TH E KING’S BUSINESS
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PRESCRIPTION In one month she went back to his office. “Well,” he said—smiling, as he looked at her face, “I see you are an obedient patient, and have taken my prescription faithfully. Do you feel as if you needed any other medicine now?” “No, doctor, I don’t,” she said, honestly. “I feel like a different person—I hope I am a different person! But how did you know that that was just what I needed?” For answer the famous physician turned to his desk. There, worn and marked, lay an open Bible. “Madam,” he said, with deep earnestness, “if I were to omit my daily reading of this Book I should lose my greatest source of strength and skill. I never go to an operation without reading my Bible. I never attend a distressing case without finding help in its pages. Your case called not for medicine, but for sources of peace and strength outside your own mind, and I showed you my own prescription, and I knew it would cure.” “Yet I confess, doctor,” said his patient, “that I came very near not taking it.” “Very few are willing to try it, I find,” said the physician, smiling again. “But there are many, many cases in my prac tice where it would work wonders if they only would take it.” This is a true story. . The doctor died only a little while ago, but his prescription remains. It will do no one any harm to try it .—Helen Ross Laird, in Forward. solution.” Preachers who saturate their sermons with the Word of God never wear out. The manna which they bring is pure, and sweet, and freshly gathered. It never clogs. God’s Word is deep, and he who studies it will ever have something new. He will never be dull, for the words of the Bible are strong, living words, and its images and descriptions are flowers of ele gance. Apt citations clinch the passages of the preacher’s discourse, and give sanc tion, dignity, positiveness, authority to it. And they shed light into his subject,, like windows in houses.^Christian Guardian.
THE DOCTOR’S QOM E years ago a lady, who tells the ^ story herself, went to consult a famous New York physician about her health. She was a woman of nervous temperament, whose troubles—and she had had many— had worried and excited her to such a pitch that the 'strain threatened her physical strength, and even her reason. She gave the doctor a list of her symptoms, and an swered his questions, only to be astonished at his brief prescription at the end: “Madam, what you need is to read your Bible more!” “But, doctor,” began the bewildered pa tient. “Go home and read your Bible an hour a day,” the great man reiterated, with kindly authority, “then come back to me a month from today.” And he bowed her out without a possibility of further protest. At first his patient was inclined to be angry. Then she reflected that at least the prescription was not an expensive one. Besides, it certainly had been a long time since she had read the Bible regularly, she reflected with a pang of conscience. Worldly cares had crowded out prayer and Bible study for years, and, though she would have resented being called an irreligious woman, she had undoubtedly become a most care less Christian. She went home and set her self conscientiously to try the physician’s remedy. Strong preachers have ever been Bible preachers. The old reformers drew their weapons from the heavenly armory. The sermons of Bunyan, and Baxter, and Flavel, and men of their stamp, were full of God—| instinct with living doctrines. Their very garb was after the Scripture pattern. White- field, as a custom, read the Bible with “Henry’s Commentary,” day by day, on his knees, praying over every sentence, line and word. Edwards and Davies were mighty in the Scriptures. Of Chalmers, it has been said that his sermons “held the Bible in
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