"Father is reading his paper. Let"s slip down into the lot and climb a tree."
One of the little fellows stood on the top of the fence to see that father did not catch them. When his brother got up on the first branch, he said:
"What do you see?"
"Why! I don"t see anything."
"Then go higher; you haven"t got high enough."
So up he went higher, and again the little boy asked:
"Well, what do you see now?"
"I don"t see anything."
"You aren"t high enough; go higher."
And the little fellow went up as high as he could go, but he slipped, and down he came, and broke his leg. Willie said he tried to get him into the house, but he couldn"t do it. He had to tell his father all about it. He said he was scared nearly out of his wits. He thought his father would be very angry. But his father just threw aside the paper, and started for the lot. When he got there, he picked the boy up in his arms, and brought him up to the house. Then he sent for the doctor. And Willie said he got a new view of that father. He found out the reason why that father was so stern. He said the moment that boy got hurt, no mother could have been more loving and gentle.
My dear friends, there is not one commandment that has been given us which has not been for our highest and best interest. There isn"t a commandment that hasn"t come from the loving heart of G.o.d, and what He wants is to have us give up that which is going to mar our happiness in this life, and in the life to come.
"Help Yourself!"
When I was out on the Pacific coast, in California, some years ago, I was the guest of a man that had a large vineyard and a large orchard.
One day he said to me:
"Moody, while you are my guest I want you to make yourself perfectly at home, and if there is anything in the orchard or in the vineyard you would like, help yourself."
Well, when I wanted an orange, I did not go to an orange tree and pray the oranges to fall into my pocket; but I walked up to a tree, reached out my hand, and took the oranges. He said "Take," and I took.
G.o.d says, "There is my Son; take Him as your Saviour. The wages of sin is death; but the gift of G.o.d is eternal life."
The Rich Husband
There was a shop-girl in Chicago, a few years ago. One day she could not have bought five dollars" worth of anything; the next day she could go and buy a thousand dollar"s worth of whatever she wanted.
What made the difference?
Why, she had married a rich husband; that was all. She had received him, and of course all he had became hers. And so we can have all, if we only receive Christ.
Settle It Now!
Some years ago, in one of the mining districts of England, a young man attended one of our meetings and refused to go from the place till he had found peace in the Savior. The next day he went down into the pit, and the coal fell in upon him. When they took him out, he was broken and mangled, and had only two or three minutes of life left in him.
His friends gathered about him, saw his lips moving, and, bending down to catch his words, heard him say:
"It was a good thing I settled it last night."
Settle it now, my friends, once for all. Begin now to confess your sins, and pray the Lord to remember you. He will make you an heir of His kingdom, if you will accept the gift of salvation.
The True Source of Joy
G.o.d doesn"t ask us to rejoice over nothing; He gives us ground for our joy. What would you think of a man who seemed very happy to-day and full of joy, and couldn"t tell you what made him so? Suppose I should meet a man on the street, and he was so full of joy that he should get hold of both my hands and say:
"Bless the Lord, I am so full of joy!"
"What makes you so full of joy?"
"Well, I don"t know."
"You don"t know!"
"No, I don"t; but I am so joyful that I just want to get out of the flesh."
"What makes you feel so joyful?"
"Well, I don"t know."
Would we not think such a person unreasonable? But there are a great many people who want to feel that they are Christians before they are Christians; they want the Christian"s experience before they become Christians; they want to have the joy of the Lord before they receive Jesus Christ. But this is not the Gospel order. He brings joy when He comes, and we cannot have joy apart from Him. He is the author of it, and we find our joy in Him.
The Meanest Kind of Murderers
When I was in England in 1892, I met a gentleman who claimed that they were ahead of us in the respect they had for the law. "We hang our murderers," he said, "but there isn"t one out of twenty in your country that is hung."
I said, "You are greatly mistaken, for they walk about these two countries unhung."
"What do you mean?"
"I will tell you what I mean," I said; "the man that comes into my house and runs a dagger into my heart for my money is a prince compared with a son that takes five years to kill me and the wife of my bosom. A young man who comes home night after night drunk, and when his mother remonstrates, curses her gray hairs, and kills her by inches, is the blackest kind of a murderer."
Where your Treasure Is
You can soon tell where a man"s treasure is by his talk. If it is in heaven, he will not be long with you before he"s talking about heaven; his heart is there, and so his speech isn"t long in running there, too. If his heart is in money, he will soon have you deep in talk about mines, speculation, stocks, bank rate, and so on. If his heart is in lands, it won"t be long before he"s talking about real estate, improvements, houses, and so on. Always the same, wherever a man"s heart is, there his tongue will be sure to go.
Some one in England said, if you see a man"s goods and furniture come down by the luggage train, you"re pretty sure he"ll be down by the next pa.s.senger train; he won"t be long after; he"ll follow his goods.
And so it is with heaven; if your treasure is on before you, you"ll be wanting to follow it; you"ll be glad to be on the road thither as soon as possible.
Why his Life was Spared
Two Americans who were crossing the Atlantic met on Sunday night to sing hymns in the cabin. As they sang the hymn, "Jesus, Lover of my Soul," one of them heard an exceedingly rich and beautiful voice behind him. He looked around, and although he did not know the face he thought that he recognized the voice. So when the music ceased he turned around and asked the man if he had not been in the Civil War.
The man replied that he had been a Confederate soldier.
"Were you at such a place on such a night?" asked the first.