A MOST interesting and profitable way of studying the Bible is by books. Take up one book of the Bible, and study it thoroughly. Read it through. Learn all you can about it. Get its central theme, etc., and in every way possible make yourself familiar with its Gospel and doctrinal teachings. There are a number of points that should be borne in mind when studying the Bible in this way. We will name a few.
1. Who wrote the book? Spend a little time in getting familiar with the character of the author of the book you are about to study. Also find out what other portions of the Bible were written by the same author.
2. When was it written? Look up the conditions of the world, its governments, etc., at the time when it was written.
3. To whom was it written? Ascertain what especially called forth this part of the Scriptures. If it is addressed to some special church, or nation, gather together the facts in this connection, and it will make the study much more interesting and profitable.
4. Where, and under what circumstances, was it written? This is an important feature to look up. Was the book written by Paul when in prison? by John when in exile? etc. This often helps the student to understand many otherwise difficult sections of the book.
5. Was it written for some special purpose, or to correct some specific condition, or to counteract some definite error? These are important questions to be considered in the beginning of the study of any book of the Bible. The answer to such a question explains why Paul, when writing to the Romans laid such emphasis on justification by faith; and on the other hand, why James, in his epistle, appears rather to emphasize the importance of works in connection with faith.
6. Further examine the life work, and the other writings, if any, of the author of the book you are about to study.
We desire to emphasize the importance of gaining a general, yet clear, knowledge of the purpose, scope, and spirit of the book you are about to study. We desire to call attention to a series of articles which are appearing in the SIGNS OF THE TIMES, by Pastor F. D. Starr, treating of each one of the books of the Bible. We consider this series of articles to be very helpful to students who may be studying the Bible by books. Each book, its author, the time at which it was written, etc., has been very acceptably and concisely handled in this series. As a help to the study of the Bible by books, we would recommend those who are studying the Word in this way, to cut these articles out, and paste them in a scrap-book for reference.
If the book you have under study is not too large, it is well to read it through at one time. This is what you would do if you received a letter from your mother or from some dear friend. You would not read the first page one day, the second page the next day, etc., but you would read the whole letter through at one sitting. While the division of the Bible into chapters is certainly convenient as a means of reference, it is unfortunate in some respects, in that it causes people to leave off their Bible study, sometimes right in the middle of the subject, simply because the chapter ends there.
When you study the Bible by books, pay no attention to chapter divisions. Read the whole book through. If possible, read it at one time, and then you can go back and consider it in smaller sections if you desire.
For a beginner along this line, the epistle of James, or one of the minor prophets, are excellent books to take up first, and then, later, one can just as easily study the larger books of the Bible in this way.
CHRIST OUR ONLY HOPE.
By Ellen G. White
BY MRS. E. G. WHITE.
BEFORE the foundations of the world were laid, Christ, the only-begotten of God, pledged Himself to become the Redeemer of the human race, should Adam sin. Adam fell, and He who was partaker of the Father's glory before the world was, laid aside His royal robe and kingly crown, and stepped down from His high authority to become a Babe in Bethlehem, that by passing over the ground where Adam stumbled and fell, He might redeem fallen human beings. He subjected Himself to all the temptations that the enemy brings against men and women; and all the assaults of Satan could not make Him swerve from His loyalty to the Father. By living a sinless life He testified that every son and daughter of Adam can resist the temptations of the one who first brought sin into the world.
Christ brought men and women power to overcome. He came to this world in human form, to live a man amongst men. He assumed the liabilities of human nature, to be proved and tried. In His humanity He was a partaker of the divine nature. In His incarnation He gained in a new sense the title of the Son of God. Said the angel to Mary, "The power of the Highest shall overshadow thee; therefore also that Holy Thing which shall be born of thee shall be called the Son of God." While the Son of a human being, He became the Son of God in a new sense. Thus He stood in our world—the Son of God, yet allied by birth to the human race.
