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THE K I N G ’S BUS I NES S (9) Oh, what a meeting! Music and mirth; joy and gladness! (10) It will be a solemn sentence from the Saviour’s lips—“The door is .shut!” (11) A word to the wise should be sufficient. i m Subject Illustration.—The people of an ancient city were commanded by the oracle, so the story goes, to assemble on a plain outside the city, and who first saw the suri- LESSON rise, should be ILLUSTRATIONS made king. A W. H. Pike ''slave turned his back to the sun and looked up the shaft of a high tem ple where the sun’s earliest rays flamed and he cried: “I see it!” He had been told to do so by a wise citizen, who stayed at home. The citizen, revealed by the slave, they made king, and he was the wisest that ever reigned there. Bible Illustration.—In 1 Kings 3:23- 28 Solomon used wisdom in deciding to which mother the child belonged. Luke says in Luke 10:21: “In that same hour he rejoiced in the Holy Spirit, and said, I thank Thee, O Father, Lord of heaven and earth, that thou didst hide these things from the wise and understanding, and didst re veal them unto babes. Yea, Father, for so it was well-pleasing in thy sig(ht.” And this Wisdom given by God is manifested in His answer a lit tle later in Luke 20:10-26 when the Scribes and Chief Priests tried to catch Him in His words and aske'd Him, “Is it lawful for us to give tribute unto Caesar or not?” And He said, “Render unto Caesar the things that are Caesar’s and unto God the things that are God’s.” It Takes Wisdom to Choose Aright.— Here is a book telling how to make things. Here is another on the won ders of nature, another about great men and what made them successful.
Would you rather have one of these books or an orange? Why, the book, of course. It is food for the mind. You .want wisdom. When Solomon was giv en his choice of the things he would like he asked for wisdom. God granted his desire. What is the best book in the world? The Bible* of course. This Book tells us how to be happy here and in’ the life to come. Choose it as a daily companion. Sam Jones said, “You can run Mor onism without Joseph Smith, and you can run Confucianism without Con fucius, but you cannot run Christianity without Christ. Neither can we run ourselves or the world rightly without Him. Wisdom Brings Happiness.—The right use of knowledge is wisdom and the wisdom acted upon always brings happiness. Dr. Bellows said, “I never knew one man or woman who steadily evaded the house of prayer and the pub lic worship on the Lord’s Day, who habitually neglected it and had a theory on which it was neglected, who did not come to grief and bring other people to grief.” How true this was in the five foolish virgins. Here is the “wisdom that cometh down from above.” Let us condense the essence of the Gospel into three points. First, you must ven ture to Christ. This takes you away from sin. Second, you must venture on Christ, this is true faith and it gives you all you need spiritually and tem porally and even after. Third, you must venture for Christ, and this is the life of love and self-denial. Golden Text Illustration:—An Eng lish dramative poet of the last century, Joanna Baillie, tells a touching tale of a maiden whose lover had gone to the Holy Land and was reported slain. Yet she, refusing to believe this kept watch day and night for his return. On the shores of her island home, every eve ning she kindled her' beacom-flxe !to guide his bark over the Mediterranean
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