The Home Council

The Little Child That Is

He is made up of three priceless ingredients—Curiosity, Ambition, and Imagination. Crush his curiosity, and you will find him sinister, self-satisfied, knowing all he cares to know. Crush his ambition, and you will find him, hands in pockets, at the street comer. Crush his imagination, and you rob him of his power to lead this old world into new joys and new experiences. The father and mother to whom the Little Child That Is has come have already tasted of the bliss of heaven; but a fearful responsibility attends their rapture.

—F. W. Boreham.

The Two Roads

Where two ways meet, the children stand,
A fair broad road on either hand;
One leads to right, and one to wrong;
So runs the song.

Which will you choose, each lass and lad?
The right or left, the good or bad?
One leads to right, and one to wrong;
So runs the song.

—Anon.

Alternate Reading: Matthew 20:20-28.

Weighing The Baby

How many pounds does the baby weigh—
Baby who came but a month ago?
How many pounds from the crowning curl
To the rosy point of its restless toe?

Grandfather ties a ‘kerchief knot,
Tenderly guides the swinging weight,
And carefully over his glasses peers
To read the record, “only eight!”

Softly the echo goes around
The father laughs at the tiny girl;
The fair young mother sings the words,
While grandmother smooths the golden curl.

And stooping above the precious thing,
Nestles a kiss within a prayer,
Murmuring softly, “Little one,
Grandfather did not weigh you fair.”

Nobody weighed the baby’s smile,
Or the love that came with the helpless one;
Nobody weighed the threads of care,
From which a mother’s life is spun.

No index tells the mighty worth
Of a little baby’s quiet breath—
A soft unceasing metronome,
Patient and faithful until death.

Nobody weighed the baby’s soul,
For here on earth no weights there be
That could avail; God only knows
Its value in eternity.

Only eight pounds to hold a soul
That seeks no angel’s silver wing,
But shrines it in this human guise,
Within so frail and small a thing!

Oh, Mother! Laugh your merry note,
Be gay and glad, but don’t forget
From baby’s eyes looks out a soul
That claims a home in Eden yet.

—Ethel L. Beers.

The World’s Need

So many gods, so many creeds,
So many paths that wind and wind,
While just the art of being kind,
Is all the sad world needs.

—Ella Wheeler Wiloox.

Alternate Reading: Matthew 19:13-15.

My Country

O beautiful, my country!
Be thine a nobler care,
Than all thy wealth of commerce,
Thy harvest waving fair;
Be it thy pride to lift up
The manhood of the poor;
Be thou to the oppressed
Fair freedom’s open door.

For thee our fathers suffered,
For thee they toiled and prayed;
Upon thy holy altar
Their willing lives they laid.
Thou hast no common birthright;
Grand memories on thee shine,
The blood of pilgrim nations,
Commingled, flows in thine.

O beautiful, our country!
Round thee in love we draw;
Thine is the grace of freedom,
The majesty of law.
Be righteousness thy scepter,
Justice thy diadem;
And on thy shining forehead
Be peace the crowning gem.

—F. L. Hosmer.

What Is The Grass

A child said, “What is the grass” fetching it to me with full hands;
How could I answer the child? I do not know what it is any more than he.
I guess it must be the flag of my disposition, out of hopeful green stuff woven.
Or, I guess it is the handkerchief of the Lord, A scented gift and remembrance designedly dropt,
Bearing the owner’s name some way in the comers, that we may see and remark, and say, “Whose?”

—Walt Whitman.

Alternate Reading: John 13: 21-30.

Who Is My Neighbor?

Thy neighbor? It is he whom thou
Hast power to aid and bless;
Whose aching heart or burning brow
Thy soothing hand may press.

Thy neighbor? ‘Tis the fainting poor,
Whose eye with want is dim,
Whom hunger sends from door to door;
Go thou and succor him.

Thy neighbor? ‘Tis that weary man,
Whose years are at the brim,
Bent low with sickness, care and pain;
Go thou and comfort him.

Thy neighbor? ‘Tis the heart bereft
Of every earthly gem,
Widow and orphan helpless left;
Go thou and shelter them.

Where’er thou meet’st a human life
Less favored than thine own,
He is thy neighbor in the strife,
Thy brother, or thy son.