Christ came in human form to show the inhabitants of the unfallen worlds and of the fallen world that ample provision has been made to enable human beings to live in loyalty to their Creator. He endured the temptations10that Satan was permitted to bring against Him, and resisted all his assaults. He was sorely afflicted, and hard beset, but God did not leave Him without recognition. When He was baptized of John in Jordan, as He came up out of the water, the Spirit of God, like a dove of burnished gold, descended upon Him, and a voice from heaven said, "This is my beloved Son, in whom I am well pleased."
It was directly after this announcement that Christ was led by the Spirit into the wilderness. Mark says: "Immediately the Spirit driveth Him into the wilderness. And He was there in the wilderness forty days, tempted of Satan; and was with the wild beasts." "And in those days He did eat nothing."
Meeting Temptation.
When Jesus was led into the wilderness to be tempted, He was led by the Spirit of God. He did not invite temptation. He went to the wilderness to be alone, to contemplate His mission and work. By fasting and prayer He was to brace Himself for the blood-stained path He was to travel. How should He begin His work of freeing the captives held in torment by the destroyer? During His long fast, the whole plan of His work as man's deliverer was laid out before Him.
When Jesus entered the wilderness He was shut in by the Father's glory. Absorbed in communion with God, He was lifted above human weakness. But the glory departed, and He was left to battle with temptation. It was pressing upon Him every moment. His human nature shrank from the conflict that awaited Him. For forty days He fasted and prayed. Weak and emaciated from hunger, worn and haggard with mental agony, "His visage was so marred more than any man, and His form more than the sons of men." Now was Satan's opportunity. Now he supposed that he could overcome Christ.
There came to the Saviour, as if in answer to His prayers, one in the guise of an angel of light, and this was the message that he bore: "If Thou be the Son of God, command that these stones be made bread."
Jesus met Satan with the words, "Man shall not live by bread alone, but by every word that proceedeth out of the mouth of God." In every temptation the weapon of His warfare was the Word of God. Satan demanded of Christ a miracle as a sign of His divinity. But that which is greater than all miracles, a firm reliance upon a "thus saith the Lord" was a sign that could not be controverted. So long as Christ held to this position, the tempter could gain no advantage.
A familiarity with the Word of God is our only hope. Those who diligently search the Scriptures will not accept Satan's delusions as the truth of God. No one need be overcome by the speculations presented by the enemy of God and of Christ. We are not to speculate regarding points upon which the Word of God is silent. All that is necessary for our salvation is given in the Word of God. Day by day we are to make the Bible the man of our counsel.
From all eternity Christ was united with the Father, and when He took upon Himself human nature, He was still one with God. He is the link that unites God with humanity. "Forasmuch then as the children are partakers of flesh and blood, He also Himself likewise took part of the same." Only through Him can we become children of God. To all who believe on Him, He gives power to become the sons of God. Thus the heart becomes the temple of the living God. It is because Christ took human nature that men and women become partakers of the divine nature. He brings life and immortality to light through the Gospel.
RESURRECTION.
By M. L. Morris
BY M. L. MORNIS.
At His word the grave forsaking,
When He cometh in the skies,
Mortal dust, immortal waking,
In His image shall arise.
Sown in weakness, raised in power!
Glorious hope, and glorious hour!
In His keeping who hath promised,
In His keeping till He comes.
Till He comes, and near or distant
The fulfilling of His word,
Quick and dead await the instant
That reveals from heaven the Lord.
Coming then to reign in power!
Glorious hope and glorious hour!
In His keeping who hath promised,
In His keeping till He comes.
In His keeping, in His keeping
Safely rests our slumbering dust,
In His keeping, in His keeping
Safely still the living trust.
True His word, and sure His power,
Glorious hope, and glorious hour!
In His keeping who hath promised,
In His keeping till He comes.
Charity, Patience, and Eternal Joy
"MEN mete out their own temporal joys and eternal pleasures by the measure of charitable, loving, considerate, patient dispositions they manifest toward others."
WILL IT PAY?
By A. H. Darrow
WILL the approaching Catholic triumph in the United States, which so many blind, infatuated Protestants are aiding, prove a desirable thing? Let us take a retrospective, historical view of this question, and see.
