THE GARLAND.

Otago Witness, Issue 3673, 5 August 1924, Page 64

THE GARLAND.

FOR THE QUIET HOUR. No. 571.

Br

Duncan Weight, Dunedin.

“HOLD THE FORT” IN A THEATRE, 1874. In the great -work going on in England, the “service of song' is still wondiously blessed. Many are attracted to the meetings by the singing of Mr Sankey who would not otherwise go; and many are convinced of sin, and, so far as man can judge, are brought savingly to Christ, by the truths contained in those simple hymns. And just as in Edinburgh last winter, they are having a strange power in the refreshing of older Christians. The sweet, limpid gospel, which many of them contain, falls like a penetrating dew on the old believers, perhaps converted long ago, but dried up and stiffened by worldly care, making "their flesh come to them again, like the flesh of a little child.’’ We know of such cases, where, by God's blessing on this simple means, it has been like a second conversion. They have been made to sing “as in the days of their youth, as in the days when they came up out of the land of Egypt.” What, for example, is better fitted tenderly and sweetly to refresh the believing soul than such lines as these, from “Safe in the Arms of Jesus:”— “Free from the blight of sorrow, Free from my doubts and fears, — Only a few more trials, Only a few more tears. “Jesus, my heart’s dear refuge! Jesus has died for me; Firm on the Rock of Ages Ever my trust shall be.” And apart from saving results, the hymns are doubtless doing much good in the mere lodging of gospel truth in the minds of thousands. Mr Moody mentioned lately how interested he felt, in passing a poorragged little girl in a back street in Liverpool, to hear her singing,— “I am so glad that Jesus loves' me.” HIS HANDS. The bands that made the Seven Stars, That bound Orion in his bands, That pent the ocean in with bars — My name is graven on those Hands. Darkness and light and life and death — All things are under His command; He gives, or takes, each mortal’s breath, Ha holds me up with His right Hand. His Hands were pierced with nails for me, How could my heart such love withstand? His Hands were stretched upon, the tree — Now, none can pluck me from His Hand. His sceptred Hand to rule is strong; By Him the hosts of heaven are led; Glory and. might to Him belong— His hand is underneath my head. C. J. It. Minimize the adverse chances. The climax of deception is self-decep-tion. It is a fine thing to be laughed at sometimes. Every human desire for holiness was meant to be satisfied. The very brevity of life clamours for concentration and activity. We are not inclined to idleness so much as to irrelevant activity. The finest of all arts is the art of putting up with unpleasant things. Some of the loveliest things in life issue from our interruptions. Prayer and performance are intimately related—they are twin sisters. Pity, like charity, must be intelligent; it is too sacred to be squandered. Tell me where a man is, and you will afford me an idea of what a man ia. Reconciliation to God begins in your own heart and your own community. When prosiness curdles into pessimism, the case of the patient is very grave. If you have a lot of time to spare, don’t spend it with those who have not! It is a great thing—a very great thing —to be able to get along with other people. Writing in the “Century” on “The Universality of the Bible,” Dr Henry Van Dyke says : “Born in the East and clothed in Oriental form and imagery, the Bible walks the way of all the world with familiar feet arid enters land after land to find its own everywhere. It has learned to speak in hundreds of languages to the heart of man. It comes into the palace to tell the monarch that he is the servant of the Most High, and into the cottage to assure the peasant that he is a son of God. Children listen to its stories with wonder and delight, and wise men ponder them as parables of life, it has a word of peace for the time of peril, a word of comfort for the day of calamity, a word of light for the hour of darkness. Its oracles are repeated in the assembly of the people, and its counsels whispered in the ear of the lonely. The wicked and the proud tremble at its warning, but to the wounded and penitent it has a mother’s voice. The wilderness and the solitary place have been made glad by it, and the fire on the hearth has lit the reading of its well-worn page. It has woven itself into our dearest dreams; so that love and friendship, sympathy and devotion, memory and hope, put on the beautiful garments of its treasured speech, breathing of frankincense and myrrh. Above the cradle and beside the grave its great words come to us uncalled. They fill our prayers with power larger than we know, and the beauty of them lingers on our ear long after the sermons which they® adorned have been forgotten. They return to us swiftly and quietly like doves Hying from

