The Home Council

Plant Lilies, And Lilies Will Bloom

Plant lilies, and lilies will bloom;
Plant roses, and roses will grow;
Plant hate, and hate to life will spring;
Plant love, and love to you will bring
The fruit of the seed you sow.

—Anon.

Nations Docile Only In Youth

Most nations, like most men, are docile only in youth; they become incorrigible as they grow old. When customs are once established and prejudices rooted, it is a dangerous and useless enterprise to try to reform them: the people will not permit their misfortunes to be touched upon, even for their instruction,—like the stupid and cowardly sick who shudder at sight of a physician.

Let free nations remember this: “Liberty may be acquired, but never recovered.”

—Jean Jacques Rousseau.

Xerxes Wept For His Army

Xerxes wept sadly when he saw his army of thirteen hundred thousand men, because he considered that within a hundred years all the youth of that army should be dust and ashes: and yet, as Seneca well observes of him, he was the man that should bring them to their graves; and he consumed all that army in two years, for whom he feared and wept the death after an hundred.

—Jeremy Taylor.

Reason Versus Force

“We hope to increase and promote the practice already begun, of submitting national differences to amicable discussion and arbitration; and, finally, of settling all national controversies by an appeal to reason, as becomes rational creatures, and not by physical force, as is worthy only of brute beasts; and that this shall be done by a congress of Christian nations, whose decrees shall be enforced by public opinion that rules the world.”

—At the forming of the American Peace Society in New York, May 8,1828

-William Ladd.

Alternate Reading: Matthew 20: 20-28.

One Rubber Plant Cannot Make A Home

One rubber plant can never make a home,
Not even when combined with brush and comb,
And spoon, and fork, and knife,
And graphophone, and wife,
No! Something more is needed for a home.

One rubber plant can never make a home;
One day did not suffice for building Rome.
One gas-log and a cat
Can’t civilise a flat;
No! Something more is needed for a home.

—Anon.

Blest Be That Spot

Blest be that spot, where cheerful guests retire
To pause from toil, and trim their evening fire;
Blest that abode, where want and pain repair,
And every stranger finds a ready chair;
Blest be those feasts with simple plenty crowned,
Where all the ruddy family around
Laugh at the jests or pranks that never fail,
Or sigh with pity at some mournful tale,
Or press the bashful stranger to his food,
And learn the luxury of doing good.

—Oliver Goldsmith.

Service Carries Its Own Reward

I built a chimney for a comrade old,
I did the service not for hope or hire—
And then I traveled on in winter’s cold,
Yet all the day I glowed before the fire.

—Edwin Markham.

Alternate Reading: Daniel 1: 8-21.

America, The Hope Of The World

We, here, in America hold in our hands the hope of the world, the fate of the coming years: and shame and disgrace will be ours if in our eyes the light of high resolve is dimmed, if we trail in the dust the golden hopes of men. If on this new continent we merely build another country of great but unjustly divided material prosperity, we shall have done nothing; and we shall do little if we shall merely set the greed of envy against the greed of arrogance, and thereby destroy the material wellbeing of all of us. To turn this Government either into government by a plutocracy or government by a mob, would be to repeat on a large scale the lamentable failures of the world that is dead.

We stand against all tyranny, by the few or by the many. We stand for the rule of the many in the interest of all of us, for the rule of the many in a spirit of courage, of common sense, or high purpose; above all, in a spirit of kindly justice towards every man and every woman. We not merely admit, but insist, that there must be self-control on the part of the people, that they must keenly perceive their own duties as well as the rights of others; but we also insist that the people can do nothing unless they not merely have, but exercise to the full, their own rights.

The worth of our great experiment depends upon its being in good faith an experiment—the first that has ever been tried—in true democracy on the scale of a continent, on a scale as vast as the mightiest empires of the Old World. Surely this is a noble ideal, an ideal for which it is worth while to strive, an ideal for which it is worth while to sacrifice much; for our ideal is the rule of all the people in a spirit of friendliest brotherhood toward each and every one of the people.

—Theodoee Roosevelt.

The Wedded Flags

Hang out that glorious old red cross!
Hang out the stripes and stars!
They faced each other fearlessly
In two historic wars.

But now the ocean circlet binds
The bridegroom and the bride:
Old England, young America—
Display them, side by side.

Was ever sign so beautiful.
Hung from the heavens, abroad?
Old England, young America
For freedom and for God!

—G. W. Doane.

Alternate Reading: Psalms 144:12-15.

