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GLEANINGS IN BEE CULTURE 



515 



Our Homes 



By a. I. Root. 



Whosoever livelh and believeth in me shall never 

 die.— John 11:26. 



The above text has always been a very 

 precious one to me — that is, since my new 

 liirth, which many of the older ones remem- 

 ber. When I was a child in the Sunday- 

 school I read about this wonderful miracle of 

 restoring Lazarus to life; and with a childish 

 faith I accepted it, for it was right along in 

 line with the teaching of my good old moth- 

 er. Later on, when Ipermitted myself to be 

 led into Satan's snares I somehow lost faith 

 in these precious Bible promises. But I 

 found no comfort in skepticism and no inspi- 

 ration in infidelity. When my eyes were 

 opened, when I was about thirty years old, I 

 awoke to the sinfulness and hopelessness of 

 the way I was then traveling, and then this 

 passage came out like letters of fire written 

 on the blue vault above — "Whosoever liv- 

 eth and believeth in me shall never die." 



After he had repeated this, the dear Savior 

 said to Martha, "Believest thou this?" And 

 I want to ask of every, reader of Gleanings, 

 young and old, friend and foe, black and 

 white, rich or poor, "Believest thou this?" 

 Do you, my friends, each and every one of 

 you", honestly believe that whoever lives and 

 believes in Jesus Christ as the Son of the liv- 

 ing God shall never die? 



After the previous Home paper had gone 

 to press I read it over a good many times, 

 and I am going to read it more while I have 

 reason to think that toward 30,000 copies of 

 Gleanings are being dropped into the homes 

 of our land. When I have dictated a Home 

 paper that I think is going to prove helpful 

 and do good it is a great pleasure for me to 

 think, while 1 am reading it over, that you, 

 too, are reading the same words; and I hope 

 and prav that the Holy Spirit may be with 

 you while you read, and that he may carry 

 the message that I have tried with my feeble 

 voice to send to you. May God in his gra- 

 cious love and kindness send the Holy Spirit 

 with the message I am going to give you 

 now. 



To be real honest, I suppose I shall have 

 to confess to you that there are times when 

 I am tempted to unbelief. We know very 

 little about the future. Nobody has ever 

 come back. I remember vividly when the 

 spiritualists claimed to have made connec- 

 tion or established communication, if you 

 choose, with the other world; but it never 

 satisfied me. Through the years that have 

 passed since the spirit rappings came up be- 

 lore the world, I have carefulTv investifjated 

 these messages from that dark beyond: but 

 none of them have ever convinced me of 

 their genuineness. None of them have the 

 stamp of truth on them. I can not under- 

 stand all the phenomena of clair^'oyance and 

 hypnotism and many of the other things, 

 call them by what name you will; but I feel 

 satisfied and sure that no communication 



has ever been received so far, from that 

 other shore in any of these ways. 



I have before stated it as a fact that we 

 used to have infidels — men who rejected the 

 Bible as the word of God; but so far as I 

 know just now, they have mostly dropped 

 out of sight. I think I know something of 

 what is going on in the world, because, dur- 

 ing the past few weeks, I have been hastily 

 reviewing, or trying to review, all the peri- 

 odicals that come to us by way of exchange 

 or otherwise. I glance hastily at the maga- 

 zines, agricultural papers,* and the scientific 

 literature and religious periodicals, and two 

 or three dailies prmted m different parts of 

 the United States. I see publications, too, 

 from abroad, and some from the islands of 

 the sea, but in all of them little or nothing 

 that favors skepticism. All mankind seems, 

 by common consent, to have united in ac- 

 knowledging that there is "a God in Israel." 

 The Bible, too, is held in higher estimation 

 than ever before since the world began. 



Who is it that said, "Whosoever liveth and 

 believeth in me shall never die"? Peter's 

 answer, that has been echoing all over the 

 world from shore to shore, seems to be echo- 

 ing still, "Thou art the Christ, the Son of the 

 living God." Years ago there used to be a 

 few silly people who refused to accept the 

 evidence of the scriptures. Some of the 

 "higher critics. ' as they style themselves, 

 of recent date, have presumed to doubt the 

 miracles or have tried to explain them away; 

 but if I am correct they do not get a very 

 large audience. The New Testament tells us 

 who Christ was. In Matthew 3:17 we read 

 that a voice from heaven proclaimed, at the 

 time of his baptism, "This is my beloved 

 Son in whom I am well pleased." In order 

 that the world might receive and accept this 

 beloved Son as such, God gave him creden- 

 tials. He went about healing the sick. By 

 the way, friends, is there any other way in 

 which our gracious Lord could have proven 

 his divinity as he did by healing those who 

 were in distress and pain? All mankind 

 was in need, but there was no one to give 

 relief from distress. Most of his miracles 

 were along the line of healing. 



Away back in my boyhood, when I went 

 to Sunday-school one of the most wonderful 

 passages to me was where Jesus stilled the 

 tempest as recorded in the 4th chapter of 

 Mark, 8th of Matthew, and 8th of Luke, and 

 I often think of it now. He said to the bois- 

 terous winds and the lashing waves, "Peace, 

 be still." With all that has been accom- 

 plished with modern science we have never 



■ * While I am about il I want to say that it delights 

 my heart to note the splendid moral tone of almost all 

 the aerioultural papers printed in the different States. 

 Just now almost every State, and perhaps every one in 

 the Union, has its leadintr agricultural periodical. All 

 these farm papers are stroncr and clear on the temper- 

 ance issue, especially those in the South. They are all 

 down on eramblinir and every dishonest undertaking. 

 Of course they are misled occasionally lespecially in 

 their advertising columns); but it rejoices my heart 

 again to note that they are fast coming to the point of 

 refusing misleading advertisements. I long to see 

 more of the poultrj- journals come up on "higher 

 ground " in this respect. 