In the beginning of apostasy in the Christian church, the vacillations of church councils and the selfish ambition of bishops combined with the popular, the political, and the imperial demand for order and tranquility, made necessary the rise of a strong central head in the church if the apostate body was to be kept intact.
Concerning the one individual who did perhaps more than any other to bring about this result, the historian Gibbon, in his Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire, says:
"The genius of Leo [I.] was exercised and displayed in the public misfortunes; and he has deserved the appellation of the Great, by the successful zeal with which he labored to establish his opinions and his authority, under the venerable names of orthodox faith and ecclesiastical discipline."—Vol. 2, p. 455.
Let it be remembered that Leo I. was the first pope, or Roman bishop, who ever succeeded in so completely dominating a church council as to cause his mandate to be substituted for the decree of a decided majority of the council. See "Two Republics," Chapters XVIII. and XIX.
Under his "authority" and "discipline" and the guidance of his successors, prayers for the dead, the worship of saints, martyrs and angels, and other unscriptural practises which had been already begun, were confirmed, and the deification of the dead and buried Mary, mother of Jesus, the adoption of a priestly garb of mixed pagan and Jewish origin, worshiping in Latin, worship of images and relics, baptism of bells, obligatory celibacy of priests, doctrine of church infallibility, sale of indulgences, transubstantiation, auricular confession, purgatory, etc., were successively adopted as doctrines and customs of the church. Patristicism, or the doctrine of the infallibility of the church fathers, became prevalent and overruling in the church, and, as a consequence, the intolerance of opposing doctrines and opinions, which had always characterized the pagan religions, was embraced by the Catholics, and has ever since been one of their most cherished tenets.
Says the Hon. George Bancroft, in his History of the Formation of the U. S. Constitution: "In the earliest states known to history, government and religion were one and indissoluble. . . . No one thought of vindicating religion for the conscience of the individual, till a voice in Judea, breaking day for the greatest epoch in the life of humanity by establishing a pure, spiritual, and universal religion for all mankind, enjoined to render to Cæsar only that which is Cæsar's. The rule was upheld during the infancy of the Gospel for all men. No sooner was the religion adopted by the chief of the Roman Empire, than it was shorn of its character of universality, and enthralled11by an unholy connection with the unholy state."—Last Chapter.
In consequence of this union of church and state and the amalgamation of Christianity with Paganism, freedom of thought ceased, new discoveries in science were curtailed; "throughout the East, men in terror destroyed their libraries, for fear that some unfortunate sentence contained in any of the books should involve them and their families in destruction. The universal opinion was that it was right to compel men to believe what the majority of society had now accepted as the truth, and, if they refused, it was right to punish them. No one was heard in the dominating party to raise his voice in behalf of intellectual liberty."—"Draper's Hist. Intel. Dev. of Europe," p. 231. "Already the Catholic party, in preparation of their commencing atrocities, ominously inquired, 'Is the vengeance of God to be defrauded of its victims?'"—Id., p. 209.
And so it went on from bad to worse till the fourth Council of Lateran, in its third canon, set forth the infamous decree, that—
"if any temporal lord, when required and admonished by the church, shall neglect to purge his land from this heretical taint, let him be bound in the chains of excommunication by the metropolitan and other bishops. And if he disdain to give satisfaction within a year, let this be signified to the sovereign Pontiff, that henceforth he may declare the vassals of such lord absolved from their allegiance, and may devote his land to be occupied by Catholics, who, exterminating the heretics, may possess it without any contradiction, and may preserve it in the true faith."—"Labbe," vol. XI, p. 148.
This quotation, in all its bold and base avowal of the worst charges ever made against the Romish apostasy, is alone sufficient to refute the assertions of Archbishop Spalding and others who try to make it appear that kings and emperor's were mainly responsible for the bloody and malignant persecutions which stain the annals of the Roman Church.
