THE KING’S BUSINESS
254 We have heard the story of the place in Russia where it was said that a Russian peasant could have all the ground that he could measure out from sunrise to sunset. So he started for the place, and when the sun rose in the morning he started on his journey after the land. He saw the wav ing trees in the distance, and said, “They shall be mine.” He saw the glisten of the lake beyond them, and he said, “I will take that in.” He saw the fertile plain just ahead, and determihed that it should be his own; but when he had gained these, he lifted his eyes, and, behold, the sun had gone beyond the meridian! Then he bent every energy tos reach the starting place. The sun dropped lower and lower and lower; but he reached the starting point just as the sun went down, and he gained it all. But when they picked him up he was dead— “What shall it profit a man if he gain the whole world, and lose his own soulf" Most of us believe that God can do more for our friends than we can. Yet how many of us act consistently on this belief? Do we count our prayer for our friends the most effective service we can render them? That rare man of God, Forbes Robinson, ■ whose influence over men in Cambridge, England, and elsewhere was so notably blessed, found that “the secret of any in fluence which he possessed over men was the outcome of his efforts to pray for them.” A friend who knew him intimate ly has written: “He told me that in his younger days he had taken every oppor tunity of personally appealing to men to come to Christ. ‘But,’ he went on, ‘as I grow older I become more diffident, and now often, when I desire to see the Truth come home to any man, I say to myself, If I have him here he will spend half an hour with me. Instead, I will spend that half hour in prayer for him.’ ” We may be very sure that any one who thus sacredly meets his prayer obligations to his friends will also not fail to let God use him in
conversational evangelism as well. But we must always remember that what we say to a man for Christ is likely to be less important than what -we have said to God in that man’s behalf.— S. S. Times. I am sorry for the men who do not read the Bible every day. I wonder why they deprive themselves of the strength and of the pleasure. It is one of the most singular books in the world, for every time you open it some old text that you have read a score of times suddenly beams with a new mean ing. Evidently the mood and the thought of that day, bred by the circumstances that you cannot analvze, has suddenly thrown its light upon that page and upon that passage, and there springs out upon the page to you something that you never saw lie upon it before. There is no other book that I know of of which this is true; there is no other book that yields its meaning so per sonally, that seems to fit itself so intimately to the very spirit that is seeking its guid ance. And so when we teach our children we do not teach them, I hope, dogmatically. We must not try to make them read the Scripture as we read it, but merely try to. bring them into such contact with the Scrip ture that it will yield its meaning to their hearts arid to their minds. Make it their companion, make it their familiar text-book, and the rest will take cafe of itself.— Wood- row Wilson. Cast thy bread upon the waters, Thinking not ’tis thrown away; God Himself saith thou shalt gather It again some future day. Cast thy bread upon the waters, Wildly though the billows roll They but aid thee as thou toilest Truth to spread from pole to pole. Cast thy bread upon the waters, Why wilt thou still doubting stand? Bounteous shall God send the harvest If thou sow’st with liberal hand.
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