toy with which to play?
Say, O ye wise, shall barren faith suffice?
Proclaim the Name that renders death supine;
Bring countless nations to the sacrifice;
Recharge earth's laboring lungs with breath divine.
Behold the millions mumbling to the throne,
Unconscious of the Lamb who sits thereon.
Work while ye may, the hour is truly late;
Our little lives towards the judgment move;
The whitening fields the husbandmen await.
The Master comes in majesty of love—
The Hand that hurled this whirling sphere in space
Hath pressed the cross and bears the iron's trace.
Lord, heed our prayer, the prayer we learned of Thee,
As voiced from cleanly lip and reverent heart,—
"Lead not into temptation;" set us free
From evil sloth; true wisdom, Lord, impart—
Thou of the innermost, in love draw men
To the humility of Bethlehem.
FRED T. ELKIN.
Denver, Colo.
Blessed Are the Peace-Keepers
By Christian Herald
Blessed are God's children, the peace-keepers; blessed are the men and women who have the courage and forbearance to let sleeping dogs lie.—Christian Herald.
UNPRECEDENTED ACCUMULATIONS OF WEALTH.
BELOW on this and the following page we give a faint reproduction of that portion of the real estate of the Astor family that may be found in the original city of New York. That is, this real estate is all on Manhattan Island, and does not include the Astor holdings in other parts of what is now called the Greater New York.
The real estate represented in the illustration herewith if placed in one line would reach a distance of seven miles. One would need to walk quite briskly to traverse it in two hours, and every step he took would represent $15,000 worth of property, or an aggregate of about $100,000,000.
The Astors also have large tracts of land in Iowa, Missouri, Wisconsin, and elsewhere in the West. It is estimated that their mortgages on the property of others amount to from $15,000,000 to $25,000,000. They own a large amount of Railroad securities, and are directors and heavy stockholders in numerous banks. And they have several million dollars worth of property in England beside.
The original John Jacob Astor bought his first American property on the Bowery, New York City, Aug. 14, 1789. The price paid was £250, or about $1,000. The property is still held by the Astor family, and is valued at $200,000. Subsequent purchases were very extensive, for it is estimated that one-twentieth of the real estate of Manhattan Island is now included in the Astor pile of wealth. And what the Astors own on Manhattan Island and elsewhere combines a greater valuation of landed property than the whole of Delaware.
Next Sunday a jury of prominent real-estate men will estimate the value of the Astor properties and the number of people that live in them for The World.
The prophet says: "Wo unto them that join house to house, that lay field to field, till there be no place, that they may be placed alone in the midst of the earth! In Mine ear said the Lord of hosts, Of a truth many houses shall be desolate, even great and fair, without inhabitant." Isa. 5:8, 9.
There are many men in the world to-day who are recklessly disregarding the warning of the foregoing scripture. They continue to "join house to house" and "lay field to field," but make little practical use of this accumulated wealth. Such vast fortunes, so called, are really very unfortunate; for those who possess them are either so perplexed and overworked in caring for them that they never know of the real work and aims of a true life, or else they become so engrossed in luxuriant dissipations that they are wholly given to self in all of its vanities and follies. And this property that might have been a blessing to others is all kept away from them by the greed of a few deluded men.
God has said, "Wo unto them." Will they hear His voice and allow Him to save them from the miseries that await them?
If property is gathered honestly it may be made a great blessing in relieving distress and poverty. But if wealth is gathered by extorting the uttermost penny from the unfortunate and helpless, there must come a reckoning time. If men choose to do that reckoning themselves now, they may avert the "wo" that is pronounced on them by restoring what they have fraudulently or heartlessly extorted from others. But if through unbelief they disregard what God has said, they will find out the literal truth of His Word, but from a standpoint that is the most undesirable.
There are some stormy times around us, but very much stormier ones ahead of us. And the great grasping of wealth by a few men will be the occasion for much of the distress into which the world is plunging. The Word of God plainly points out all these perils, and also what they portend. Have you studied that Word that you may know of these things?
T.