Letty’s Home Is There

When Letty had scarce passed her third glad year,
And her young, artless words began to flow,
One day we gave the child a colored sphere
Of the wide earth, that she might mark and know,
By tint and outline, all its sea and land.
She patted all the world; old empires peeped
Between her baby fingers, her soft hand
Was welcome at all frontiers. How she leaped,
And laughed, and prattled in her world-wide bliss!
But when we turned her sweet unlearned eye
On our own isle, she raised a joyous cry:
“Oh, yes! I see it; Letty’s home is there!”
And while she hid all England with a kiss,
Bright over Europe fell her golden hair!

—Charles Tennyson Turner

Had I A Dozen Sons

Had I a dozen sons, each in my love alike and none less dear than thine and my good Marcius, I had rather eleven die nobly for their Country than one voluptuously surfeit out of action.

—William Shakespeare.

Breathes There A Man With Soul So Dead

Breathes there a man with soul so dead
Who never to himself hath said,
This is my own, my native land!
Whose heart hath ne’er within him burned,
As home his footsteps he hath turned
From wandering on a foreign strand?

—Walter Scott.

Alternate Reading: II Kings 5: 1-20.

The Little Child That Is To Be

(This should be read by every young man and woman and by every parent lest they regard too lightly the sublime obligation of parenthood.)

In a room whose window faces the east, the sunrise, a room called Hope, I found the Little Child That Is to Be. A wonderful, wonderful child is he—the Little Child That Is to Be. I often feel that I should like to take every young fellow into this room that faces the sunrise and show him this sweet and slumbering angel-face. And as he looks down upon the head on the pillow I would say, “Take care, when you are making love to the girl of your fancy, that you are securing for the Little Child That Is to Be a mother capable of maintaining the great and holy traditions of motherhood. Take care that you are winning to yourself a woman whom you can set with pride and confidence before the eyes of the Little Child That Is to Be as the embodiment of all that is pure and noble and unselfish and true!”

And I often feel that I should like to take every girl into this little room with the eastern window. And, as she gazed tenderly down into the sleeping face of the Little Child That Is to Be, I would say to her, “Take care, when you ally yourself with the lover of your fancy, that you are securing for the Little Child That Is to Be a father to whom you may always point with proud motherly affection! Take care that you are setting before the eyes of the Little Child That Is to Be, when he wakes up, a father whose character he may copy and in whose safe foot-prints he may plant his own! Take care! Take care! !” And I would have both young men and maidens, as they stand beside this sleeping angel, to remember that whenever they yield to temptation they are striking a more terrible blow at the Little Child That Is to Be than they will ever be able to strike him with clenched fist. And whenever they resist and overcome temptation they are securing for the Little Child That Is to Be a finer heritage than any they will ever leave him in their wills. “Take care, take care!” I would say to every man and maiden, “Take the greatest care, the tenderest care of the Little Child That Is to Be!”

-From “The Golden Milestone” by F. W. Boreham.

The sweetest duet ever heard is the laugh of mother and child.

Alternate Reading: Acts 3:1-26.

Jesus Befriends A Sick Woman In The Synagogue On The Sabbath

Jesus was teaching on a Sabbath in one of the Synagogues, and he saw before him a woman who for eighteen years had suffered from weakness, owing to her having an evil spirit in her. She was bent double, and was wholly unable to raise herself. When Jesus saw her, he called her to him, and said:

“Woman, you are released from your weakness.” He placed his hands on her, and she was instantly made straight, and began to praise God. But the President of the Synagogue, indignant that Jesus had worked the cure on the Sabbath, interposed and said to the people:

“There are six days on which work ought to be done; come to be cured on one of those, and not on the Sabbath.”

“You hypocrites!” the Master answered him. “Does not every one of you let his ox or his ass loose from its manger, and take it out to drink, on the Sabbath? But this woman, a daughter of Abraham, who has been kept in bondage by Satan for now eighteen years, ought not she to have been released from her bondage on the Sabbath?”

As he said this, his opponents all felt ashamed; but all the people rejoiced to see all the wonderful things that he was doing.

—Luke.

Remember every day to keep it holy.

All that is purest and best in man is but the echo of a mother’s benediction. The hero’s deeds are a mother’s prayers fulfilled.

A Happy Life

How happy is he born and taught
That serveth not another’s will;
Whose armor is his honest thought,
And simple truth his utmost skill!

Whose passions not his master’s are,
Whose soul is still prepared for death,
Not tied unto the world with care
Of public fame, or private breath.