It is useless to more than mention the burning of the Serapion; the destruction of the Alexandrian Library; the wars of Justinian, "undertaken at the instance of the orthodox clergy," in which it is estimated that twenty-five million people lost their lives that Roman Catholicism might live and triumph; the internal strifes of the church. Then, as Draper says, bishops were concerned in assassinations, poisonings, adulteries, blindings, riots, treasons, civil war; when patriarchs and primates were excommunicating and anathematizing one another in their rivalries for earthly power, bribing eunuchs with gold, and courtesans and royal females with concessions of episcopal love, and influencing the decisions of councils asserted to speak with the voice of God by those base intrigues and sharp practise resorted to by demagogues in their packed assemblies! Among legions of monks, who carried terror into the imperial armies and riot into the great cities, arose hideous clamors for theological dogmas, but never a voice for intellectual liberty or the outraged rights of man.—"Hist. Int. D. of E.," p. 240.
Nor is it worth the while to more than allude to the hatred displayed against learning by Pope Gregory the Great, whose motto, "Ignorance is the mother of devotion," caused him to "expel from Rome all mathematical studies," to "forbid the study of the classics," to "burn the Palatine library founded by Augustus Cæsar and valuable for the many rare manuscripts it contained;" who "boasted that his own works were written without any regard to the rules of grammar" and of whom it was said that "he was as inveterate an enemy against learning as ever lived."—Id., pp. 264-265.
But it should not be forgotten, that after Charles Martel had saved Roman Catholic Europe from Mohammedan conquest and rule, and solely because he had taken some church revenues and applied them to the support of his army, he was "eternally damned" by the same pope and clergy which subsequently forged a celestial letter from St. Peter to persuade his son, Pepin, to conquer and bestow upon the pope the dominion of the Lombards. His son, Charlemagne, an equally zealous churchman, crowned by the pope, "invariably insisted on baptism as a sign of submission, punishing with appalling barbarity any resistance, as on the occasion of the revolt, A.D. 782, when, in cold blood, he beheaded in one day 4,500 persons at Verden."—Id. pp. 273-275.
Charlemagne himself "never succeeded in learning how to write;" and his schools "proved a failure," because "the Roman pontiffs and their clergy, very few of whom knew how to read, scarcely any to write, as far as they troubled themselves with any opinion about the matter, thought that knowledge was of more harm than good."—pp. 276, 277.
Pope Adrian had made money by selling his vassals as slaves to the Saracens; and, under the rule of Louis the Pious, "the slave trade greatly increased." "France, at this time, had literally become a theocracy, the clergy absorbing everything that was worth having." "We have now approached the close of a thousand years from the birth of Christ; the evil union of the church and state, their rivalries, their intrigues, their quarrels, had produced an inevitable result, doing the same in the West that they had done in the East; disorganizing the political system, and ending in a universal social demoralization."—Id. pp. 276-279.
Yet this same union of church and state is what Catholics are everywhere contending for, and what they expect to accomplish here. Through such union John Huss was slain, also Jerome of Prague, and millions of other heretics. By it they have reduced flourishing provinces to destitution, and decimated or cruelly tortured the population of numerous districts. After all his efforts to throw the blame for religious persecution on the state, Archbishop Spalding overturns his whole argument by saying, in his remarks on the multiplicity of sects in the United States: "The fatal source of all this mischief is the principle of private judgment in matters of religion, in opposition to that of authority."—"Essay on the Spirit of the Age," p. 392.
He thus denies for his church and for all people the right of private or individual judgment, and in so doing, justifies every act of persecution of which the Romish church has ever been guilty. Shall we uphold a church, or system, or principle, that stand for a union of church and state, for universal social demoralization, for religious persecution; and which, instead of bettering, makes worse even the heathen nation which it subdues and dominates? O build on Christ, the Rock of Truth, and not on ecclesiasticism, or you will find in the great Judgment Day that the storms and floods have swept away your only refuge.
WHAT YOU BURY.
By Joseph Parker
THERE is room enough on earth to find graves for the finest abilities and noblest powers. The ground which received the one talent will also receive the five. Every man can be his own sexton. You can easily find a spade to dig a grave for your talents and abilities, your money and your time. But understand that in burying your talent you are burying yourself; in burying aught that God has given you, you are burying that part of your very life.—Joseph Parker.
SWIFT TO HEAR.
