THINGS THOUGHTFUL

Star (Christchurch), Issue 19814, 4 December 1919, Page 10

THINGS THOUGHTFUL

Some persons say that all they ask is justice, as though justice were nob the most difficult tiling and the highest—De Quincey. THE POW.EE FOR GOOD. It is impossible to estimate the power for good-—in this sad, struggling life—of a bright, glad, shining face. Of all the lights you carry on your face Joy shines farthest out to sea". If any little word of rain© may make a life the brighter, If any little song of mine may make a heart the lighter, God help me speak the little word, and take my bit of singing, And drop it down some lonely vale, to set the echoes ringing. 1 THE ENGLISH-SPEAKING PEOPLES. In what spirit will the English-speak-ing peoples enter on their high function? Theirs it will bo not only to stretch the bounds of freedom wider yet” lor themselves, but for others. Theirs it will be to mother the backward peoples that are still in their childhood into tho gradual practice and the art of self-government. If they

face this task in the spirit of mutual suspicion and rivalry, with divided aims 1 and selfish policy, wo may bo preparing j for a worse calamity than oven this which has brought Europe so nearly to ' ruin. If they do so with a common purpose and in loyal friendship, there aren o bounds to tho possibilities of good that lie before this torn and tortured, but still aspiring, world.—Priu- I cipal Griffith-Jones, D.D. j OUR SUPREME DUTY. I tell you that this is the working day, that this is the watching hour, and that our supremo duty is to work .Ml tho day is done, to watch till the hour is ended.—Raleigh,

WHEN BROUGHT TO LIGHT. To understand Dio beauty of Nature and the handiwork ol' God in it., it is not essential to familiarise oneself with a, continent.; a '‘Hotter in ihe crannied wall" is amply sufficient. And in the Judgment when all hidden things dU> brought to light, some- of (he meekest, sou! 9 will learn for the first time what, grandeur their Lord has seen in ac- , lions which to them looked poor ami | small. LOVE ANT) SPEECH. What silences tve kce]> year after year With those who are most near to us and j dear; 1 We lire beside each other day by day, t And speak or myriad things," hut seldom saj | The full sweet word that lies just in I our roach, | Beneath the commonplace of common | _ speecn. 1 Then out. of sight and out of reach they : go—- ; These close, familial' friends who loved ; ns_ so; And sitting in the shadow they have Ifttt, Alone.with loneliness, and some bereft, We think with vain regret of some kind word That once we might have said, and they have heard. FORESIGHT. We mar well learn that the purest faith m God should bo accompanied by foresight, that in the dav of prosperity we should not forget that a darker day will surely come, and that they who have host used the sunny hours will host endure darkness and’ storm. Not only in economy as to money Init, m regard to far higher things! we are. to “lay tip for a rainy dav,' , -- Maclafen. REAL LOVE, j The love tiiat is kind, that envies not, and is humble, will win its wav through doors that are barred to Urn felt-assertive and the overbearing. Shakespeare wrote, as Burke wrote, lor hfs audience; and. their glory is that they have outlasted the conditions they observed. \ct it was bv observing them that, they gained thon-«,ld'9 caw Let ns, who are less than they, beware of scorning to belong to our own time. bir Arthur Quillcr-Cduch. l.vvu is wrought by want of thoimhl . as well as want of hcart.-sHood. °

[ I j THE TEST OF EXPERIENCE. j | Goodness is a kind of beauty. The moral law. like the laws ol' physical iuiture, rests. in tbc long rim upon instinctive intuitions, and is neither more nor less ■"innate'’ and “ necessary ,! than they are. . . . Home there are who cannot feel the difference between " Sonata Appassionato-” and Cherry Ripe'’; or between a grave-stone-cutter’s cherub and tiio Apollo Belvedere; but the canons of art are none the less acknowledged. (Some there may be who, devoid of sympathy, are incapable of a sense of duty: bill neither does their existence affect the foundations of morality. Such pathological deviations from true manhood are merely the hair, the lame, and the blind ot tlie world of consciousness and the anatomist of the mind leaves them aside, as the anatomist of the body would ignore abnormal specimens --1, fl. Huxley. As long as ovd and righteousness bolb remain in the world there must, needs be warfare, and every sou) must choose on which side it mil fight. HUMBLE WORK. Tlie noblest service comes from nameless hands, And the best servant does his work unseen. Who found the seeds of fire and made them shoot, bed by his breath, in buds and flowers ot flume? I 'Aho forged in roaring flames the pon--1 derou?. stone, | And shaped the moulded metal to hU | speed p AMio gave the dragging car its rolling [ w free I, hj And tamed the steed that whirls its circling round P All these have left their work and not their names--Why should ]. murmur at a fate. like theirs? This is. the heavenly light ; flic pearlv stain Was hut a. wind-cloud driftin', o'er the stars! -Oliver Wendell Holmes.

A WARNING. I,n that great storm of terror which swept over Franco in 1793, a certain man who was every hour expecting to bo led off to the guillotine uttered this memorable sentiment; “Even at tins, incomprehensible moment, when morality, enlightenment, lovo of country, all. of them only make (loath at the prison door or on tbo scaffold more certain—yes, on the fatal tumbrel itself, with nothing free but my voice I oould still cry take care to a child that should come too near the wheelperhaps I may save his life, perhaps he may one day save his country.”—John Morlsy.