Article July 26, 1900 Issue

Religious Items

with contributions from Alexander MacLaren, John Stuart Mill, H. W Beecher

A writer in the Homiletic Review, treating the subject of obscure passages of the Bible, says very sensibly: "Why not let the perplexing questions wait for the hour of higher elevation and clearer light? We are like the little child in its first day of school. Eagerly turning over the pages of the book that has just been placed in its hand, it comes quickly to that which is a vast mystery to its present undeveloped mind. Now hear its impatient cry: 'Teacher, teacher, here is something that I can get no understanding of. Tell me quickly what it is. Give me the explanation now or I will close the book and leave the school.' To such an ambitious neophyte might not the voice of the teacher in all sweet reasonableness come in this fashion? 'Is it in to-day's lesson, my child, that which troubles you so greatly? If not, can you not wait until your advancing lessons bring you unto it?' "

"Now, men, my hearers, are only children of a larger size often as petulant."

Why have so many Christian men so little joy in their lives? Because they look for it in all sorts of wrong places, and seek to wring it out of all sorts of sapless and dry things. "Do men gather grapes of thorns?" If you put the berries of the thorn into the wine press, will you get sweet sap out of them? That is what you are doing when you take gratified earthly affections, worldly competence, fulfilled ambitions, and put them into the press and think that out of these you can squeeze the wine of gladness.

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