146 



GLEANINGS IN BEE CULTURE. 



MAlt. 



Blessed are the meek, for they shall inherit the 

 earth.— Matt. 5:5. 



And — 



Ask of me, and I shall givo thee the heathen for 

 thine inheritance, and the uttermost parts of the 

 earth for thy possession.— Psalm 3:8. 



Since I have given you quotations from 

 the Bible for the same thing, I fear you will 

 say you knew all about that before, and so 

 let it lose its force ; but I pray you, friends, 

 believe me when I say you do not know all^ 

 about it ; or at least you have not proved it" 

 by actual experience. Satan is wily. You 

 may be a professing Christian, and you may 

 think your life is very good ; but for'all that, 

 you may be a great stumblingblock to all 

 about you. 



Some years ago I attended a conference 

 meeting where all seemed harmony and 

 peace and good will, until some difficulty 

 arose in regard to parliamentary rules. It 

 seemed to come from a minister from a 

 neighboring town, who was not quite satis- 

 lied. After a considerable waste of time, a 

 brother suggested they should sing a hymn, 

 with a view of having it break the protitless 

 discussion, and restore a better feeling; but 

 no sooner was it started than he jumped to 

 his feet, and declared he would not be" sung 

 down'' by anybody. 



Do you think, friends, such a spirit will be 

 likely to rise in the world, or to win souls to 

 the Christian religion ? As he would not be 

 sung down, the whole audience wisely, as I 

 think, gave the tloor, and alloAved him to 

 talk as long ashe wished. I was quite young 

 in Christian matters then ; but at the noon 

 intermission I approached him and ventured 

 to suggest he had not shown the spirit of the 

 Master. 



"Oh! yes, to be sure," said he; "any 

 thing in the bounds of reason; but when 

 people make asses of themselves, it is a dif- 

 ferent matter." 



Now, it might have been quite pat to the 

 purpose to have told him who I thought was 

 making an ass of himself; and I confess I 

 relish as hugely as any of you that way of 

 speaking plain and apparent truths ; but by 

 so doing I should have lost all possible hope 

 of doing him any good at all. He stuck out 

 for his rights, and would not submit, or be 

 taught of any one, because he was old and 

 wise. He was, in fact, old, wise, and learn- 

 ed ; but for all that, he had not learned to be 

 as little children ; and before the afternoon's 

 exercises were half through, he got mad 

 again, (I guess I have used the right word, 

 haven't Ir*) and gathered up his books, over- 

 coat, and manuscript, and swept out of the 

 room without even delivering the address as- 

 signed to him on the printed programme. As 

 he got down the stone steps of the church, he 

 ran against one of our prominent lawyers, 

 who made no profession of religion, and, 

 stirred up as he was, he commenced detail- 

 ing to him his grievances, and appealed to 

 him to know if he wasn't right. The law- 

 yer, in a mild, gentlemanly, and, I guess, 

 Christian -like way, declined passing any 

 opinion, saying that if we Christians got 

 into quarrels in our church matters, he really 

 did not know how he could help us any. 

 Boys, how much do you suppose this inci- 



dent did to help the cause of religion? Eve- 

 rybody who heard it would almost at once 

 decide in favor of the lawyer, and (I shudder 

 while I think of it) in favor of skepticism 

 rather than the churches. Yet this poor 

 man, minister though he was, was so blind- 

 ed by Satan he could not see his awful in- 

 'consistency. 



One of my great objections to attending 

 bee conventions was because this kind of 

 wrangling and waste of time is so apt to be 

 the case. Do you not see how much we need 

 the spirit that 'would prompt us to come to 

 help, not to stand up for our own personal 

 rights? In the language of our text, if we 

 would be of use, we need to lose our lives for 

 the good of the people. The two neighbors 

 \v\\o were quarreling, needed to get rid of 

 selfishness ; and Christ, in his teachings, 

 recognizes so fully the importance of this, 

 and the great probability that we will err, 

 even the best of us, in this same matter of 

 selfishness, that he says, when we are struck 

 on one cheek, turn the other also, and get 

 struck a second time rather than return evil 

 for evil ; and, also, if we are sued at law, 

 and lose clear down to our coat, let the cloak 

 go also, rather than disagree with a neigh- 

 bor. Well, we sometimes make ourselves 

 miserable by worrying about matters that 

 are not blows, nor coats and cloaks either. 

 ^Ye get a notion in our heads that we have 

 done a great deal for the world, and that it 

 has done but little for us. and we brood 

 over it until we are actually incapable of 

 seeing the truth as it really is, and so we 

 go through life blinded by selfishness, as it 

 were. What shall we do? Some will say, 

 I know, we should ask the Holy Spir- 

 it to enlighten us, and we shall then see 

 ourselves as we really are. I grant this, 

 pi'oviding the prayer is supplemented with 

 strong, earnest, willing work. The man who 

 prays, and at the same time gets up from 

 his knees thinking he is liberal, and all the 

 rest of the world selfish, will not profit very 

 much by his prayers, if I am correct. God 

 gives wisdom, but it comes only through 

 hard and searching labor, Moses, with all 

 his great wisdom, and nearness to God, would 

 have made the blunder of wearing himself 

 out had he not listened to and heeded the 

 voice of his father-in-law .lethro. The great 

 lesson we have to learn, is that we are hu- 

 man and selfish still. We want to so learn 

 this that it will be " rooted and grounded " 

 in us ; and as we recognize we are selfish, 

 just in proportion shall we see the good 

 qualities of others, and so shall be ready to 

 have love and charity for all. 



We want to be just. We say we do, and I 

 guess we are honest in it, as a general thing. 

 Well, how shall we manage to be just, when 

 we are so prone to selfishness? By accept- 

 ing it as a fact that we are, have been, and 

 always shall be, selfish ; and, therefore, de- 

 ciding to give more to the world, constantly, 

 than it seems to us we ought to. To be sure 

 we are not taking more from the world than 

 we give back, make it a point to do kind 

 services to everybody, at every opportunity ; 

 and after that is all done, just " fiing in " a 

 lot more of kind services, so as to be posi- 

 tive y sure we have given a full equivalent 



