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GLEANINGS IN BEE CULTURE. 



Nov. 15. 



sort of a blessing John asks before they com- 

 mence their meal; but you maybe sure there 

 is grace in it, no matter what the words may 

 be. If his saying grace is after my own fashion, 

 his words would probably be something like 

 this: 



" O Lord, we thank thee for this pleasant and 

 happy home. We thank thee for these our dear 

 children. We thank thee for health and 

 strength, and for good appetites, and for this 

 our daily food. May it strengthen us that we 

 may be helpful, one to another, and that we 

 may be self-sacrificing: that we may have 

 grace to use our strength so that selfish feelings 

 shall be put down, together with all that is 

 evil: and may we uphold all that is good and 

 noble and pure, for the sake of the dear Master, 

 our Lord and Savior Christ Jesus. Amen." 



Some of you may say that all this takes a 

 good deal of time. My friends, it really takes 

 less time than I have b^en telling it. for all 

 soon learn to help. If the parents set an ex- 

 ample before the children, of bearing each 

 other's burdens, when all go to work cheerfully 

 to help things along, instead of hindering, then 

 time is being saved. Besides, this very cheer- 

 fulness and bright hopefulness helps digestion 

 to such an extent that all will be better fitted 

 for the duties of the afternoon, and more work 

 is accomplished — oh dear me I before supper- 

 time — than if each pushed ah^ad for self and 

 nothing el.«e, and hardly took time to eat a 

 meal and eat it properly. Of late I have been, 

 by the doctor's orders, taking a full half-hour, 

 or sometimes three-quarters, for each meal, 

 principally because every thing is so thorough- 

 ly chewed before it is swallowed, instead of 

 washing down the food with drink at meal- 

 times. Well, I am greatly a gainer, and the 

 time thus taken to say grace before our meals, 

 and to get all the familv together " decently 

 and in order." is certainly saved, oftentimes. 

 many times over, before the day's duties are 

 done. 



A great many people, you know, call the Old 

 Testament " law," and the New Testament 

 " grace;" and some go so far as to keep the one 

 and reject the other. I have given you one 

 illustration of law from the uld Testament. 

 Just read about Ananias and Sapphirain the.5th 

 chapter of Acts, and you will have a striking 

 illustration of the need of law as well as grace, 

 in the New Testament. It was just in the be- 

 ginning of the Christian church: at the very 

 outset, hypocrisy, deception, and falsehood had 

 crept in. The very life of the new church de- 

 pended on prompt and vigorous measures; and 

 this terrible illustration was given us that it 

 might stand through time and eternity as a 

 warning to all who would undertake to make 

 religion a cloak. 



It is true that the New Testament is mostly 

 taken up with the coming of the Savior to this 

 world. " For God so loved the world that he 

 gave his only begotten Son;" and it is also true 

 that the message of that only begotten Son was 

 peace on earth, good will to men. As we have 

 it in the first chapter of John, " The only be- 

 gotten of the Father, full of grace and truth." 

 The Savior's mission was one of grace. While 

 he did not annul the law or do away with it, 

 his work was particularly a work of grace. 

 But he fulfilled the law by his mission of 

 mercy and grace. Almost the only time when he 

 used any means that even approached severity 

 was when he took occasion to drive the money- 

 changers out of the temple. The Old Testa- 

 ment is law in one sense; but if we had to deal 

 with law. and law only, we should all be lost, 

 every one of us, for we are all sinners; and it is 

 here that this mission of grace comes in; or as 

 that beautiful hymn expresses it — 



Jesus paid it all— all to liim I owe; 

 and as I approach this part of my subject a 

 great number of those old familiar hymns well 

 up in a way that seems as if the writers must 

 surely have been inspired when they wrote 

 them. For instance: 



Just as I am, without one plea, 

 But that tliy blood was slied for me. 



You see the sinner does not depend upon his 

 good deeds nor upon his clean and faultless 

 life. He acknowledges in the outset that there 

 is no hope in (/u(f direction. Our only hope is 

 through the blood that was shed, and the grace 

 so freely given for us. And then, again, comes 

 in that old hymn that I used to hear my father 

 sing just 3s far back as I can remember. He 

 was converted, if I remember rightly, at a re- 

 vival meeting, and perhaps it was my good 

 fortune to hear some of those hymns of praise 

 welling forth as a spontaneous outburst of a 

 new-born soul: 



Oh, to grace how gieat a debtor 

 Daily I'm constrained to be! 



How many, many times it has occurred to me 

 that my father must have passed through 

 much the same trials I have met — much the 

 same that I am meeting day by day! How 

 wonderfully expressive that word "debtor" 

 comes in I Again: 



Let thy goodness, like a fetter. 

 Bind my wand'ring- heart to thee. 



We naturally associate the word "fetter" 

 with something disagreeable; but when we 

 think of being fettered by the goodness and 

 grace of Christ Jesus, then well may we burst 

 forth, " O glorious fetters I " * Once more : 



Prone to wander— Lord. I feel it; 



Prone to leave the God I love. 



I do not know how it is with the rest of you, 

 friends, but these two lines tell the history of 

 my life better than any thing else ever told it. 

 With sadness and sorrow, with humiliation 

 and shame, I acknowledge that I am still prone 

 to wander: and what shall he done, not only 

 for me, but for all others like me? Here we 

 have it: 



Here's my heart; oh, take and seal it- 

 Seal it for thy courts above! 



That is all we can do; and. oh glorious 

 thought! it is all we have to do— all we need to 

 do. If our hearts are in the Savior's care — if 

 they have been placed in his keeping— if his lov- 

 ing seal has made thf m safe, the work is done, 

 through life and through eternity. 



Let me now close with that wonderful verse 

 from the first chapter of John— a verse that, it 

 seems to me. I have never appreciated and un- 

 derstood before as I do now at the close of this 

 talk . 



And the Word was made flesh, and dwelt among us 

 (and we beheld his glory, the glory as of the only 

 begotten of the Father), full of grace and truth. 



There is a class of people, as you know, who 

 claim that they do not want grace or mercy. 

 All they ask for is justice. By the way, it just 

 occurs to me that the friends I meet in the 

 county jail are the ones who oftenest make 

 this claim. I do not know that I have ever 

 heard anybody, however, plainly declare he had 

 never broken any of God's laws — even the best 

 men among us. The most faultless Christian, 

 our leading evangelists, whose lives are com- 

 paratively clean and unspotted, would not 



* Yon will remember that Jimmie's companions 

 supposed he was fettered by the law of his father. 

 There were fetters, it is true, that kept Jimmie; but 

 they were fetters of grace— his mother's prayers 

 and anxious solicitude. Yes, the tears that were 

 shed when she supposed him to be asleep were the 

 fetters that held his "wandering heart." 