NOT GOSPEL CONVERSIONS.
By Editor
UNDER the heading, "Conversions in Mass," the New York Observer tells us that the German extremists of Austria threaten "to renounce the Catholic faith and accept Protestantism in a body. The motive of the proposed change is political, the maintenance of German ascendancy in the monarchy, which the Germans claim as the more enlightened of the races within the composite empire. Now this ascendancy is seriously menaced by the increasing demands of the Slavs, and by the concessions made by the crown in the decree placing Czech on an equal footing with German as an official language. The German radicals, therefore, hope to find in closer relations with Germany, whose royal house is not noted for its disinterestedness, a weapon which may replace the Austrian Germans in the position they claim,—that of a dominant minority ruling a majority, or, if not, may lead to their final absorption into the German Empire. Such relations would, they think, be greatly promoted by conversion in mass to Protestantism, the dominant religion of Germany. For the governing men of Germany would have not only more sympathy for the Austrian Germans in their struggle for ascendancy, if they were7of the same faith, but also, as they would not increase the German Catholic vote, less hesitation in adding them to the empire, if that alternative became necessary. The German extremists believe, therefore, that either solution of their political problem would be furthered by the conversion of the Austrian Germans to Protestantism."
And this might accomplish a political object for a time; but when disappointed, or believing that more would be gained by returning to the Roman Catholic Church, the same motive, if the object desired be sufficient, would carry them back. It would seem that it need not be said that such conversions are purely political, and of the basest sort. They have not even the principle which often moves a man to change his politics. It is a change for pure self-interest. Such a change might be spoken of as a conversion to "Protestantism," that is, a conversion to an ism or system opposed to Rome; but it is not a conversion to the Protestantism of the Reformation, or to the Christianity of Christ and the apostles.
True conversion to Christianity, to true Protestantism (which rightly regarded Christianity a life, not a system), is individual and personal. It pertains to a man's personal attitude toward God, to his relations and vital connection with God. No political revolution or resolution accomplishes this; it is accomplished by each man yielding to God for himself, whether any other soul goes with him or he stands alone. Protestantism has too many of the sort of converts that the German Austrians propose to give. We will see, no doubt, much of these kind of conversions among the heathen in the future, but be not deceived. Such acceptance simply puts the religion of Christ on the same basis as its counterfeits.
Growing Selfishness and Brutality
By Editor
Growing Selfishness and Brutality.—An article in The Herald of the Golden Age (England) presents this description of what is becoming more and more manifest:—
‘What is this England of ours coming to when oxen are paraded (as occurred recently) through the streets of London labeled with advertisements of the suet about to be stripped from their very bones; when the people flock in crowds and pay their money to witness butchering competitions; when the whole country is eager to obtain reports of prize fights which are taking place; when women by tens of thousands are deaf to every protest that appears in the secular press concerning the decorating of their heads with the bodies of parent birds who are slaughtered in vast numbers to pander to their vanity; and when the most enlightened of Christian nations, by its elected legislators, licenses torture dens and authorizes hundreds of men to torment defenseless animals to their heart's content the whole year round?’
“Because iniquity shall abound, the love of many shall wax cold. But he that shall endure unto the end, the same shall be saved.” “This know also, that in the last days perilous times shall come. For men shall be lovers of their own selves, . . . fierce, . . . lovers of pleasures more than lovers of God.” O, it is time to turn to the Gospel of Christ, with its holy, benignant, tender influences and power!
