Freedom Of Soul

       What a remarkable invention is the airship! In it are wrapped almost boundless possibilities for good or evil. The Christian bound on his sacred mission may yet be able to use the viewless air for his highway, transport himself through its soundless solitudes, hundreds of miles before the dawning. He may transport himself with ease from place to place and behold all the marvels of creation on earth, having cut loose from gravitation and being free in the infinite ocean of starlight and sunlight.

"The ideal of man is perfect freedom of the soul."

Fear Of Man

       Ex-President Roosevelt is usually pictured as proof against fear, but the New York Times tells of an occasion when he admits that he was badly frightened.

       It was on the evening of his first diplomatic reception as President, and the long and brilliant line headed by ambassadors, foreign ministers and attaches, and distinguished army and naval officers in gorgeous uniforms, was passing slowly before him. In this procession was a lady who knew the President quite well, and who confidently expected a hearty greeting. To her surprize, Mr. Roosevelt merely inclined his head over her hand, and bowed her on with the throng.

       An hour later she met the President in the reception-room, and he spoke to her in the friendliest way.

       "Why didn't you come in time for the reception?" he asked.

       "I did," she replied, "and you did not even recognize me!"

       "Impossible!" exclaimed the President, "but," and set his teeth together hard and whispered, "to tell you the truth, Mrs. -----, I was so fearful I wouldn't do the right thing I could not think of anybody except myself!"

Jeremy Camp sings "Christ In Me"

Divinity

All things are mine; to all things I belong:

I mingle in them--heeding bounds nor

bars--

Float in the cloud, melt in the river's song;

In the clear wave from rock to rock I

leap.

Widen away, and slowly onward creep;

I stretch forth glimmering hands beneath

the stars

And lose my little murmur in the deep.

Yea, more than that: whatever I behold--

Dark forest, mountain, the o'erarching

wheel

Of heaven's solemn turning, all the old

Immeasurable air and boundless sea--

Yields of its life, builds life and strength

in me

For tasks to come, while I but see and feel,

And merely am, and it is joy to be.

Lo, that small spark within us is not blind

To its beginning; struck from one vast 

soul

Which, in the framework of the world, doth

bind

All parts together; small, but still agree-

ing

With That which molded us without our

seeing;

Since God is all, and all in all--the Whole

In whom we live and move and have

our being.

Samuel V. Cole, The Critic.

Jesus is God following us up.

       You see, the heart of God had been breaking - is breaking over the ways things have been going  down on this planet. Folk fail to understand  Him. Worse yet, they misunderstand Him, and  feel free to criticize Him. Nobody has been so much slandered as God. Many are utterly ignorant of Him. Many others who are not ignorant yet ignore Him. They turn their faces and backs. Some give Him the cut direct. The great crowd in every part of the world is yearning after Him: piteously, pathetically, most often speechlessly yearning, blindly groping along, with an intense inner tug after Him. They know the yearning. They feel the inner, upward tug. They don't understand what it is for which they yearn, nor what will satisfy.

       For man was made to live in closest touch with God. That is his native air. Out of that air his lungs are badly affected. This other air is too heavy. It's malarial, and full of gases and germy dust. In it he chokes and gasps. Yet he knows not why. He gropes about in the night made by his own shut eyes. He doesn't seem to know enough to open them. And sometimes he will not open them. For the hinge of the eye-lid is in the will. And having shut the light out, he gets tangled up in his ideas as to what is light. He puts darkness for light, and light for darkness.

       Once man knew God well; close up. And that means loved, gladly, freely. For here to know is to love. But one day a bad choice was made. And the choice made an ugly kink in his will. The whole trouble began there. A man sees through his will. That is his medium for the transmission of light. If it be twisted, his seeing, his understanding, is twisted. The twist in the will regulates the twist in the eye. Both ways, too, for a good change in the will in turn changes the eyes back to seeing straight. He that is willing to do the right shall clearly see the light.

       But that first kink seems to have been getting worse kinked ever since. And so man does not see God as He is. Man is cross-eyed Godward, but doesn't know it. Man is color-blind toward God. The blue of God's truth is to him an arousing, angering red. The soft, soothing green of His love becomes a noisy, irritating yellow. Nobody has been so much misunderstood as God. He has suffered misrepresentation from two quarters: His enemies and His friends. More from - which? Hard to tell. Jesus is God trying to tell men plainly what He is really like.

       The world turned down the wrong lane, and has been going that way pell-mell ever since. Yet so close is the wrong lane to the right that a single step will change lanes. Though many results of being in the wrong lane will not be changed by the change of lanes. It takes time to rest up the feet made sore by the roughness of the wrong lane. And some of the scars, where men have measured their length, seem to stay.

       The result of that wrong turning has been pitiable. Separation from God, so far as man could make separation. There is no separation on God's part. He has never changed. He remains in the world, but because of man's turning his face away, He remains as a stranger, unrecognized. He remains just where man left Him. And any one going back to that point in the road will find Him standing waiting with an eager light glistening in His eyes. No! That's not accurate. He is a hit nearer than ever He was. He is following us up. He is only a step off. Jesus is God eagerly following us up. S. D. Gordon

Divine Discontent

An unidentified author writes thus of discontent:

When the world was formed and the morn-

ing stars

Upon their paths were sent,

The loftiest-browed of the angels was

named

The Angel of Discontent.

And he dwelt with man in the caves of the

hills,

Where the created serpent stings,

And the tiger tears and the she-wolf howls,

And he told of better things.

And he led man forth in the towered town,

And forth to fields of corn;

And he told of the ampler work ahead

For which the race was born.

And he whispers to men of those hills he sees

In the blush of the golden west;

And they look to the light of his lifted eye

And they hate the name of rest.

