Peace Through Jesus Christ Our Lord.

We have cleaned and adapted this graphic for web use from a larger archive made available by J & R Lamb Studios.

Spiritual Flood-Tide.

I stood on the coast of England, and looked out over a stretch of oozy slime and ill-smelling mud. There were the barges high and dry, lying on their side--no matter what cargo they carried or how skillful the captain, they were on the mud. It would have availed them nothing to heave the anchor or hoist the sail. And I thought, What is the remedy? Were it any use for the corporation to pass a by-law that every citizen should bring kettles filled with water, and pour it out upon the stretch of mud?

But as I watched I saw the remedy. God turned the tide. In swept the waters of the sea, and buried the mud, and then came the breath of sweetness and life. And it flowed in about the barges, and instantly all was activity. Then heave-ho with the anchor, then hoist the sails, then forth upon some errand of good. So it is that we stand looking out upon many a dreadful evil which fills us with dismay--drunkenness, gambling, sexual impurity. Is there any remedy? And the churches, so very respectable, but, alas, high and dry on the muddy beach--for these too, what is the remedy? We want the flood-tide--the gracious outpouring of the Spirit; then must come the roused and quickened churches, the Christians transformed into Christ-like men and women who shall demand righteousness.--Mark Guy Pearce.

The Lord Lift Up His Countenance Upon You

We have cleaned and adapted this graphic for web use from a larger archive made available by J & R Lamb Studios.

Harmony Is God's Work.

In "Famous Stories by Sam P. Jones" may be found this bit of wisdom:

A well-trained musician sits down to a piano and sweeps his fingers over the keys. A cloud gathers on his face as he recognizes a discord in the instrument. What is the matter? Three of the keys are out of harmony. These three keys that are out of harmony with everything in the universe that is in harmony. I say to that musician, "Close up that piano and let it alone until it puts itself in harmony." He replies, "It is impossible for the piano to put itself in harmony." "Who can put it in harmony?'' I ask. He replies, "The man who made the instrument." The instrument is put into the hands of the man who made it, and in a few hours every key on the piano is in harmony, and the piano being in harmony with itself is in harmony with everything else in the universe."

God alone can put discordant souls into harmony!

Saint Peter.

We have cleaned and adapted this graphic for web use from a larger archive made available by J & R Lamb Studios.

Losing Your Head!

I was preaching for a single Sabbath in Brooklyn. In the course of my discourse I lost my head; in fact, I lost all of them. Three were on paper, and one on my shoulders; and they all went at once.

I tried to remember what I had had in my head, but, like the old king's dream, the matter had gone from me.

I tried to decipher what I had put upon paper, but the writing had faded out.

Everything was gone except the audience, and I could have wished they were gone too.

I pounded the desk; I pawed the floor; I clawed the air. I poured whole broadsides of big dictionary into those long-suffering people, but without a single scintilla of sense.

At last I struck a line of thought, and clutched it with the grip of despair, and pulled myself out of the hole in which I had been floundering, and then limped along to a "lame conclusion."

And then so mortified was I that I would have sunk through the floor, could I have found a vacant nail-hole. As that was out of the question, I would fain have sneaked away without speaking to a human being; but, as bad luck would have it, I had promised to go home to dinner with the Hon. William Richardson, one of the most cultured members of the congregation.

We walked some distance before either spoke a word. Finally, I broke silence--I felt like breaking everything in sight--and I said, "Richardson, was not that the very worst you ever heard?"

"What do you mean?" he asked.

"Mean?" I replied, catching savagely at the word. "'Mean' is name for it. You must have noticed how under the third head of my discourse I lost my head, and ripped and raved and tore around like a lunatic. What did the people think of it?"

"Think of it? Think of it?" he repeated with sincere surprise. "Why, they thought it was the best part of the whole sermon."

And then I said to myself, and I said to him, "What is the use of talking sense to the people when they like the other so much better?" Possibly this may serve to account for the fact that these same people subsequently called me to become their pastor.--P. S. Henson, Christian Endeavor World.

The Holy Trinity

We have cleaned and adapted this graphic for web use from a larger archive made available by J & R Lamb Studios.