SOME men’s hearing gets to be very sharp. Take one who is working in a telegraph office: The click of the instrument rings out day and night, carrying messages over the wire. The far ends of the earth receive these despatches; but the moment the call comes over the line for that particular office, he is instantly alert to receive the word that is coming to him.
You and I probably might sit there for hours and hours and hear that call, but it would not appeal to us in the least; the sounds would all be alike to us. But to the one whose ear is trained to hear such sounds, the message is as clear as noonday.
I went into a boiler factory once. Such a bang and clatter as went up from every direction! It was enough to make one distracted. I wondered how men could make themselves understood at all when they spoke to one another. But did they ever do that, or was the work carried on from morning till night with no word spoken? The answer came to me when I tried to tell the foreman of the shop what my business was. He answered me in a tone of voice such as he might have used out-of-doors, where all was still. I was compelled to lean far down, in order to hear what he said at all, while he caught my lightest word. His ear was tuned to all the sounds that seemed to me so distressing.
To every one of His children, God speaks. Not many of us catch the meaning of what He says. Why?—Because our ears are attuned to other sounds. We hear the call of the world when it comes inviting us to scenes of pleasure. Fortune has only to whisper, and we follow her to the ends of the earth. The faintest whisper of sin reaches us, and we obey; but when God, the Father of heaven and earth, stoops to talk with us, we do not hear.
And yet, we are told that we should be swift to hear. We must be, if we would escape the awful allurements of the world about us. Sometimes it seems to us as if God were indeed gone from earth altogether. So dull have our ears become from constant listening to the calls of evil, that we do not recognize even the thunder tones with which He sometimes speaks to us.
But how shall we come to know that God is speaking to us? When the telegraph operator is learning to read that mysterious click which stands for the Morse code, every instrument save the one in the office of his teacher is shut off. The only sound that comes to him over the line is that intended for his own ears. All the disturbing sounds are turned off while he listens to the friend speaking to him at the other end of the wire. So, and so only, can he become conversant with the wonderful art he is studying.
So we need to stop now and then, with all the world shut out, and, in the secret of our closets, listen to God as He tells us the sweet story of His love. When we have once mastered that so that we will know just when He speaks to us, we may go out into the world and hold our hearts true forever and forever against all the noises that sin can possibly make to turn us aside.—Christian Work and Evangelist.
TRYING THE HEART.
1. Besides the Sabbath what does God establish as a test of obedience and loyalty?
“And all the tithe of the land, whether of the seed of the land, or of the fruit of the tree, is Jehovah’s; it is holy unto Jehovah.” Lev. 27: 30.
2. By what arrangement in this matter are we taught that the Lord is particular in the matter of the tithe?
“And if a man will redeem aught of his tithe, he shall add unto it the fifth part thereof. And all the tithe of the herd or the flock, whatsoever passeth under the rod, the tenth shall be holy unto Jehovah. He shall not search whether it be good or bad, neither shall he change it; and if he change it at all, then both it and that for which it is changed shall be holy; it shall not be redeemed.” Verses 31-33.
3. What important lesson is taught in the tithing system?—That we are but stewards of God.
4. What will the Lord require of His stewards?
“For it is as when a man, going into another country, called his own servants, and delivered unto them his goods. And unto one he gave five talents, to another two, to another one; to each according to his several ability; and he went on his journey.” “Now after a long time the lord of those servants cometh, and maketh a reckoning with them.” Matt. 25: 14, 15, 19.
5. Whose record in this matter is left as an example for us?
“And Melchizedek king of Salem brought forth bread and wine; and he was priest of God Most High. And he blessed him, and said, Blessed be Abram of God Most High, possessor of heaven and earth; and blessed be God Most High, who hath delivered thine enemies into thine hand. And he gave him a tenth of all.” Gen. 14: 18-20.
6. Because of Abraham’s faithfulness, what honored title is given him?
“Didst not Thou, O our God, drive out the inhabitants of this land before Thy people Israel, and give it to the seed of Abraham Thy friend forever?” 2 Chron. 20: 7.
