Seven Baskets Full (Matt. 15:37)
Seven Baskets Full
(Matt. 15:37)
Hand-picked fruit is often the
sweetest and most perfect. The warmth
She lay in bed one day and asked what she could do, a dismembered woman without a joint in
her body. Then an inspiration came to her,
and she got a friend who was a carpenter to come, and he fitted a pad to her shoulder, and
then to that another, and a Swan fountain pen, and she began to write letters with it. And remember, when you write, you write with your
arm. She had to write; there was no joint,
she wrote with the whole of her body. There
may be clever caligraphists in this place, but I will undertake to say there is, no woman
who could write a letter one-half so beautiful from the point of view of caligraphy as
that woman wrote in my presence, almost like copperplate; and she had got 1,500 or 1,600
letters from people who had been brought to Christ through the letters she had written in
that way from that room. And I said to her:
How do you do it?" And she smiled and
replied: "Well, you know Jesus said
that- 'They who believed in Him out of them shall flow rivers of Living Water,' and I
believed in Him, and that is all."
Britain's crown jewels, valued at $100,000,000 fifty years ago, are now housed in a million-dollar underground stronghold in the Tower of London. In addition to the sophisticated electronic alarm system, there are sixteen Yeoman warders and curators always on duty watching the jewels. That is how safe they are.
According to the New Testament, the believer in Christ is even safer. "You are dead," wrote Paul, "and your life is hid with Christ in God" (Col. 3:3). What a stronghold!
Dr.
Dale, of Birmingham, once said in my hearing that Mr. Moody was the only man who seemed to
him to have the right to preach about Hell. When
asked why, he said: "Because he always preaches it with tears in his voice."
-Dr. Campbell Morgan.
Meekness is love at school, at the Saviour's school.
It is the disciple learning to know himself, to fear, distrust, and abhor himself. It is the disciple practising the sweet, but
self-emptying lesson of putting on the Lord Jesus, and finding all His righteousness in
that righteous Other. It is the disciple
learning the defects of his own character, and taking hints from hostile as well as
friendly monitors. It is the disciple
praying and watching for the improvement of his talents, the mellowing of his temper, and
the amelioration of his character. It is the
loving Christian at his Saviour's feet, learning from Him who is meek and lowly, and
finding rest to his own soul.
The eyes of God, angels and men, are upon us, and great is the account we must make to our
Lord Jesus Christ, who is the supreme head of his church, and will at length reward or
punish his servants in this ministry of his Gospel, as he shall find them faithful or
negligent. We must not think to be idle or
careless in this office, but must bend our minds and studies, and employ all our gifts and
abilities, in this service. We must preach
the word of faith, that men may believe aright; and the doctrine and laws of godliness,
that men may act as becomes Christians indeed. For
without faith no man can please God; and without holiness no man can enter into the
kingdom of heaven.
ARCHBISHOP USHER
[ Top of this page
| Table of Contents ]
The
whole world is within the range of our influence, because it may become the object of our
prayer. There is not a single living person
who is not within the reach of our power. Our prayer can rise up unto the highest, and it
can sink down to the lowest and most depraved. Our
friends may be separated from us by distances which we cannot destroy; but distance is a
thing unknown to prayer, and so, for all practical purposes, they are near, and we can
bring to bear upon them an immense and omnipotent power.
Our feelings may not allow us to talk on religious subjects to some of our friends,
and yet we can use, on their behalf, an instrumentality that has never been known to fail. We may have no wealth
with which to carry forward the cause of Christ, and yet, out of our poverty, we may
enrich its treasures and augment its influence. We
may have no talents to set forward, and no eloquence to describe the glories of our
Redeemer. We may never be able to speak a single word in support of the claims
of our religion, and yet we may do more to promote the cause of Christ, to magnify the
glories of the Lord than the man who has at his command wealth, talents, eloquence, but
who is not a man of prayer.
F. EDWARDS
At one time Bishop Gobat, of Jerusalem, was greatly discouraged when he had been on a
missionary journey in Abyssinia. Everything
seemed against him, and the difficulties were so hard that he felt that God had forsaken
him. He found a cave and went into it,
spending a long while in prayer telling the Lord how forsaken he was. Bishop Gobat prayed and prayed, pouring out his
soul to God. It was very dark in the cave,
but after he had remained in the dark for a little while, his eyes began to get a little
accustomed to it, and he there saw a ferocious wild animal, a hyena, and her cubs, quite
near. God had protected him, and they had
never offered to touch him, or offered to move. God's
hand, at the very hour that he [Gobat] thought that He [God] was against him, was keeping
him from being torn to pieces; for there is no animal more ferocious than a hyena with
cubs. He went through unharmed. If God would only open our eyes in the darkness
when we seem forsaken by Him, we would see how perfectly He has kept us from many unseen
dangers and calamities; and in the very hour of our greatest despair we will probably have
most reason to thank Him.
[ Top of this page | Table of Contents ]
.