THE KING’S BUSINESS
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comfort and ease must be studied and whose temper is so sensitive that it must always be coaxed and coddled, or he is irritable and hard to get on with; who demands that the other members of the household should be thoughtful toward him, but who never himself is thoughtful of them. “Mary,” said the sister of a recent convert, “I believe you have truly got religion, for you are so much easier to get on with.” Some people do not get that kind of religion. They have never heeded the scriptural injunction to “put on kindness.” They are quick at fault-finding,' but slow of praise. And not until loved ones pass away do they realize how ungrateful and unthought- ful toward them they have been. When not a whisper can be heard? Why do we w ait till hands a re laid Close-folded, pulseless, ere we place W ithin them roses sweet and rare, O r lilies in their spotless grace ?” III. We would not expect to find many left-hearted people in the field of charity, would we ? But how great is our disappointment! Indeed, I my self have come to feel that there are proportionately more men arid women who carry their hearts at the left in doing such work than in any other act ivity. This is the peculiar temptation of the official almoner. He starts out in the work with his heart in the right place, but soon begins to meet all sorts of disenchantments or set-backs. The people he helps are almost universally ungrateful. - Many wholly deceive him. He meets constantly with im postors. Soon his faith in humanity is shaken. He grows cold at first and after that severe. His heart gradually moves over to his left side, and no one is more exacting or uncharitable toward the poor than he. Another group of people belong in “Why do we w ait till ears are deaf Before we-speak the kindly word, And only u tte r loving praise
would be treated, and how differently our clerks would treat their employ ers. How confidence would at once replace the present suspicion and an tagonism existing between capital and labor. How certain of our corporations now criticized, and justly, as heartless/ would take on a vital and active con science. Some one has said that what the world needs is not more men, but more man. Certainly its foremost need is more Christian manhood. When d’Aguesseau, prime minister of Louis XIV, was summoned to Ver sailles under order to sign a state pa per to which he felt it wrong to attach his signature, his wife bade him good bye, saying: “Forget your home, vour wife, your children, and even your country, but remember your con science and your God.” Were our Christian men to go to business with their consciences in control, there would not be so many crooked dealings in real estate or bond disposal, as this country is now alas! so often charged with. A business man who carries his heart on his right side will be per pendicularly honest, uniformly patient, high-principled, both kind and kindly, as straight as a string, as morally steadfast as granite. . Many of our Christian men are all that, thank God! But they are now too lonely down in business. God mul tiply the number of men who wear their hearts on the'right side. II. What of right-hearted men at home? Are they the rule or the ex ception? The number of those de scribed by the old-time adage as “saint abroad and devil at home” are doubt less comparatively few; but quite the opposite is true when we search there for the delicately thoughtful and pro verbially unselfish. The man who car ries his worries home with him has his heart on the wrong side. So with the man who wants his own way ;• whose
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