Heaven A Locality

       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.

•  Where is Heaven Right Now?
  

Fragrant Buds...

       There is an old Indian legend that a poor man threw a bud of charity into Buddha's bowl and it blossomed into a thousand flowers. So we throw the bud of Christian truth into isolated and scattered communities, into the far-off lands, and lo, it bursts forth into a thousand fragrant blossoms and bears fruit in every activity of human life. -- J. A. Huntley.

• Ready-made community: The growth of Christianity in China
• Christianity grows in North Korea despite persecution
• Finding God where you least expect Him

Utilizing Seed

       "There isn't one man in ten thousand who has the remotest idea of the vast number of uses to which the once despised cottonseed is now being put," said Captain B. J. Holmes, of New Orleans.

       "From the clean seed are obtained linters and meats and hulls, the hulls making the best and most fattening feed for cattle that has yet been found. From the linters are gathered material for mattresses, felt wads, papers, rope, and a grade of underwear, and likewise cellulose, out of which gun-cotton is made. The meats furnish oil and meal, the oil after refining being now in almost universal use in the kitchens of this and other countries. Before refinement to the edible stage, the oil is known under many names, such as salad-oil, stearine, winter-oil and white-oil, oleomargarine being the product of stearine. The white-oil is the chief ingredient in compound lards. The original oil, also known as soap stock, has fatty acids used in the manufacture of soaps, roofing- tar, paints and glycerine, and from this comes the explosive nitroglycerine. I might also add that the meal, aside from its use as cattle provender, is transformed into bread, cake, crackers and even candy. Last of all come the doctors, who are saying that this wonderful seed is a boon to the sick, since from its oils an emulsion is prepared that has been known to be of value in tuberculosis and other ailments."  Baltimore American.

• Planting Seeds by Pastor John Lindell
• Never Underestimate the Power of a Seed...
• Good Seeds, Good Soil by Emily C. Heath

Earth Cry

      M. Guyau, in his "Sketch of Morality," relates a dream that he had. He felt himself soaring in heaven, far above the earth, and heard a weary sound ascending as of torrents amid mountain silence and solitude. He could distinguish human voices - sobs mingled with thanksgiving, and groans interrupted by benedictions; all melting into one heartrending symphony. The sky seemed darkened. To one with him he asked, "Do you hear that?" The angel answered, "These are the prayers of men,  ascending from the earth to God." Beginning to cry like a child, the dreamer exclaimed, "What tears I should shed were I that God!" Guyau adds: "I loosened the hand of the angel, and let myself fall down again to the earth, thinking there remained in me too much humanity to make it possible for me to live in heaven." 

It is that earth-cry that brings God down to help the needy.

• Crying Out for Rescue
• Crying Out to a God Who Answers
• Why Won't God Answer My Cries For Help?
• Prayer Out of Pain
• Cry Out To Jesus

Growth In Darkness

      There is a darkness which helps and sweetens. Disappointments, difficulties, discouragements, and all things dark, come to us apparently to depress us, but these are part of the experience which helps us. Black charcoal will keep water sweet. Bulbs must be buried in the darkness if they are to grow. In the winter a florist endeavored with success to grow some bulbs without placing them in the ground. He gathered some small stones and put them into basins, placing the bulbs on the top of the stones. Then he poured in sufficient water to touch the bulbs, and to conserve the sweetness of the water he introduced little pieces of charcoal among the stones. He then placed the basin in a dark cupboard and kept them there for ten weeks, and when he took them out the green leaves of the bulbs were showing. (Text.)

• Blessed In The Dark Places
• Growing through a Dark Night of the Soul

Mystery No Bar To Belief

      Toads are said to have been found in rocks. Such cases are rare, but it would be as unreasonable to doubt them as to believe in some of the miraculous explanations that have been made of the matter. The phenomenon is marvelous, it is true, but it is supported by evidence that we are not able to contest; and skepticism, which is incompatible with science, will have to disappear if rigorous observation shall confirm it. The toad was observed, in one case, in the stone itself, and before recovering from its long lethargy, it had not made any motion. One of these toads was presented to an academy, with the stone which had served it as a coffin or habitation, and it was ascertained that the cavity seemed to correspond exactly with the dimensions and form of the animal. It is remarkable that these toad-stones are very hard and not at all porous, and show no signs of fissure. The mind, completely baffled in the presence of the fact, is equally embarrassed to explain how the toad could live in its singular prison, and how it be- came shut up there. M. Charles Richet had occasion to study this question some months ago, and came to the conclusion that the fact was real, observing that even if, in the actual condition of science, certain phenomena were still inexplicable, we were not warranted in denying their existence, for new discoveries might at any time furnish an explanation of them.  Popular Science Monthly

Truth, sometimes, is stranger than fiction.

• The Theology of Creation
• The Mystery of Creation
• Does The Bible Teach Science? 

Obedience And Greatness

       The moon calls to the Atlantic and the mighty seas lift themselves in great tidal waves as they follow their mistress round the globe. It calls with equal insistence to the wayside pool and this passing reminder of yesterday's shower yields not an inch. The dust speck dances in the sunlight impudently or ignorantly defiant of the law which holds the earth with a grip of steel as it goes bounding along through a wilderness of stars held steady by the same hand. Be it big enough and noble enough, it knows how to obey.  John H. Willey

Capacity

       "You do not preach to the acorn that it is its duty to become a large tree; you do not preach to the art-pupil that it is his duty to become a Holbein. You plant your acorn in favorable soil, where it can have light and air, and be sheltered from the wind, you remove the superfluous branches, you train the
strength into the leading shoots. The acorn will then become as fine a tree as it has vital force to become. The difference between men and other things is only in the largeness and variety of man's capacities." - James Anthony Froude.

• Man's Threefold Needs
• Having the Capacity to Truly See
• Developing a Heart for God

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"

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

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)

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

Life A Stream

      Life bears us on like the stream of a mighty river. Our boat at first glides down the narrow channel, through the playful murmuring of the little brook and the winding of its grassy boarders. The trees shed their blossoms over young heads: the flowers on the brink seem to offer themselves to the young hands. We are happy in hope, and we grasp eagerly at the beauties around us; but the stream hurries on, and still our hands are empty. Our course in youth and manhood is along a wider and deeper flood, amid objects more striking and magnificent. We are animated at the moving pictures, and enjoyments and industry passing us; we are excited at some short-lived disappointment. The stream bears us on; and our joys and griefs are alike left behind us. We may be shipwrecked; but we cannot be delayed. Whether rough or smooth, the river hastens to its home, till the roar of the ocean is in our ears, and the tossing of the waves is beneath our feet, and the land lessens from our eyes, and the floods are lifted up around us; and we take our leave of earth and its inhabitants until, of our future voyage, there is no witness save the Infinite and Eternal. Bishop Herber

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.

Life A River

      Pliny compares life to a river. The river, small and clear in its origin, gushes forth from rocks, falls into deep glens, and wantons and meanders through a wild and picturesque country; nourishing only the uncultivated tree or flower by its dew or spray. In this, in its state of infancy and youth, it may be compared to the human mind, in which fancy, and strength of imagination, are predominant: it is more beautiful than usual. When the different rills or torrents join, and descend into the plain, it becomes slow and stately in its motions, and able to bear upon its bosom the stately barge. In this mature state, it is deep, strong, and useful. As it flows on towards the sea, it loses its force and its motion, and at last, as it were becomes lost and mingled with the mighty abyss if waters. -Sir Humphery Davy