Oh, pass not, pass not heedless by;
Perhaps thou canst redeem
The breaking heart from misery—
Go share thy lot with him.

—Anon.

A Day Gained Or A Day Lost

If you sit down at set of sun
And count the acts that you have done,
And, counting, find
One self-denying deed, one word
That eased the heart of him who heard—
One glance most kind,
That fell like sunshine where it went—
Then you may count that day well spent.

—George Eliot.

Alternate Reading: John 10: 1-21.

King Arthur’s Ideal Of A Gentleman

(Here is Tennyson’s picture of a society of gentlemen.)

I was first of all the kings who drew
The knighthood-errant of this realm and all
The realms together under me, their Head,
In that fair Order of my Table Round,
A glorious company, the flower of men,
To serve as model for the mighty world,
And be the fair beginning of a time.
I made them lay their hands in mine and swear
To reverence the King, as if he were
Their conscience, and their conscience as their King,
To break the heathen and uphold the Christ,
To ride abroad redressing human wrongs,
To speak no slander, no, nor listen to it,
To honor his own word as if his God’s,
To lead sweet lives in purest chastity, To love one maiden only, cleave to her,
And worship her by years of noble deeds,
Until they won her; for indeed I knew
Of no more subtle master under heaven
Than is the maiden passion for a maid,
Not only to keep down the base in man,
But teach high thought, and amiable words
And courtliness, and the desire of fame,
And love of truth, and all that makes a man.

—Alfred Tennyson.

Naturalizing The Heart

I can so accustom my lungs to pure air that foul air immediately creates a sense of suffocation. On the other hand, by much familiarity—I can so habituate myself to foul air that it no longer assails me as repulsive, but becomes my natural element. We can be acclimatized to the pure or the impure. The Mind can become naturalized to the unclean. On the other hand, the Mind may have such close companionship with the lofty that the sordid appears as a sharp and painful offense. The Mind can become naturalized to the holy. Its citizenship is in heaven. It may wear the white robes.

—J. H. Jowett.

Alternate Reading: I Samuel 10:1-4 and 19:1-7.

The Little Child That Was

The Little Child That Was is an exquisitely beautiful child, a child that is always a child, a child that never grows up. I remember hearing a Sunday-School superintendent in England tell a story of a shepherd who could not get his flock to cross a narrow bridge that spanned a silver stream. At last he took a lamb in his arms and crossed. The mother instantly dashed across after him, and the whole flock scampered at her heels.

The Little Child That Was has a great work to do in the world. The classical example is the story of Mrs. Josephine Butler. We all remember with a shudder the story of that holiday—the father and mother in Europe, the little girl left at home. And at last the night came when father and mother were expected. And in the night there was the sound of wheels and the commotion in the great hall below. The excited little daughter sprang from her bed, rushed out into the corridor, jumped up on to the banister rail to peer over to see “Dadda” and “Mamma” again. And then—the lost balance; the awful fall! “Never,” says Mrs. Butler, “never can I lose that memory, the fall, the sudden cry, and then the silence. It was pitiful to see her, helpless in her father’s arms, her little drooping head resting on his shoulder, and her beautiful golden hair all stained with blood, falling over his arm. Would to God that I had died that death for her I If only we had been permitted one look, one moment of recognition!”

Here, then, is a picture from life of the Little Child That Was! And we all know what resulted. Mrs. Josephine Butler could find no comfort until she rose from her grief and devoted herself to all the wayward and motherless daughters of the great world outside, and everybody who knows the story of that greatly heroic life for the world’s womanhood thanks God for the Little Child That Was. The Little Child That Was calls, not for sorrow, but for service.

—F. W. Boreham.

Alternate Reading: John 14:15-31.

God’s Muster Roll

When God shall call the muster roll,
As heroes He’ll mark off
Some who ne’er charged at Waterloo,
Or stormed the Malakoff.

Stars, garters, crosses, ribbons fade;
New orders here unfold;
The widow’s mite, St. Martin’s cloak,
The cup of water cold.

The hearts that saved the world by love,
And hourly Calvaries bore,
The mother-martyrs, queenly host,
Are marshalled to the fore.

Earth’s black robed throngs are clad in white;
Their brows a light adorns—
A radiance of diamond,
Crowns of transfigured thorns.

Some humble folk we knew quite well,
But passed with scarce a nod,
Now rank as heaven’s nobility,
The chivalry of God.