—Henry Wotton.

A Prayer

Teach me, Father, how to go
Softly as the grasses grow;
Hush my soul to meet the shock
Of the wild world as a rock;
But my spirit, propt with power,
Make as simple as a flower.
Let the dry heart fill its cup,
Like a poppy looking up;
Let life lightly wear her crown
Like a poppy looking down,
When its heart is filled with dew,
And its life begins anew.

Teach me, Father, how to be
Kind and patient as a tree.
Joyfully the crickets croon
Under the shady oak at noon;
Beetle, on his mission bent,
Tarries in that cooling tent.
Let me, also, cheer a spot,
Hidden field or garden grot-
Place where passing souls can rest
On the way and be their best.

—Edwin Markham.

Alternate Reading: Psalms 27: 8-14.

First Things, First

In the beginning—God.

Exalt the Home above every other institution on earth.

Duty

He who is false to present duty breaks a thread in the loom, and will find the flaw when he may have forgotten the cause.

—Henry Ward Beecher.

The Voice Of Nature

The heavens declare the glory of God; and the firmament showeth his handiwork. Day unto day uttereth speech, and night unto night showeth knowledge.

—Psalms.

Discovering God In Nature

If there were men whose habitations had been always under ground, in great and commodious houses, adorned with statues and pictures, furnished with everything which they who are reputed happy abound with: and if, without stirring from thence, they should be informed of a certain Divine power and majesty, and after some time the earth should open and they should quit their dark abode to come to us, where they should immediately behold the earth, the seas, the heavens; should consider the vast extent of the clouds and force of the winds; should see the sun and observe his grandeur and beauty, and perceive that day is occasioned by the diffusion of his light through the sky; and when night has obscured the earth they should contemplate the heavens, bespangled and adorned with stars, the surprising variety of the moon in her increase and wane, the rising and setting of all the stars and the inviolable regularity of their courses,—when they should see these things, they would undoubtedly conclude that there is God, and that these are His mighty works.

—Aristotle.

Alternate Reading: Psalms 127: 1-2.

Prayer

More things are wrought by prayer
Than this world dreams of. Wherefore, let thy voice
Rise like a fountain for me night and day.
For what are men better than sheep or goats
That nourish a blind life within the brain,
If, knowing God, they lift not hands of prayer
Both for themselves and those who call them friends?
For so the whole round earth is every way
Bound by gold chains about the feet of God.

—Alfred Tennyson.

The Lesson Of The Fruitless Fig Tree

And Jesus told them this parable—

“A man, who had a fig tree growing in his vineyard, came to look for fruit on it, but could not find any. So he said to his gardener, ‘Three years now I have come to look for fruit on this fig tree, without finding any! Cut it down. Why should it rob the soil?’

“‘Leave it this one year more, Sir,’ the man answered, ’till I have dug round it and manured it. Then, if it bears in future, well and good; but if not you can have it cut down.'”

—Luke.

Musical Characters

Some men move through life as a band of music moves down the street, flinging out pleasure on every side through the air, to every one far and near, that can listen.

—Henry Ward Beecher.

Good For Good

Do not look for wrong and evil—
You will find them if you do;
As you measure for your neighbor
He will measure back to you.

—Alice Cary.

A Letter From Christ

All can see that you are a letter from Christ entrusted to our care, a letter written, not with ink, but with the Spirit of the ever-living God, and not on tables of stone, but on tables of human hearts.

—Paul.

The Gospel According To You

There’s a sweet old story translated for man,
But writ in the long, long ago—
The Gospel according to Mark, Luke and John—
Of Christ and His mission below.

Men read and admire the Gospel of Christ,
With its love so unfailing and true;
But what do they say, and what do they think
Of the Gospel according to you?

‘Tis a wonderful story, that Gospel of love,
As it shines in the Christ life divine;
And, Oh, that its truth might be told again
In the story of your life and mine!

Unselfishness mirrors in every scene;
Love blossoms on every sod;
And back from its virion the heart comes to tell
The wonderful goodness of God.

You are writing each day a letter to men.
Take care that the writing is true.
‘Tis the only Gospel that some men will read—
That Gospel according to you.

—Evangelical Messenger.

Repentance

Man-like is it to fall into sin.
Fiend-like is it to dwell therein;
Christ-like is it for sin to grieve,
God-like is it all sin to leave.

—Von Logun.

Alternate Reading: Daniel 4: 5-37.