March 1929
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K i n g ' s
B u s i n e s s
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What Do You Want? “Covet earnestly the best gifts” (1 Cor. 12:31). If you could fill in a blank check on the Christmas pack of a great cosmic Santa Claus, what would you write ? Tell me that thing above all things you would have if you could get it, and I will tell you something about your soul. Marcus Aure lius wrote, “Would you know a man? Keep your eyes upon the things he aims at.” Let me see a man descend from a train in a great city. He is all alone. No one knows him; he knows no one. There are no pretenses to make, no reputation to consider. His real character can express itself unhindered. Let me see where he goes, what he does, how he conducts him self, what his real wants are, and I have a photograph of his inner self. One man will ask first of all where the most lux urious hotel is, another the location of the fastest night club, another the address of the safest bootlegger. Another man will ask where the snappiest show is being played. Still another will search out .the famous art museum, another will go to study the slums, another will seek the best preacher or the most beautiful church. The direction each one takes as he follows his dominant desire reveals the bent of his inner life. Beware what you want; it is a measure of your soul. Beware what you want, for you will get it. There is nothing truer than that we get what we really want in this world —at least we get no more. John Bur roughs has said, “If you have a thing in mind, it is not long before you have it in hand.” Jesus said of spiritual things, “Ask and it shall be given you; seek and ye shall find; knock and it shall be opened unto you; for every one that asketh recelveth; and he that seeketh findeth; and to him that knocketh it shall be opened.” But it is true of material things, too.— Frank B. Fageburg in “Watchman-Examiner." Joseph Parker on Preaching Dr. Parker was a close observer of preachers and a student of the matter, the method and manner of the pulpit. The following statement by him is valuable as the result of his experience and obser vation during a long ministerial career. Other preachers may have reached some what different conclusions, but in the main most will agree with him. He says: “Preaching must be broadly human to be popular. You cannot reach the popu lace through an academy, but you may often reach an academy through the popu lace. It seems to me in looking back that the old preachers were stronger in per sonal experience than are the preachers of today. They had fewer intellectual temptations _to resist. The pew did not ply them with so many curious questions. In my early days preaching was religious; within recent years it has become intel lectual with an occasional religious flavor. Things have quite altered in this respect. The first preaching was religious, with an occasional intellectual outlook; today religion is intellectual, with an occasional religious reference. In some places of worship people have to ask whether they are in a lyceum or in a church, in a hall of science or in a house of prayer. Wherein the pulpit has lost religiousness is has lost power. . . . . The direc
tion and warning given in thp Sermon on the Mount apply to preaching as well as to everything else. Jesus Christ would seem to say through the medium of that great discourse: ‘Take no thought for your preaching, what ye shall say as to words, temporary criticism, flowers of rhetoric, and the idolatry of science; for after all these things do the Gdntile ar tists seek; but seek ye first and foremost in your preaching the kingdom of God and his righteousness, be first and fore most intensely religious, and all these minor tributaries and accessories shall, if necessary—which is very doubtful—be added unto you.’ ” — Watchman-Examiner. Bible Exhibit of 380 Languages The New York Bible Society has been collecting Bibles, or Portions of the Scrip tures in various languages in actual circu lation in different parts of the world, and
has brought together 380 volumes, which have been; exhibited in the Assembly Hall of its Bible House at S East Forty-eighth Street, New York City. Every Book is in a different language or dialect. They are not volumes of ancient tongues, but are languages in actual use today. Some of the volumes are of languages that within the past eighteen months were only spoken, and within this period have been reduced to writing and portions of the Scriptures first published. Many of these languages represent millions of people in Africa, India, and the Islands of the Pa cific. The printed list of these tongues begins with the Accra Bible, the Addo Psalms, and ends with Luke in Zande and Matthew in Zigula. The Society has a separate exhibit of sixty-seven languages in which the Society is circulating the Scriptures in the city and harbor of New York, and among the foreign populations coming to America.
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