Obliged to Confess It True
By Editor
Obliged to Confess It True.—God's Word declares that violence and crime and wickedness will increase in the world till Christ comes. The tares will grow till uprooted by the great judgment-harvest. This is often unwittingly admitted even by those who picture a roseate future for this poor world in its present condition. An evidently clerical editorial writer in the Los Angeles Sunday Times of January 15, writing on "How to Accomplish Our Mission," that is, Americans, says:—
"Politically we are not wholly pure, nor honest, nor upright. While the higher places of power and political trust may be bought or bartered for gold, or for influence, and the sacredness of the ballot is not duly regarded, we are not safe. While men with no moral principle, no respect for law, no desire for anything higher than the gratification of their own ambitions, dare aspire to the highest places within the gift of the people, fearless of rebuke, there is something that is rotten in our political system that threatens danger to the very life and spirit of our political freedom. It can not be denied that while we as a people have made noble advancement along certain lines, we are along other lines degenerating, and are proving ourselves to be, in some respects, unworthy of the grandeur of our past. The struggle for office was never more unscrupulous or more determined than it is to-day, and in many cases the fitness for the same is in nowise as seriously considered as it should be. Where this is the case, and unfit men are elected, the machinery of the government must suffer and its integrity and strength be greatly impaired. We can not hope that good will come out of evil, or that men who are totally unfitted for legislative trusts will legislate wisely upon the most important questions that concern our life as a nation."
And this is true; and the people were never so indifferent to this fearful condition. "Cease ye from man." All hope of true reformation must come through faith in Jesus Christ to the individual. Moral reforms have more than a political basis.
Criminal Record for 1898
Criminal Record for 1898.—"As for war, I call it murder," James Russell Lowell makes one of his characters to say. War being legal murder, and last year being a war year, may account for the diminution of crime in the United States. There were reported to the Chicago Tribune, 5,920 suicides, 680 less than in 1897; 7,840 murders, a decrease of 680 over the previous year, the same as the suicides. There were 109 hangings or executions for capital crime against 127 for 1897. In 1898 there were 127 lynchings; in 1897, 166. Money embezzled amounted to $5,851,263, as compared with $11,248,084 in 1897. That this does not show all the crime will be evident to the thinking ones. It gives only those reported to one great paper. Some of the greatest crimes do not at once come to light, and this is especially true in the embezzlement of money. A war year always shows a falling off in private crimes of violence.
Looking Toward the Light
"I ASKED the roses, as they grew
Richer and lovelier in their hue,
What made their tints so rich and bright;
They answered, 'Looking toward the light.'"
DO YOU WISH TO BE SAVED?
SINNER, you who know that you are a sinner, who feel the need of salvation, who long to be free from the bondage of sin, do you wish to be saved from the sins of the past, from the sinning of the present, from the desire to sin?
Here is God's answer: "Believe on the Lord Jesus Christ, and thou shalt be saved." Only believe. "All things are possible to him that believeth."
But what does it mean to believe on Jesus Christ?—It means (1) that you will accept His way instead of your way. His Word says of mankind: "They are all gone out of the way; they are together become unprofitable; there is none that doeth good, no, not one." "The way of peace have they not known." Christ is "the way." John 14: 6.
To believe in Christ and accept His way, you will believe and accept what He says concerning your way. You will not attempt to excuse your way. You will not excuse yourself by the wrong-doing (real or imagined) of some one else. He says, "You are a sinner;" if you believe Him, you will respond, "It is true, Lord." He declares, "The heart is deceitful above all things, and desperately wicked;" and if you believe Him, you will again respond, "It is true, Lord, in me." He declares that with such a heart you can not do good deeds, even as a corrupt tree can not bring forth good fruit. Matt. 7:17; 12:33-35; Mark 7:14-23. And, again, if you believe Him, you will reply, "Amen; it is true, Lord."
But, on the other hand, He says in the same Word:—
"If we confess our sins, He is faithful and just to forgive us our sins, and to cleanse us from all unrighteousness."
"Wash you, make you clean; put away the evil of your doings from before Mine eyes; cease to do evil; learn to do well; seek judgment, relieve the oppressed, judge the fatherless, plead for the widow. Come now, and let us reason together, saith the Lord; tho your sins be as scarlet, they shall be as white as snow; tho they be red like crimson, they shall be as wool. If ye be willing and obedient, ye shall eat the good of the land."
"A new heart also will I give you, and a new spirit will I put within you; and I will take away the stony heart out of your flesh, and I will give you a heart of flesh. And I will put My Spirit within you, and cause you to walk in My statutes, and ye shall keep My judgments, and do them."
