Devotional Column

Manawatu Times, Volume LIII, Issue 6631, 9 June 1928, Page 7 (Supplement)

Devotional Column

PRECEPT. Whatsoever things arc pure—think on these things. Phil. 4, 8. PROMISE. Blessed are the pure in heart for they shall see God. Matt, 5, 8. PRAYER. Let the meditation of my heart, be acceptable in Thy sight, 0 Lord. Ps. 19, 14. REDEEM THE TIME. The time is short! If thou wouldst work for God, it must be now; If thou wouldst win the garland for thy brow, Redeem the time! Shake off earth’s sloth! Go forth with staff in hand while yet 'tis day; Sot out with girded loins upon the way; Up! Linger not! Withstand the foe; Dio daily, that forever thou mayest live; Be faithful unto death! the Lord will give The crown of life. —Horatius Bonar. OUR LIVES OP CHRIST* To read biography is the most fascinating way to read history. Life, not dates or events, is vital. All history, in the last analysis, is a movement of life. So, also religion is most interesting and real in terms of life rather than of doctrine. It was inevitable that lives of Christ should be written. Every one of us is writing his life of Christ. Shepard of Aintab wrote it in the sacrificial ministry of a Christian physician. - A Wellesley girl wrote it when she went to Turkey, “to show the; girls there how a Christian girl could live.” A city missionary visitor wrote it so that a boy in/the homo where she called, asked: “Be you God’s wife?’’ Every woman whose hand soothes a brow hot with fever, every man who lifts a brother man, every one whose gifts serve humanity—all these are kin of Jesus. What part of the life of Christ are you writing today? It is a serious thing to realise the time will come when there can be no change, when we must say with Pilate: ‘What I have written,'l written!’’ Will you write to-day something more about His sympathy, about His love, His helpfulness, and His joy, so that “he who runs may read?’’ • Thank God every morning when you get up that you have something ,to do thttt day which must be done whether you like it or not. Being forced--to work, and forced to do your best, will breed in you temperance and self-con- 1 trol, diligence and strength of will, cheerfulness and content, and a hundred' virtues which the idle will never,, know. , DRY BONE SCIENCE. If some of our friends, who commenced their successful career in our country by buying up our waste products and purchasing our rags, bones and bottles, had only learned to attach a good long Latin name to some of their old bones they would have become millionaires at a much earlier date. The tooth of an old pig found in a dry river bed in Nebraska a few years ago became known as the “million dollar tooth’’ when it was labelled “Hesperopithecus” and placed in the American Museum of Natural History.

Then, too, the dry bone scientists vt that Museum would have been made rich if they could have been awarded a dollar a year for every birthday they assigned to that old tooth. Of course it was “prehistoric,’’ and belonged to that celebrated group of ape men. In fact it may have been a very important link among the missing ones that join man to the monkey.. For if “necessity is the mother of invention” and that lone, solitary tooth was the first that ached in an ape man’s jaw, any one of that species would have developed into a dentist with such a tooth and such a jaw, uftder the urgo of that ache. Someone must have extracted that tooth for it was found solitary and alone. And it must have gotten out of a jaw somehow. And as to the dating of that tooth—if a veterinary surgeon can tell how long an old horse has walked on his hoofs by examining his teeth, surely when a man becomes an anthropologist ho can tell you the kind of skull from which that tooth was extracted and how many millions of years ago it cracked nuts. Anyway, they settled it, G. Elliott Smith and the rest of these bone experts, that it was “Hcspcropithecus.” Such a jaw-breaker of a name would draw a tooth from any kind of a skull. What a pity that the ape maif’s descendants were allowed to go on investigating after the discovery of that old tooth. The idea of their going and digging up that old skeleton of a pig in the same spot where that prehistoric tooth was discovered and then discovering that that tooth just fits into its jaw. lybuld it not have been bettor to have left those wise bone men in th« ignorance which is bliss? PEACE. “The peace of God which passeth all understanding.” There is a life deep hid in God , Where all is calm and still. Where, .listening to His holy Word, One learns to trust, until All anxious care is put away And there is peace profound, alway: ; Grant-us; Thy peace, 0 God! CHOOSING THE GREATER. It was Characteristic of human nature when. the disciples contended as to which should be greatest. Greatness is something everybody seeks. To be wpll-known', famous, lauded—these are the. natural desires of the human heart. There is only one kind of greatness that counts. It is the greatness of God in an individual. It is the greatness that served'ministers,, does for others, is helpful to many. Borne, who are doing things worth while might be doing greater things if they only knew it. There was Bishop Tucker. He was an artist on the way to success. One day, while engaged on a picture which he hoped', would win a' prize at the Royal Academy; (the picture of a young woman with a baby in her arms, walking the streets of London on a dark, stormy night, and which the artist was ,to call ‘ ‘ Homeless), the following thoughts came to him:--- . “God help me. Why don’t I go and saye the homeless, instead of painting pictures of them?” Then and there ho resolved to give his life for others. He. worked in the slums of England, and then he Went to Africa, where he did a great work as the Bishop of Uganda. He chose the greater for the lesser. Always there is something better,' finer, to challenge. Always , there is the “better” and after that the “best.” The best life is the life that follows the Master, going about- doing good.