7. What promise did Jacob make after the Lord had spoken with him in vision?
“And Jacob vowed a vow, saying, If God will be with me, and will keep me in this way that I go, and will give me bread to eat, and raiment to put on, so that I come again to my father’s house in peace, and Jehovah will be my God, then this stone which I have set up for a pillar, shall be God’s house; and of all that Thou shalt give me I will surely give the tenth unto Thee.” Gen. 28: 20-22.
8. What instruction does the Saviour give upon the payment of the tithe?
“Wo unto you, scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites! For ye tithe mint and anise and cummin, and have left undone the weightier matters of the law, justice, and mercy, and faith; but these ye ought to have done, and not to have left the other undone.” Matt. 23: 23.
9. For what purpose was the tithe used anciently? —For the support of the Lord’s work and those that were doing His work. See Num. 18: 21, 24.
10. What accusation does the Lord bring against those who were not faithful in this matter?
“Will a man rob God? yet ye rob Me. But ye say, Wherein have we robbed Thee?—In tithes and offerings. Ye are cursed with the curse; for ye rob Me, even this whole nation.” Mal. 3: 8, 9.
11. What blessing is pronounced upon those who were faithful in this regard?
“Bring ye the whole tithe into the storehouse, that there may be food in My house, and prove Me now herewith, saith Jehovah of hosts, if I will not open you the windows of heaven, and pour you out a blessing, that there shall not be room enough to receive it.” Verse 10.
12. What definite instruction has the Lord given for the support of the Gospel ministry?
“Know ye not that they that minister about sacred things eat of the things of the temple, and they that wait upon the altar have their portion with the altar? Even so did the Lord ordain that they that proclaim the Gospel should live of the Gospel.” 1 Cor. 9: 13, 14.
PROGRESS IN BRITISH WEST INDIES.
By W. A. Sweany
BY W. A. SWEANY.
[From a letter to the Editor.]
WE love the SIGNS, and those that make it, not only for the immense help it has been to us financially, in our needy field, but for its precious, valuable contents, week after week.
We were unable to secure a suitable place in St. George for public services, so we devoted our time and effort to personal work,—visiting, Bible-reading, and canvassing. We expect to erect a church and school building there at once, a lot having been given, and about half enough money pledged to buy the material. The labor will all be donated. These people are mostly East Indians, and a church and school in their midst will be an inestimable blessing to the entire community. If any of the readers of the SIGNS feel it a privilege to help us a little in this enterprise, we shall greatly appreciate it, and it will be a good investment.
In the village of Gongave, twelve miles up the coast, there has lived for several years a lone sister in the faith, and her influence finally brought another young woman to accept the truth. These two greatly desired us to hold some meetings there. So we rented a building for three months, fitted up a neat little hall, holding about one hundred persons, and moved into some tiny rooms adjoining, with just enough of our household effects to enable us to live a sort of camp-meeting style.
We held meetings just a week, with a good attendance and interest, and then the sister first mentioned fell very ill, in her room just beneath our hall. So we had to stop the meetings, as she was threatened with nervous prostration. Her room was dark, damp, and unventilated; and she had no one to properly care for her, being forsaken by her husband. She tried taking the doctor's drugs, but grew rapidly worse; so she turned to us for help.
A Wharf Scene in St. George, Grenada.
The laws touching nursing and medical practise are very strict here, but we knew she would soon die, if left alone, and that rational treatment would save her. So, despite the doctor's wrath and the mutterings of the people, we carried her upstairs to our bed and room, and began at once to apply the necessary treatments as best we knew. Necessary bowel treatment, cool sponge baths, the wet-sheet pack, hot and cold to the spine, etc., reduced her temperature from 105 degrees to normal so quickly as to almost constitute a miracle.
The doctor declared, when he was dismissed, that she would die, and vowed he would not issue a certificate of death; and I don't know what would have happened, had she died. However, she did not die, but is now fully recovered, and we have resumed our meetings, the people being more favorably impressed with our principles than they were before. To God be all the praise.
Our meetings were interrupted nearly three weeks, and the attendance is not so large as we could wish; but we trust that our coming here will not be in vain, altho our plans for a vigorous three-months' campaign here did not materialize as we hoped.