—George Alway.

True Religion

To move among the people on the common street; to meet them in the market-place; to live among them not as a saint or monk, but as a brother man with brother men; to serve God not with form or ritual, but in the free impulse of a soul; to bear the burdens of society and relieve its needs; to carry on the multitudinous activities of the city, social, commercial, political, philanthropic, in Christ’s spirit and for His ends; this is the religion of the Son of Man, and the only meetness for heaven which has much reality in it.

—Henry Drummond.

Alternate Reading: Isaiah 35.

The Prayer That Counts

Another time, speaking to people who were satisfied that they were religious, and who regarded every one else with scorn, Jesus told this parable—

“Two men went up into the Temple Courts to pray. One was a Pharisee and the other a tax-gatherer. The Pharisee stood forward and began praying to himself in this way—

“‘O God, I thank thee that I am not like other men —thieves, rogues, adulterers—or even like this tax-gatherer. I fast twice a week, and give a tenth of everything I get to God.’ Meanwhile the tax-gatherer stood at a distance, not venturing even ‘to raise his eyes to Heaven’; but he kept striking his breast and saying, ‘O God, have mercy on me, a sinner.’ This man, I tell you, went home pardoned, rather than the other; for every one who exalts himself will be humbled, while every one who humbles himself shall be exalted.”

Against Hindering Others

Jesus said to his disciples:

“It is inevitable that there should be snares; yet alas for him who is answerable for them! It would be good for him if he had been flung into the sea with, a millstone round his neck, rather than that he should prove a snare to even one of these lowly ones. Be on your guard.

On Dealing With Wrong-Doers

“If your brother does wrong, reprove him; but, if he repents, forgive him. Even if he wrongs you seven times a day, but turns to you every time and says ‘I am sorry,’ you must forgive him.”

—Luke.

“The hand that rocks the cradle makes the history of the world.”

The Home Builders

The World is filled with bustle and with selfishness and greed,
It is filled with restless people that are dreaming of a deed.
You can read it in their faces; they are dreaming of the day
When they’ll come to fame and fortune and put all their cares away.
And I think as I behold them, though it’s far indeed they roam,
They will never find contentment save they seek for it at home.

For the peace that is the sweetest isn’t born of minted gold,
And the joy that lasts the longest and still lingers when we’re old
Is no dim and distant pleasure—it is not to-morrow’s prise,
It is not the end of toiling, or the rainbow of our sighs.
It is every day within us—all the rest is hippodrome—
And the soul that is the gladdest is the soul that builds a home.

They are fools who build for glory! They are fools who pin their hopes
On the come and go of battles or some vessel’s slender ropes.
They shall sicken and shall wither and shall never peace attain
Who believe that real contentment only men victorious gain.
For the only happy toilers under earth’s majestic dome
Are the ones who find their glories in the little spot called home.

—Edgar A. Guest.

Alternate Reading: I Corinthians 15:12-58.

The Meaning Of Sacrifice

When men fully understand the world, they will understand that Jesus was right about sacrifice. They will understand that sacrifice is loss only so long as it is exceptional and forced. When we face sacrifice loyally, when we join in a general economy of sacrifice, when we refuse knowingly to gain except by intending a gain for somebody else, the balance of the total transactions with sacrifice will have passed from the debit to the credit side of the world’s account. This is a vicarious world but not as stupidly conceived by the mediaeval theologians who located the one vicarious act of importance in the death on the cross. Life is vicarious in that its processes begin and continue and end with exchanges of sacrifice, wherever there are moral beings.

—Albion W. Small.

Mercy

The quality of mercy is not strain’d;
It droppeth as the gentle rain from Heaven
Upon the place beneath: it is twice bless’d;
It blesseth him that gives, and him that takes:
Tis mightiest in the mightiest; it becomes
The throned monarch better than his crown:
His scepter shows the force of temporal power,
The attribute to awe and majesty,
Wherein doth sit the dread and fear of kings;
But mercy is above his sceptered sway;
It is enthroned in the hearts of kings,
It is an attribute to God Himself;
And earthly power doth then show likest God’s
When mercy seasons justice.

—William Shakespeare.

Learn the luxury of doing good.

—Oliver Goldsmith.

Alternate Reading: John 13: 31-38. !