In the light of that eye doth the slave be-

hold

A hope that is high and brave,

And the madness of war comes into his 

blood

For he knows himself a slave.

The serfs of wrong in the light of that eye

March on with victorious songs;

For the strength of their right comes into

their hearts

When they behold their wrongs.

"Tis by the light of that lifted eye

That error's mists are rent--

A guide to the table-land of Truth

Is the Angel of Discontent.

And still he looks with his lifted eye,

And his glance is far away

On a light that shines on the glimmering

hills

Of a diviner day.

Death Does Not Change Character

       When corn is cut down and is lying on the ground, and is afterward put into the granary, it is the very same corn as had grown up to full maturity in the earth. So also souls in the granary above are the very same souls as had grown up to maturity in heaven on earth. When they are transferred to heaven above, they are not tares which had been cut down on earth, and which somehow in the process of cutting had been transformed into corn or wheat. Unless wheat will grow up as wheat in the earth, and be harvested as wheat, it will not turn into wheat in the act of cutting, or while it is being removed to the granary. -- Alexander Miller, "Heaven and Hell Here."

• Questions about Heaven, Hell, and Eternity 
• The Truth About Hell 
• Surviving Hell on Earth
  

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.

Acquiescence to Providence

       Each branch of a vine is bound to a certain point of its wall or its conservatory. It is not growing just where and how it would spontaneously and naturally choose, but is affixt there contrary to its natural bent, in order that it may catch the sunbeams at that point and cover that spot with beautiful foliage and luscious fruit.

       Sorrow is like the nail that compels the branch to grow in that direction; inevitable circumstance is like the rough strip of fiber which bends the branch, and pain is like the restraint which is suffered by the branch which would have liked to wander at its own will. We are not to murmur or repine at our lot in life, but are to remember that God has appointed it and placed us there.

"To every thing there is a season, and a time to every purpose under the heaven" Ecclesiastes 3:1 

Fruit And Soil

       A choice variety of plum was purchased and set out in a certain garden. When the tree came to maturity, to the keen disappointment of the owner, there was no fruit on its branches. Investigation showed that the fault was not in the tree. The land in which it was planted proved to be barren and lacking in proper nourishment.

       A tree growing in poor soil can not bear, because it requires all the strength it can extract from the soil to barely sustain its life. It takes all the virtue there is in the soil to support the head and foliage so that the fruit is literally starved out.

       There are church-members who branch into Christian profession but who are rooted in the world. Such will bring forth nothing but leaves. (Text)

What Am I?

What an I, whence produced, and for what end?
Whence drew I being, to what period tend?
Am I th' abandon'd orphan of blind chance,
Dropp'd by wild atoms in disordered dance?
Or, from an endless chain of causes wrought,
And of unthinking substance, born with thought?
Am I but what I seem, mere felsh and blood,
A branching channel with a mazy flood?
The purple stream that through my vessels glides,
Dull and unconscious flows, like common tides,
The pipes, through which the circling juices stray,
Are not that thinking I, no more than they;
This frame, compacted with transcendent skill,
Of moving joints, obedient to my will;
Nursed from the fruitful glebe, like yonder tree,
Waxes and wastes, -- I call it mine, not me,
New matter still the mould'ring mass sustains;
The mansion chang'd, the tenant still remains;
And, from the fleeting stream, repair'd by food,
Distinct, as is the swimmer from the flood.

by Dr. Arbuthnot

Spiritual Flood-Tide

      "I stood on the coast of England, and looked out over a stretch of oozy slime and ill-smelling mud. There were the barges high and dry, lying on their side–no matter what cargo they carried or how skillful the captain, they were on the mud. It would have availed them nothing to heave the anchor or hoist the sail. And I thought, What is the remedy? Were it any use for the corporation to pass a by-law that every citizen should bring kettles filled with water, and pour it out upon the stretch of mud? 

      But as I watched I saw the remedy. God turned the tide. In swept the waters of the sea, and buried the mud, and then came the breath of sweetness and life. And it flowed in about the barges, and instantly all was activity. Then heave-ho with the anchor, then hoist the sails, then forth upon some errand of good. So it is that we stand looking out upon many a dreadful evil which fills us with dismay–drunkenness, gambling, sexual impurity. Is there any remedy? And the churches, so very respectable, but, alas, high and dry on the muddy beach–for these too, what is the remedy? We want the flood-tide–the gracious outpouring of the Spirit; then must come the roused and quickened churches, the Christians transformed into Christ-like men and women who shall demand righteousness."  Mark Guy Pearce. 

The Present, Past and Future

      It is noble faculty of our nature which enables us to connect to our thoughts, our sympathies, and our happiness, with what is distant in place or time; and, looking before and after, to hold communion at once with our ancestors and our posterity. Human and mortal although we are, we are nevertheless not mere insulated beings, without relation to the past or the future. Neither the point of time, nor the spot of earth, in which we physically live, bounds our rational and intellectual enjoyments. We live in the past by a knowledge of its history; and in the future by hope and anticipation.

      As it is not a vain and false, but an exalted and religious imagination, which leads us to raise our thoughts from the orb, which, amid this universe of worlds, the Creator has given us to inhabit, and to send them with something of the feeling which nature prompts, and teaches to be proper among children of the same Eternal Parent, to the contemplation of the myrids of fellow-beings, with which His goodness has peopled the infinite space--so neither is it false or vain to consider ourselves as interested and connected with our whole race, through all time; allied to our ancestors; allied to our posterity; closely compacted on all sides with others; ourselves being but links in the great chain of being, which begins with the origin of our race, runs onward through its successive generations, binding together the past, the present and the future, and terminating at last with the consummation of all things earthly, at the throne of God. Daniel Webster