Faith Taught by Nature

       Faith bids us be of good cheer. Long ago, that old Greek studied the mental operations of a bee, with brain not as large as a pin-head. Here is a little bee, that organizes a city, that builds ten thousand cells for honey, twelve thousand cells for larvae, a holy of holies for the mother queen; a little bee that observes the increasing heat and when the wax may melt and the honey be lost, organizes the swarm into squads, puts sentinels at the entrances, glues the feet down, and then with flying wings, creates a system of ventilation to cool the honey, that makes an electric fan seem tawdry– a little honey-bee that will include twenty square miles in the field over whose flowers it has oversight. But if a tiny brain in a bee performs such wonders providential, who are you, that you should question the guidance of God? Lift up your eyes, and behold the hand that supports these stars, without pillars, the God who guides the planets without collision. Away with fear! -N. D. Hillis.

Music and words by Jon Althoff and Nathan Stiff.

Things That Never Die

 Things That Never Die

The pure, the bright, the beautiful,
That stirred our hearts in youth,
The impulse to a wordless prayer,
The dreams of love and truth;
The longings after something lost,
The spirit's yearning cry,
The strivings after better hopes--
These things can never die.
The timid hand stretched forth to aid
A brother in his need,
The kindly word in grief's dark hour
That proves a friend indeed;
The plea for mercy gently breathed
When justice threatens high,
The sorrow of a contrite heart--
These things shall never die.
The memory of a clasping hand,
The pressure of a kiss,
And all the trifles, sweet and frail,
That make up love's first bliss;
If with a firm unchanging faith,
And holy trust on high,
Those hands have clasped, those lips have met--
These things shall never die.
The cruel and the bitter word
That wounded as it fell;
The chilling want of sympathy
We feel but never tell;
The hard repulse that grieves the heart
Whose hopes were bounding high
In an unfading record kept--
These things shall never die.
Let nothing pass, for every hand
Must find some work to do;
Lose not a chance to waken love--
Be firm, and just, and true:
So shall a light that cannot fade
Beam on thee from on high,
And angel voices say to thee--
"These things shall never die."

by Sarah Doudney

Heaven A Locality

Outer space

       I am at a loss to understand why there should be difficulty in receiving the idea of heaven a locality - a fact of materiality, within the domain of physics, equally positive with the existence of Jupiter or Saturn, Venus or Uranus. The telescope, it is most true, has given wondrous revelations of the magnitude and the magnificence of God's glorious universe; but even that has not been able to reveal the secrets of the milky way, nor to calculate the distances of the nearest of the fixed stars, as the astronomer will tell you. But when we come to think, as is most probably true in fact, that with all the wonders thus laid open to our view - and they are most stupendous - we stand as yet but within the vestibule of God's great temple. Like Newton, we saunter along picking up here and there a pebble from the shore, the great ocean of truth meanwhile lying all unexplored beyond us. I doubt not that, could we but see them, as in prophetic vision, we should behold myriads upon myriads of shining orbs peopling the infinitudes of space, and of which the most accurate of all the sciences has not conceived the most remote idea. Inasmuch, then, as we as yet know nothing in comparison of what yet remains to be revealed to the eye of science, how dare we presume to say that the idea of heaven as a locality is a Utopian figment of the imagination - a mere poetic creation? We have picked up a sand or two from the beach, and say these are all there is of them! We have become slightly acquainted with the wonders of this, our own solar universe, and from that premise attempt the impossible feat of proving a negative, predicating the non-existence of any other!

       Most assuredly, since God has found place for the worlds we do see, He is of might sufficient to the finding of room in the vast depths of space for the heaven or heavens which at present we do not see? Rev. W. H. Cooper, D. D.

"The Only Scars In Heaven" sung by Casting Crowns.

Negative and Positive Culture

 will thereby be weeded out:

Negative and Positive Culture
 
Two fields lay side by side. Only a hedge
Which ran athwart the plain dissevered them.
In one my title lay, and he who owned
The other was my brother. Each alike
Had generous part of one ancestral lot.
And each alike due diligence displayed
On that he called his own. At early spring
Each with a shining share upturned the soil
And gave it to the sun, the wind, the shower.
Thenceforth we rested not. Busily we
wrought
And wiped our briny brows 'neath burning
suns,
Biding the time of one far-off event.

At summer's end we each one came at last
To find our recompense. Each had his own,
The end for which he'd toiled. Through all
those days
My only thought had been no weeds should
grow,
But he had plowed 'mid rows of waving corn
And in so doing killed the cumbering weeds
That grew between. And now at summer's
close
Behold ! my field was verdureless and bare.
While his was clad in vestiture of gold.
How vain my toil ! His recompense how
full.
Who reaped so much, yet plowed no more
than I!

God Spelling Himself Out in Jesus

       Jesus is God spelling Himself out in language that man can understand. God and man used to talk together freely. But one day man went away from God. And then he went farther away. He left home. He left his native land, Eden, where he lived with God. He emigrated from God. And through going away he lost his mother-tongue.

       A language always changes away from its native land. Through going away from his native land man lost his native speech. Through not hearing God speak he forgot the sounds of the words. His ears grew dull and then deaf. Through lack of use he lost the power of speaking the old words. His tongue grew thick. It lost its cunning. And so gradually almost all the old meanings were lost.

       God has always been eager to get to talking with man again. The silence is hard on Him. He is hungry to be on intimate terms again with his old friend. Of course he had to use a language that man could understand. Jesus is God spelling Himself out so man can understand. He is the A and the Z, and all between, of the Old Eden language of love.

       Naturally enough man had a good bit of bother in spelling Jesus out. This Jesus was something quite new. When His life spoke the simple language of Eden again, the human heart with selfishness ingrained said, "That sounds good, but of course He has some selfish scheme behind it all. This purity and simplicity and gentleness can't be genuine. "Nobody yet seems to have spelled Him out fully, though they're all trying: All on the spelling bench. That is, all that have heard. Great numbers haven't heard about Him yet. But many, ah! many could get enough, yes, can get enough to bring His purity into their lives and sweet peace into their hearts.

       But there were in His days upon earth some sticklers for the old spelling forms. Not the oldest, mind you. Jesus alone stands for that. This Jesus didn't observe the idioms that had grown up outside of Eden. These people had decided that these old forms were the only ones acceptable. And so they disliked Him from the beginning, and quarreled with Him. These idioms were dearer to them than life that is, than His life. So having quarreled, they did worse, and then-softly-worst. But even in their worst, Jesus was God spelling Himself out in the old simple language of Eden. His best came out in their worst.

       Some of the great nouns of the Eden tongue, the God tongue -He spelled out big. He spelled out purity, the natural life of Eden; and obedience, the rhythmic harmony of Eden; and peace, the sweet music of Eden; and power, the mastery and dominion of Eden; and love, the throbbing heart of Eden. It was in biggest, brightest letters that love was spelled out. He used the biggest capitals ever known, and traced each in a deep dripping red, with a new spelling, s-a-c-r-i-f-i-c-e. Gordon

 Softly and Tenderly Jesus Is Calling.