Our conference convenes in Georgetown, British Guiana, July 17, and, if I attend, as all the workers are expected to do, another month will be taken out of our plan here. However, "all things work together for good to them that love God," and "He worketh all things after the counsel of His own will;" so we are of good courage, despite difficulties.
We received word this week that Brother Enoch is stricken with fever in Barbados. He had just returned from an extended trip to British Guiana, and was about starting for Tobago. This occasions us much anxiety, as he is alone, his wife having gone on a visit to the States.
Our island field is so divided, so difficult, and so extensive, and our laborers so few, that we are often at our wit's end to know what to do; but "our sufficiency is of God," and "His grace is sufficient," and His truth will triumph. We have been greatly cheered by the reports of the General Conference, and rejoice in the world-wide, onward progress of the message. Wondrous things will be achieved before the next General Conference, and soon, please God, the General Assembly and Church of the First-born will convene at Mount Zion; that meeting we are planning to attend.
No. 12 St. John Street, St. George, Grenada, B. W. I.
Halifax Street, St. George, Grenada.
CHILDREN AS MISSIONARIES.
By Belle M. Brain
I pluck an acorn from the greensward, and hold it to my ear, and this is what it says to me:
"By and by birds will come and nest in me. By and by I will furnish shade for the cattle. By and by I will provide warmth for the home in the pleasant fire. By and by I will be shelter from the storm to those who are under the roof. By and by I will be the strong ribs of a great vessel, and the tempest will beat against me in vain, while I carry men across the Atlantic."
I look into the faces of a company of little children, and I hear a whisper, saying:
"By and by I will be a blessing to many. By and by I will give money to the Lord Jesus for His work. By and by I will teach many to love the cause of missions. By and by I will cross the ocean to carry the Gospel to those who have it not. By and by I will turn many from worshiping idols to serve the living God. By and by I shall finish my course, and be among the glorified with my Redeemer."
"You, frail, powerless little one?" I ask.
And the little child makes answer: "Yes; Christ and I."
"Thank God for bairns' prayers!" wrote James Chalmers, from New Guinea; "I like best the prayers of children."
Children, even very little children, are a greater factor in missionary work than we realize. What they actually accomplish is by no means inconsiderable, and far greater than we give them credit for. If their efforts should suddenly cease, many a missionary wheel would stop revolving. Since the day when the Lord Jesus used a little lad's five loaves and two small fishes to feed the hungry multitude, He has been using children's gifts to bless the world. The figures are not at hand to show the amount given to missions by the children of Christendom, but it is undoubtedly a vast sum. In proportion to their income, children are the largest givers in the world. Nor are their prayers to be despised. Few among older Christians pray with the simple faith and loving confidence of a little child. If only the curtain were drawn aside, we should probably find that many of the blessings granted to the cause of missions have been given in answer to the prayers of Christ's own little ones.—Belle M. Brain.
A Street in St. George, Grenada.
LITTLE BY LITTLE.
By London Freeman
STEP by step the Alpine climber
Presses upward sure and slow,
Till his feet are firm'y planted
In the realms of endless snow.
Blow on blow the sculptor fashions
Roughness into symmetry,
Till the dark rock gleams with brightness
In its new-born majesty.
Touch by touch the picture groweth
Into beauty, life, and light,
Till a wondrous revelation
Bursts upon the raptured sight.
Stroke by stroke the clock aye ringeth
Welcomes to eternity,
Adding warning unto warning
To the heart in me and thee.
Word by word the book is written,
With its tale of wo or weal,
Till the throbbing thoughts like music
Through the trembling spirit steal.
Wave on wave the wild tide creepeth
Farther on and up the shore,
Till the stranded boats are floating
Free and buoyant as of yore.
Such is life in all its phases,
Little things make up the great;
Therefore scorn them not, but make them
Stepping-stones to heaven's gate.
—London Freeman.
Worldliness and Hard-Heartedness in Religion
By Matthew Henry
NOTHING exposes religion more to the reproaches of its enemies than the worldliness and hard-heartedness of the professors of it.—Matthew Henry.
