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GLEANINGS IN BEE CULTURE 



OCTOBKR, 1919 



OUR HOMES 



A. I. ROOT 



Let the words of my mouth and the meditation 

 of my heart be acceptable in thy sight, O Lord, my 

 strength and my redeemer. — PsALMS 19:14. 



For from within, out of the heart of men, proceed 

 evil thoughts, adulteries, fornications, niurder.s. — 

 M.'VRK 7:21. 



Thou Shalt not covet thy neighbor's house, thou 

 shall not covet thy neighbor's wife, nor his man 

 servant, nor his maidservant, nor his ox, nor his 

 ass, nor anything that is thy neighbor's. — Exodus 

 20:17. 



YOU will no- 

 tice, friends, 

 that 1 have 

 not yet got out 

 of my mind the 

 text that I used 

 in our July 

 number, espe- 

 cially that part 

 in regard to the 

 meditation of 

 the heart. Our 

 second text tells 

 us that the 

 crime that is 

 just now so 

 prevalent, espe- 

 cially in our 

 great cities, 

 originates in the 

 "meditation" of 

 the heart. The 



question often comes up, " Which is the 

 most important commandment? What is 

 the worst sin that a man can commit?'' 

 The reply has frequently been, "A viola- 

 tion of the commandment which says, 

 ' Thou Shalt not kill' " But I have been 

 thinking seriously that the one which fol- 

 lows it, if not worse than murder, is often 

 further reaching in its ultimate conse- 

 quences. It was David who uttered the 

 words I have quoted so much, and the 

 words that have come to be so precious to 

 me. I am not theologian enough to say 

 these words were uttered in his youth; but 

 I rather imagine they were. And yet 

 David, whom God declared to be " a man 

 after my own heart," committed that ter- 

 rible sin of adultery first and then murder 

 afterward to cover up his first sin. You 

 can hardly pick up a newspaper that does 

 not report another crime as the result of 

 an unfaithful husband or an unfaithful 

 wife. And these crimes generally, like 

 David's crime, go on thru the generations. 

 A business man who was trusted, and 

 supposed to be beyond suspicion, recently 

 got his stenographer into trouble. To get 

 out of the trouble a crime was committed. 

 I do not know whether the -world generally 

 calls it murder or not; but I call it murder 

 — the murder of a sweet, innocent babe. 

 Just yesterday Mrs. Root called me to look 

 at a little girl grandchild four and a half 

 months old. I talked to this child, and 

 she gave me a sweet little smile that seem- 

 ed to me more precious than anything else 

 here on earth. You may talk about the 

 flowers and the sunshine and the hum of 

 bees; yet these things can in no way com- 

 pare with that pure and innocent look of 



recognition 

 Avhen the baby 

 just begins to 

 recognize her 

 fi-iends and the 

 tho ight that she 

 is loved. 



Well, this 

 crime of adul- 

 tei'v sooner or 

 later results in 

 murder — not 

 the murder of a 

 full-grown man 

 or woman who 

 is presumed to 

 be able to take 

 care of herself 

 more or less, but 

 the murder of a 

 helpless inno- 

 cent. Some peo- 

 ple seem to think that if the murder is per- 

 jjetrated before birth it is not murder; but 

 I look upon it now as one of the worst and 

 foulest of murders. 



I wish you, my dear readers, would go 

 back to the second book of Samuel and 

 read the 11th and 12th chapters. I am 

 afraid that David was hurt by prosperity; 

 and, by the way, how many of us just notv 

 are harmed by prosperity? If there was 

 ever any man who had no need of coveting 

 another man's wife, that one was King- 

 David. When he was listening to the 

 tempter, I wonder if he ever thought about 

 that text of his in regard to the meditation 

 of the heart. In consulting an able attor- 

 ney recently in regard to things of this 

 kind he said that when a man becomes un- 

 faithful to his wife and to his maiTiage 

 vows, he is no longer faithful to his em- 

 ployer nor to anybody else. He can not 

 be trusted anywhere. He has broken one 

 of God's most holy commands and he is 

 likely to steal, kill, or do almost anything 

 else. And poor innocent Uriah! Because 

 lie refused to be a party to crime, even tho 

 it was the king who had committed the 

 crime, he met a most foul and shameful 

 death. May the Lord be praised that there 

 was such a man as the prophet Nathan who 

 had the courage to talk plainly, even to the 

 king of the realm; and with the beautiful 

 parable he led David to see just where he 

 stood in the " miry clay." He said plainly, 

 and without any circumlocution, " Thou 

 art the man." 



Now, if you have become interested in 

 the story (and I hope you have), just go 

 on and see what David suffered — yes, and 

 the whole nation — because of that foul 



