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GLEANINGS IN BEE CULTURE 



Nov. 1 



Our Homes 



By a. I. Root 



Fear thou not, for I am with thee; be not dismayed, 

 for I am thy God. I will s'renfjthen thee; yea, I will 

 help thee; yea, I will uphold thee with the right hand 

 of my riarhteousness. 



For I the Lord thy God will hold thy right hand, 

 saying unto thee, Fear not; I will help thee. — Isaiah 

 41 : 10, 13. 



I suppose we " old fellows " (many of us) 

 get into a fashion of telling the same story 

 over again, forgetting that we had ever told 

 it before; and I hope the readers of Glean- 

 ings will be patient with me if I, in a like 

 manner, get to telling stories that have been 

 told before on these pages. It is not always 

 because I forget; but ofttimes the story I 

 have told before illustrates some new point 

 better than any thing else, and therefore I 

 take the liberty of trespassing on your good 

 nature in this way. And then there is anoth- 

 er thing — this is a changing world. Many of 

 those who read Gleanings thirty and more 

 years ago are dead and gone, and younger 

 ones have taken it up, so that the story will 

 be new to the greater mass of our readers, 

 even if there be a few gray-headed ones who 

 are tempted to say, "There, you are telling 

 that same old story over again." But the 

 story I want to tell you this morning I think 

 I have told twice before at least — once, per- 

 haps thirty-five years ago, and at least once 

 since. This is the story: 



When I first got a glimpse of the character 

 of the Lord Jesus Christ and of his mission 

 down from heaven to this world of ours, I 

 began telling what I had discovered, just as 

 I have been telling the world about my dis- 

 coveries with bees, and just as I am telling 

 to all the world now my discoveries along 

 the line of incubators and chickens. Well, 

 when I was almost a new-born child in fol- 

 lowing the meek and lowly Nazarine, some- 

 body said that a near neighbor, while intox- 

 icated, drove his wife and family out of doors 

 in the dead of night in winter. I knew him, 

 and kept my eye on him, for my conscience 

 troubled me and told me I ought to go and 

 speak with him. I dreaded it, and tried to 

 excuse myself; but the still small voice kept 

 following me something as God followed 

 Jonah and told him to go and preach to the 

 Ninevites. This neighbor, soon after the 

 occurrence, I saw on the streets sober and 

 in his right mind. He turned and went into 

 a shoe-shop where I was acquainted. I fol- 

 lowed him in. .\s I could not well see him 

 alone, and as all of those present knew of 

 his treatment of his family, I ventured to 

 broach the subject. As I told you before, I 

 had been dreading the task beforehand; but 

 when I opened up, as well as I could, before 

 those ungodly men I was almost appalled at 

 the objections they brought up against the 

 Bible and the gospel. For the first time in 

 my life, almost, I realized how poorly I was 

 equipped and prepared to "preach " to any 

 one. I think it must have been about the 

 time I learned to use that little prayer, "Lord, 

 help," and I used it then, mentally; and I 



furthei- tried to tell the dear Savior (in my 

 mind) how \^eakand helpless I felt in trying 

 to answer the rude jests and sarcasms ot the 

 crowd before me. While I prayed I absent- 

 ly moved some little pieces of leather that 

 covered the floor, with the toe of my shoe. 

 As I pushed these bits of leather away, a 

 piece of paper came into view. I thought it 

 was a scrap of newspaper, and in my per- 

 plexity I stooped down and picked it up. It 

 was a fragment of the sixth chapter of the 

 book of Luke. The little crowd was watch- 

 ing me. I said to the shoemaker (who had 

 been as bitter as any of them) that I had 

 found a piece of the Bible in his shop among 

 the scraps of leather. Either before I read 

 what was on the paper or after, he made an 

 exclamation something like this: 



"My God! how did that piece of paper, 

 torn out of the Bible, ever get into /«>' shop?" 



The scrap of paper contained, as nearly as 

 I can remember, from the 27th to the 39th 

 verses. It is almost too long to quote here, 

 but I wish that you who love your Bibles 

 (and everybody else who is interested in my 

 story) would hunt it up and read it. My lit- 

 tle prayer was answered, and it seemed to 

 me almost like a miracle. My critics were 

 silenced, and the man who abused his family 

 was touched. The scrap of Bible did a work 

 that perhaps no human tongue, unaided by 

 that Bible, could do. After the man had 

 given me his solemn promise to be a better 

 father to his family, I said: 



"Now, friends, as you see, God has an- 

 swered my prayer for help. Nobody, knows 

 how this scrap happened to be among those 

 pieces of leather; but God sent it and placed 

 it there. I wish to kneel down, with the per- 

 mission of my good friend the shoemaker 

 here, and pray that God will help us all to 

 be better men than we have been. I shall 

 be glad to have you kneel with me, if you 

 feel inclined to do so; but, of course, you 

 can do as you wish. I am not the one to dic- 

 tate as to your duty." 



I think everyone knelt down, and I thank- 

 ed God for his kindly and timely help, and 

 asked his blessing on all of them. It was a 

 broken and awkward prayer, for it was a 

 new thing then for ine to pray at all, much 

 less in a public business place like that. Oh! 

 but I was happy, as I went out feehng that 

 the task I dreaded was done. It was one of 

 the first experiences I had ever met of the 

 thrills of joy and peace that come after per- 

 forming a dreaded duty for Christ's sake. 

 But that was not all. Over in the closing 

 chapter of Malachi there is a verse that ends 

 something like this: "Prove me now here- 

 with, saith the Lord of hosts, if I will not 

 open before you the windows of heaven and 

 pour out a blessing that there shall not be 

 room to receive it. ' ' There is a suggestion in 

 that phrase, that "when a man's ways please 

 the Lord " the answer to his prayers will be 

 greater and further-reaching than he has any 

 comprehension of. Just as I stepped out of 

 the door of the shoe-shop the door of an ad- 

 joining room opened, and the proprietor of a 

 drugstore stopped me. Said he, "Mr. Root, 