far away. They surprise us with new meanings, like springs of water breaking forth from the mountain beside a longtrodden path. They' grow richer as pearls do when they are worn near the heart. No man is poor or desolate who has this treasure of liis own • when the landscape darkens and the trembling pilgim comes to the valley named of the shadow, he is not afraid to enter; he takes the rod and the staff of (Scripture in his hand; he says to friend and comrade, “Goodbye; we shall meet again ;” and comforted by that support, he goes towards the lonely pass as one who climbs through darkness into light. SECRET THINGS, AND THINGS REVEALED. Deut. xxix: 29. I viewed a distant mountain range, Fretted against the sky, From unseen depths its snow-clap peaks Majestic rose on high, And as I gazed the setting sun Flashed on those distant spires, Making their ice-bound summits glow As with celestial fires. The gleaming peaks I plainly saw, Their charm appealed to me; The darkened depths from which they rose, Were veiled in mystery. And when I thought on God’s own Word How, like that mountain chain, The lofty heights, the mystic depths That man cannot attain, Until the Spirit from on high. The holy Paraclete. Illumes the page with flashing light, Revealing what is meet. -The things revealed I claim as mine; They prove the Word divine. The hidden things, the shadowed depths, I leave to God’s own time. F. W. Nash. By Rev. H. W. Beecher. THE BIBLE. “The word of the Lord endureth for ever.”— 1 Peter i, 25. When you take passage for England in a ship, the shipmaster does not merely undertake to carry you so long as the water is smooth and you are within sight of the shore—he undertakes to carry you by day and by night, through calms and through storms, until he lands you on the other side. This he undertakes to do; but he may fail to do it through human weakness. But God has made His Word stancher than any ship, and if you put your feet on that, you are in a barque which no tempest shall whelm or shipwreck. No matter what temptations may betide you, it is able to bear you safely through them. Wherever you may be, so long as you have the Word of God for your support, you need have no fear. Whatever may be your changes, nothing changes God, and His promises give you a right to feel that you will be taken care ot, and that to the end. GOD. “Thou compassest my path.”—Psalm cxxxix, 3. He that can look up into the heaven at mid-day, and dwell long, and yet return his thoughts whence they came, without once having felt that God was there— I pity him. He that can look into the darkness of the night, and come back again to the light of his own countenance, and not have found God there—l pity him. He that can sit down upon a bank on which the sun shines in the spring, and watch the roots, and young insects, and all that nature is doing there, and not have one single thought of God—l pity him. He that can hear the sounds of the night, the voices t>f the sea, or feel the stillness; he that can look upon the face of a friend: he that can witness a marriage feast, or stand in the marble presence of death; he that can go anywhere, and not have the shadow of the eternal throne cast upon him—l pity him. He that has to hunt for hia God, and shuts his God up in a closet, and keeps a lock and key on him, and goes there to find him— I pity him. siy God is everywhere. In “Notes of a Life,” by John Stuart Blackie, we are told how he met many famous men in his time. Lockhart was a distant relation, hut he confesses to have known little of him: “I saw him (he says) several times at Melrose and in Edinburgh, and admired his handsome face, though I thought his fingers were too fine for a male. But deeper I never entered into his nature, for he seemed cold and distant when I dined with him in London, and never gave me any encouragement to come within tongue-shot of him again.” Of his visit to Coleridge at Highgate he remembered only two things—(l) that he was an old, infirm, down-bent man; (2) “that lie told me that he had thrown overboard all speculative philosophy, finding perfect satisfaction in the first chapter of the Gospel of John. This,” says Blackie. “I did not understand at the time, but many years afterwards came to see that in the prologue of that spiritual Gospel, taken free from the trappings and bandages of artificial words, there lies a philosophy sufficiently high to satisfy the demands of the most high-reaching intellect. ” In referring to Dr Chalmers oratory, he savs: “it rushed like a torrent and rattled with passing wheels like a war chariot in the battle.” Blackie was a great admirer of Dr Guthrie—as who. indeed was not?—and of Dr Norman Macleod he says: “He was certainly tiro grandest Scotsman I have ever known”—a verdict which none will dispute.