Heaven.

A schoolboy had a blind father; the boy was very keen on games, and his father was in the habit of being present at all the school cricket matches, altho he had to look on at the prowess of his son through other eyes. Then the father died. The day after the funeral there was an important cricket match on, and, to the surprise of his fellows, the lad expressed a wish to play. He played, and played well, making a fine score, and carrying out his bat. His friends gathered round him in the pavilion, shaking him by the hand and patting him on the back.

"Did I do well?" he asked.

"Well!" was the reply, "you did splendidly; never better."

"I am so glad," the boy said; "it is the first time he ever saw me bat."

For him, heaven was the place which gave his blind father sight.

Multitude Monday

1. I am thankful for God's Amazing Grace!

When we've been here ten thousand years

Bright shining as the sun.

We've no less days to sing God's praise

Than when we've first begun.

2. I am thankful for my children who teach me to value life itself.

3. I am thankful for my husband, who always comes home from wherever he has ventured to explore!

4. I'm thankful for poets who can describe whatever I'm feeling more eloquently than I can write about it myself.

I thank Thee that I learn

Not toil to spurn;

With all beneath the sun

It makes me one;

For tears, whereby I gain

Kinship with human pain;

For Love, my comrade by the dusty ways,

I give Thee praise.

--Emily Read Jones.

5. I'm thankful for author's who can write a few lines that touch the very depth of men's souls.

A little scene of child-life has often seemed to me to contain the most touching lesson for men. A child knows when it receives a service from any one that it should say thank you. But, often, when a child renders us a service, we forget to thank it. After having waited in vain for the little word which should be pronounced, it then itself says, "Thank you," and goes its way. The child has a feeling that something ought to happen and does not; then he takes charge of it himself. --Charles Wagner, "The Gospel of Life."

6. I'm thankful for coffee; need I say more?

7. I'm thankful for this free blogging software. Otherwise, I could not afford to communicate with others online about Christ.

8. I am thankful for the time God gives to me to meditate upon His word. When I can stop and think about my life, His blueprint unfolds and I find new energy to live for His design.

Thinking is specific, not a machine-like, ready-made apparatus to be turned indifferently and at will upon all subjects, as a lantern may throw its light as it happens upon horses, streets, gardens, trees or river. Thinking is specific in that different things suggest their own appropriate meanings, tell their own unique stories and in that they do this in very different ways with different persons. As the growth of the body is through the assimilation of food, so the growth of mind is through the logical organization of subject-matter. Thinking is not like a strange machine which reduces all materials indifferently to one marketable commodity, but is a power of following up and linking together the specific suggestions that specific things arouse. Accordingly, any subject, from Greek to cooking, and from drawing to mathematics, is intellectual, if intellectual at all, not in its fixt inner structure, but in its function--in its power to start and direct significant inquiry and reflection.-- John Dewey, "How we Think."

The Good Shepherd

A gentleman traveling in the lonely part of the highlands of Scotland was attracted by the bleating of a ewe, as the animal came from the roadside, as if to meet him. When nearer she redoubled her cries and looked up into his face as if to ask for assistance. He alighted from his gig and followed her to considerable distance from the road, where he found a lamb completely wedged in betwixt two large stones, and struggling with its legs uppermost. He took out the sufferer and placed it on the green sward, when the mother, seemingly overjoyed, poured forth her thanks in a long-continued bleat.

The good Shepherd giveth His life for His sheep. He rejoices more at the safety of the lost sheep than over the ninety and nine that were safe in the fold.

A Symbol Of Immortality

This apostrophe to a butterfly was written by Alice Freeman Palmer:

I hold you at last in my hand,

Exquisite child of the air;

Can I ever understand

How you grew to be so fair?

You came to this linden-tree

To taste its delicious sweet,

I sitting here in the shadow and shine

Playing around its feet.

Now I hold you fast in my hand,

You marvelous butterfly,

Till you help me to understand

The eternal mystery.

From that creeping thing in the dust

To this shining bliss in the blue!

God, give me courage to trust

I can break my chrysalis, too!

Pharaoh's Daughter