In the above is expressed the way of God in Christ Jesus; and with this His whole Word and life are in harmony. He says this to you. If you believe Him, you will respond from the depths of your heart: "Amen, Lord. I yield to do all that is required. I give up all the sin; I yield the hard heart; I accept the cleansing and the blessed Spirit. It is true, O Lord, in me!" And thus it is that the apostle declares of genuine belief,—"With the heart man believeth unto righteousness." A belief which falls short of this avails nothing. Believe thus, follow mortal, and you will find that "His ways are ways of pleasantness, and all His paths are peace."
2. If you "believe on the Lord Jesus Christ," you will accept Him and His Word as the truth; for He declares, "I am the Way and the Truth." He says to the Father, "Thy Word is truth." By His Spirit that Word is called "the Scriptures of truth," and of His law it is said, "Thy law is the truth." It is, also, "the Word of the truth of the Gospel." If you believe Jesus Christ, you will accept the Word. You will believe all that is contrary to that Word to be error. And, again, however hoary tradition may endeavor to gloss or pervert its teaching, however infidelity may deny it, however "higher criticism" may question, you will say: "Amen; let God be found true; but every man a liar;" "Thy Word is true from the beginning; and every one of Thy righteous judgments endureth forever." Let it be truth to me forever. Henceforth, "Thy Word is a lamp unto my feet, and a light unto my path."
3. If you believe, dear soul, on the Lord Jesus Christ, you will accept Him as your life; for He says, "I am the Way, the Truth, and the Life." He tells us that we are sinners, "by nature" "children of wrath," doomed to die; for "the wages of sin is death;" "the soul that sinneth, it shall die." We have no reason to believe that this does not mean the soul; for so it says, "The man sins; the man dies; and, apart from Christ, when the man dies he would be forever dead." But Christ died to redeem from death and the grave. He died and rose again. "But if there be no resurrection of the dead, then is Christ not risen."
And if Christ be not raised, your faith is vain; ye are yet in your sins. Then they also that are fallen asleep in Christ are perished." This is a part of the apostle's inspired argument by which he demonstrates the absolute necessity of the resurrection, of which that of the righteous dead will take place at the second coming of Jesus Christ, the Life-giver.
The old satanic lie, "Thou shalt not surely die," may be repeated in myriad forms; it may be associated with the sacred memories of the loved and gone; it may be embellished with all the flowers of poetry, and perfumed with all the fragrance of past memories; men may seek to uphold it by sophistry, by dogma, by stupendous edifices of false doctrines which involve almost the entire race of men in their serpentine folds; notwithstanding, he who intelligently and truly believes on the Lord Jesus Christ, will turn from the mighty host and accept the simple word of truth: "The soul that sinneth it shall die;" "the dead know not anything;" "his breath goeth forth, he returneth to his earth; in that very day his thoughts perish;" and by living faith he will look beyond the gloom of the grave to the second coming of the Life-giver, who has declared: "I will ransom them from the power of the grave; I will redeem them from death; O death, I will be thy plagues; O grave, I will be thy destruction." And to all this the true believer will respond: "Amen; Lord, live Thy life in me now, that I may be obedient to all God's commandments, even as Thou wert. Make me to be righteous with Thy righteousness, that I may partake of Thy life even now, and when Thou comest, live with Thee forevermore, in a universe free from sin."
O what a Saviour—"the Way, the Truth, and the Life"! O soul, will you not believe in Him?
True to the Best One Knows
THERE is only one real failure in life possible, and that is not to be true to the best one knows.—Canon Farrar.
A BLIND GUIDE—A FOUNDATION OF SAND.
