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December 1932
T h e
K i n g ’ s
B u s i n e s s
Joel Crosbie looked again at the dead form. His chin trembled and a tear rolled down his cheek. “ And he has,” he said distinctly, “ but it’s only Through Street Crosbie, and he doesn’t know the way.” Joyfully Grandpa put his arm about the shaking shoul ders. “ It’s a through street, Joel,” he whispered, “ and a one way street, too. It’s the way of the manger and the cross.”
cause I won’t use his blood-sucking business tactics. I pre fer thieving. It’s more honest.” “ How come you’re so interested in these mission folks, Eddie?” “ I guess— down underneath, Grandpa, that we’re true kin, you and me. I ’d— I might be a min- ister, if it weren’t for Dad.” ¡¡U im H it Grandpa Crosbie was shaking all over. WsSpfBMlir’ “ Eddie, Eddie, my prayer for you—ever Down on his knees went the boy. The tall frame shook with emotion. Edward cried out to God for forgiveness. H is face took on a determined look. He laid his life at the foot of the cross. He would henceforth be a soul-winner. Grandpa was speaking again—hurriedly—emphatically: “W e’ll leave this house together. I’ve a little money. You shall study. W e’ll work—•” • Edward took his sport roadster. If was his dead mother’s gift to him. He was entitled to that. They were driving along the snowy streets, still sprin kled with belated Christmas shoppers. Edward stopped, waiting for an opportunity to swing onto the through street that joined the highway leaving the city. He shifted gears, the car shot forward. A huge black sedan, tearing along at right angles, ig nored the red light. Grandpa Crosbie covered his face with his hands. A ripping, rending crash split the night! * * * ' * It was the day after Christmas. Through Street Crosbie sat in a wheel-chair, his right arm in a sling, his left leg in splints, and his head swathed in bandages. Grandpa Crosbie, miraculously free from injury, en tered the library. “ I’ve just been down to the morgue to see the other poor fellow,” he told Joel. “ Dead, eh?” Joel felt of his throbbing head and frowned. “ He had the right of way, Joel. You never stopped for the light.” “ Well! Haven’t I made arrangements to pay all his bills? Am I not suffering, too?” “ Ah, yes, and due to suffer more. You see—it was Eddie.” “ Edward !” Joel Crosbie’s face went white. “ Not—not Eddie!” “ Eddie. You turned him out. I was going with him.” Joel Crosbie’s eyes seemed almost to bulge from their sockets. “ Bring him home!” he shouted at last. “ Bring him home! My boy! He has a right to come home!” He had the nurse wheel his chair in beside the casket, and there he sat for hours, talking to the still, mangled form of his son. “ Do you think he hears me? Does he know I didn’t mean,to send him away ?” he begged of the old man. “ You did mean it, Joel,” reminded his father, “ but you can plan to go where he is, and tell him how sorry you are.” He went on, half afraid of this new, softened man who was his son. “ Eddie made the Lord a present of his life on Christmas Eve. He was going to be a minister and win others to Him.” since you were born! Come! Kneel here and make Christ a present of your life. The right way— the sky way.”
A CHRISTMAS HOMILY [Continued from page 508]
from the view of others by a prominent, vigorous, sin- warped self-life which was condemned to death in Him when He assumed it and nailed it to Calvary. Can you not hear the Christ of the manger, the cross, and the glory say ing to you at this Christmas time, “ Come, follow Me” ; “ if any man will come after me, let him deny himself, and take up his cross, and follow me” ? O you who have been redeemed, you who have wel comed Him into your heart, will you not voluntarily de liver your self-life up to the death of the cross and then, having wrapped Christ lovingly within your crucified self, make these words o f Paul—-“ Not I, but Christ”—the rule of your life and service in the new year? Henceforth say, “ Christ shall be magnified in my body” ; “ for to me to live is Christ.” The present crisis hour demands that we who bear His name shall “walk in newness of life,” and in “ the power of his might.” Such a walk is the fruit of our iden tification with Christ in His death, the outgrowth of the practical apprehension of Paul’s statement, “We have been planted together in the likeness of his death.” May we not fail to present in our lives to the three onlooking worlds, the death-sign, which they beheld in the manger bed, for “ as he is, so are we in this world.” May you and I have no ambition but “ that I may know him and the power of his resurrection, and the fellowship of his sufferings, being made conformable unto his death,” and to make Him known. The Christ of the Manger ^ 1 l wice a thousand years swing by, and the whole world waits by the manger. Oh, I wonder not that the skies grew so strangely bright that night the Christ was born! I won der not that fugitive melody rippled o’er the jasper walls and entranced the adoring shepherds. I wonder not that the wise men from afar headed the great procession of Christ mas givers. And all of us must go to the stable this week. Come, let us go to Bethlehem! Come, all ye proud, and be rebuked by the lowly'Jesus; all ye rich, and present to Him your g ifts; all ye poor, and see poverty deeper than your own; ye em bittered ones, and behold God exhausting Himself to bring joy to man; ye who are weary, to the heavy-laden Son of Man; ye burdened, to the world’s Burden-Bearer; ye be wildered, and look upon the Way by which the prodigal may return to God; ye sin-darkened sons of sorrow, and bathe in the great Light of the world; ye friendless and for saken, to the Brother born of and for adversity; ye sick ones, to the Great Physician; and ye dying ones, to the fountain of life. How dear to the heart Thou art, O Thou Christ of the stable and the manger L—W. B. H inson . '
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