1882 



GLEANINGS IN BEE CULTUEE. 



463 



Lead me, O Lord, in thy righteousness, because of 

 mine enemies; make thy way straight before my 

 face.— PsAT,M 5 : X. 



¥Ex\.RS ago I got hold of that pleasant 

 book, by Andrew S. Fuller, entitled, 

 — " Fuller on the Grape," and I was cap- 

 tivated by the way in which the author tells 

 US liow to train grapes by a fixed system, so 

 that the naturally snarly, uncouth grapevine 

 may, with a little trouble, be made to assume 

 a fixed and regular form, and that the same 

 process may be ap})lied to any old vine, so as 

 to make a thing of beauty out of the most 

 irregular product of the vegetable kingdom. 

 Not only is the vine made pleasing to the 

 eye, but, in the new form, where each vine 

 is made exactly like every other one, it bears 

 large amounts of fruit, and the fruit is also 

 arranged with such regularity that the vine- 

 grower may tell almost a year ahead just 

 how many clusters he will have on each vine. 

 You may be sure 1 had very soon a lot of 

 vines in training, and I found it exactly as 

 Fuller had tauglit, and there seemed to be 

 nothing more to do, to have plenty of grapes 

 and a nice vineyard, but to just keep doing 

 the same thing over and over. It is true, 

 friends, there is nothing more to do to raise 

 grapes, and I might almost say, there is noth- 

 ing more to be done to build up a Christian 

 character. "When 1 got as many as a hun- 

 dred gravevines, I found it was a deal of work 

 to look after them all ; and as different va- 

 rieties of grapes developed different phases, 

 it became quite a task to have the whole 

 vineyard always present a pleasing appear- 

 ance to the eye, and to bear fruit uniformly. 

 Did you, my friend, ever try to live such a 

 life as to have it fair and blameless in all 

 eyes, and to have it. at the same time, bear- 

 ing some good fruit every day? I once spoke 

 to a friend of mine, who was quite well read 

 in fruit-growing, and asked him if he could 

 point to me an author who would give di- 

 rections for growing all kinds of fruits with 

 the system and certainty that friend Fuller 

 has pointed out for the care of grapes. He 

 said it had never yet been done. Books 

 there are on peaches, and books on apples, 

 but no one has, so far as I know, ever reduc- 

 ed the care and culture of these fruits to such 

 a system that any boy could take the book 

 and know just what to do every time. He 

 could probably succeed, after years of care 

 and study, with the aid of the book, but it 

 must be a succession of steps, and many of 

 them, through painful failures, before he 

 reaches even'moderate success. I believe it 

 is very much so with the work of buiding up 

 a Christian character. No doubt many of 

 you, my friends, have longed and prayed 

 with David, " Make thy way straight before 

 my face." Who is there, who looks on 

 these pages, who has not said, over and 

 over again, " Oh that I knew just what is 

 best in this crisis " ? The children of Israel, 

 in olden time, had a cloudy pillar by day, 

 and a pillar of lire by night to guide their 

 footsteps, and it has often seemed to me it 

 would be such a happy life to lead, to have 



only to glance up to that pillar, to know at 

 once exactly what is the right and proper 

 thing to do. 



It seems to me there fire two classes of 

 people in this world,— one class who want to 

 do right, and another who do not care par- 

 ticularly whether they do right or do wrong, 

 so they can have the best of every thing and 

 with the least trouble. The latter class, I 

 presume, know nothing of the trials of those 

 who ''hunger and thirst after righteousness." 

 Did you never think what a wonderful ex- 

 pression that is. hungering and thirsting aft- 

 er righteousness? It came in the first part 

 of our Savior's first great sermon. Hunger- 

 ing and thirsting after righteousness is 

 climbing up toward God, for God is all 

 righteousness. Right near this little text, 

 our Savior says, '' Blessed are the pure in 

 heart, for they shall see God." ]ioth these 

 texts give us the promise, that one who is 

 really in earnest about trying to do right 

 shall not go far astray, for the one tells us 

 we shall eventually see God ; and the other, 

 that this hungering and thirsting shall be 

 fully satisfied, or that we shall be filled. 

 Filled with righteousness! is it not a promise 

 great enough to encourage us to hold onV 



Is it an easy thing to do right? In one 

 sense it is, and in another it isn't. It seems 

 an easy thing to want to do right ; but when 

 we buckle right down to the Dusiness of al- 

 ways wanting to do right, no matter what 

 tenhptations may stand in the w^ay, I tell 

 you it is a great task. Then again, when 

 you want to do right you many times make 

 mistakes. What one thiidcs right, another 

 doesn't; and who Is to decide, where both 

 are honestly trying to do that which they 

 think right? The way the Bible points out 

 in such matters is to leave it to some mutual 

 friend ; and if both parties have God for a 

 mutual friend, will he not guide them to a 

 ha])py settlement of their different ways of 

 looking at things? To be sure, he will ; and 

 those who make a practice of going to God 

 in prayer for guidance in matters of difficul- 

 ty will very soon so nearly agree that we 

 virtually say that God has guided them in 

 straight paths. It will not do for each one 

 to say he is guided by (iod and his own con- 

 science alone, and thus ignore the opinions 

 of those about him, for we meet God through 

 our fellow-men, as surely as we meet him in 

 the solitude of our closets. Jesus said we 

 are to love God with all our heart and soul 

 and strength ; and had he stopped there, we 

 might possibly liave had a chance to claim 

 that we need not consider our fellow-men ; 

 but almost right in the same breath he says, 

 "■And Ihji nrigkhor a^ ihyscJf.^^ I believe this 

 comman"d holds good all the way through, 

 friends. If you are going to strive for God's 

 greatest blessings, you must love your neigh- 

 bors ; and even should they prove unlove- 

 able, and exceedingly trying, you must love 

 them still, and keep on trying to fulfill the 

 spirit of this command. The straight way 

 that God points out to every Christian will 

 surely lead into pretty close companionship 

 with "the people about and near him. If he 

 can not get on, and see God through them, 

 he probably can't anywhere. Quite a num- 

 ber have written me that they would like to 