By Editor
FOR the editor of The Torch of Reason, a Secularist paper of Oregon, we have the same feeling that we do for an honest man making a losing, hopeless, mistaken fight for what he believes to be right. This editor has been working for years to build a great liberal university by means which he hopes that Liberals will sometime liberally furnish. He has presented his building plans, he has enthusiastically set forth the advantages of education, he has earnestly appealed for means to build this temple to "science, the great saviour of men." He says:—
There is no use of our quoting Scripture to Secularists. "God loveth a cheerful giver," only makes an Infidel smile; besides, it would be trying the same old trick that we condemn the priests for. What, then, can we do?—We can appeal to your love of liberty, to your love of justice, to your love of truth, to your love for the children, to your love for HUMANITY. This is all we can do. If this and our labor are not a sufficient appeal, we must struggle on without further aid.
In the same issue he quotes most of an article from this paper on "The Trust Idea," and then ridicules the thought we express that the only way to secure true union is through Jesus Christ. He gives us this counsel:—
You must drop all superstition, brothers, and form a trust with education as a foundation and science as a guide. Your idea of Christ's coming is no better than the Indian's idea of the happy hunting-ground. You are not much in advance of the Catholics. Those old prophecies and miracles and horned-beast stories only keep up the disunion of our people, or cause factions to form trusts in order to control other factions. Give up your ancient myths and mysteries; come with us and help in forming a trust that will save the world from its corruption—the great Secular brotherhood of mankind.
And we reply, No, no, friend, we want a better "torch" than that to light us. The only true greatness is goodness. "Love is eternal." Education is good only when it is the good education of a good man. The more a confirmed bad man is educated the worse he is. "Science" will not change men's hearts. Education apart from God is a foundation of sand. Science at her very best, apart from God, is groping in the dark.
We have no desire to argue with you on the Old Book or its "more sure word of prophecy," but it stands and will stand. You do not believe it; you will not submit to its supreme and certain test. We know it; we know Jesus Christ, its Author—a knowledge higher than all the universities of earth can give. And, brother mortal, if you are weary of following old, blind, credulous, fumbling "Science;" if you have been sufficiently deceived by a false education divorced from God; if you get weary of calling, appealing, laboring in vain for other unbelievers to build a temple to your own higher ideals, then come to Christ, the power of God and the wisdom of God, and He will receive you. You do not know Him; but "taste and see that the Lord is good."
THE TWO WAYS.
By Pauline E. Fife
It had been a day of heart-ache,
Of clamor, and toil, and strife,
A day of storm and battle,
With sin and with sorrow rife.
Sadly I turned toward heaven,
But nearer the dark clouds came;
And it seemed to me that my labor
Of love was all in vain.
There is no need, said the tempter,
That your life be spent in vain.
Has art or science or travel
A pleasure you may not claim?
Seek, in the halls of wisdom,
Ease and an honored name;
Mine are the kingdoms of earth-land,
And I give to my children fame.
Forget the poor and the needy,
The outcast and forlorn.
Walk as the wide world walketh,
Nor fear the coming storm.
Then, when you turn at even
From the sunny paths you've trod,
There'll still be ease and resting
Within the gates of God.
The tempter ceased, for music
Wondrously pure and sweet,
Sung by the watching angels,
My listening ear did greet;
Then I saw an angel beckon,
And with him I fled through space,
Past myriad worlds—past marvels
Of color and form and grace.
But when we reached the city
Of the great God's jasper throne,
My angel guide he left me
To wander on alone.
I walked through stately mansions,
And lingered in gardens fair,
Yet, strangest of all these marvels,
I saw no angels there.
Wondering I said, They departed
To some enchanting shore,
Seeking new joy and pleasure
From the Father's endless store.
For them are no days of sadness,
No long, dark nights of pain;
They hear no cries of anguish,
Nor look on sin or shame.
Anon through the gates of heaven
I heard a cry of wo,
So sad, beseeching, familiar,
I cried in shame, "Let me go."
In the dreary realm of mortals,
In the midst of death and shame,
Legions of holy angels
There soothe and banish pain.
"As long as the world hath sorrow,
As long as the heart hath wo,"
Whenever men need comfort,
God's angels will come and go.
"Ah, service is sweeter than pleasure!"
The dear Lord said to me,
Mine eyes grew dim, and I whispered,
"Where once I was blind, I see."
PAULINE E. FIFE.
Oakland, Cal.
