DECEMBER 1, 1912 



783 



man have to carry? I told you a few is- 

 sues back of liow much I was enjoying the 

 presence of the Holy Spirit until I grieved 

 it so it went away. A guilty conscience so 

 burdened me that I could neither eat nor 

 sleep until I got rid of that burden. 



Our management has just asked how 

 many there now are who took Gleanings 

 at the time it was printed by windmill 

 power. Huber tells me that we have let- 

 ters from something more than fifty. 

 These veterans who have stood by us all 

 these years will remember the time when 

 I knelt down in the darkness — spiritual 

 darkness as well as real darkness — and 

 asked God (if there was a God) to give 

 me back the innocence and hajopiness of 

 childhood, and how, down on my knees, 

 I promised the great Father to give up all 

 and every thing that I possessed, even life 

 itself, to be freed from the burden of sin 

 that was daily getting to be more and 

 more burdensome. The prayer was an- 

 swered, and with trembling footsteps I 

 started out to explore the new heavens and 

 a new earth ; and it was then and there that 

 these Home papers were started. God 

 knows how soon or where the end shall 

 come, or who shall take them up when I 

 am called on to lay down my labors here 

 on earth. 



Perhaps we may consider how it is that 

 men and women consent to handicap them- 

 selves with a surplus of avoirdupois 

 equal to a sack of flour or even more. It 

 may not be easy to say just what brings 

 this about. If we should hastily decide 

 that it was due to overeating, it might 

 sound a little tough and severe on some 

 of our feminine friends who haj^pen to be 

 "plump" as well as "rosy." It is bad, 

 without question, to be overburdened with 

 flesh; but, my dear friends, it is worse to 

 have a burden imposed on us by giving 

 way to sinful temptations; and not only 

 give way, but invite sinful thoughts and 

 actions. The tobacco habit is a burden, as 

 I think all must admit ; but intemperance 

 is a greater burden, and generally an ad- 

 ditional one. Not only is it a burden on 

 the shoulders of the wretched victim him- 

 Belf, but a burden on the wives and chil- 

 dren who often go hungry, and lack in 

 flesh as much as the others we have been 

 considering are oversupplied. Tobacco 

 and drink not only impose a burden but a 

 constantly increasing burden. There is no 

 need of denying it, for we see it all about 

 us. Why should a boy in his teens invite 

 such a burden — a burden not only on his 

 body but on his finances? 



Let me illustrate the difficulty of once 



getting rid of the burden of tobacco habit. 

 A good friend of mine at one of the Michi- 

 gan beekeeiDers' conventions told me of 

 being helped by these Home papers, and 

 then he gave this illustration: He had 

 been teaching a class of boys in Sunday- 

 school, but he was a user of tobacco, and 

 he very soon saw he would have to give 

 up tobacco or give up his class. What 

 should he do? He said he had thought it 

 over, and prayed over it; and finally he 

 decided that he could not stand before that 

 row of bright young faces as a spiritual 

 teacher while he knew, and tliey knew that 

 he used tobacco. He prayed for grace 

 to give up the tobacco, and rejoiced in the 

 liberty and happiness he had found in 

 breaking off the habit for Christ's sake. 

 Two of his sons stood near me while he 

 told the story, and they were not tobacco- 

 users, and rejoiced to see that their father 

 was emancipated from a habit contracted 

 years before — perhaps when ]ie was a boy. 



Now, I should be glad to end my little 

 story right here. Years afterward, when 

 I met him again, I found he had given up 

 his class in Sunday-school, and gone back 

 into slavery, to the tyrant Habit. Now 

 comes the saddest part of the story. He held 

 on to his class, and kept his pledge faith- 

 fully for three full years, and then went 

 back. We want to realize how big a job 

 it is to get rid of this burden of bad habits 

 and not have them come back. 



In the 7th chapter of Mark, verses 21 

 and 22, there is a list of sins that burden 

 jioor infirm humanity: "Evil thoughts, 

 adulteries, fornication, murders, thefts, 

 covetousness, wickedness, deceit, lascivious- 

 ness, evil eye, blasphemy, pride, foolish- 

 ness." The next verse, the 23d, explains 

 how we come to shoulder such filthy and 

 disgraceful burdens. "All of these things 

 come from within and defile the man." 

 You see it is all our own fault. We per- 

 mit these foul weeds to take root and grow ; 

 and they do not grow, mind you, without 

 encouragement, just as the crops in our 

 garden do not grow without encourage- 

 ment. 



A great deal is being said in the papers 

 of late in regard to the high cost of liv- 

 ing. A recent issue of Green's Fruit 

 Grower tells us how a large part of this 

 burden is needless. Read it: 



HIGH COST OF LIVING. 



"There are in the United States 10,000 men 

 who are making and distributing liquor." This 

 great army is responsible for the high cost of 

 living. Here are 5,000,000 men, women, and 

 children dependent upon the liquor business. Who 

 feeds them? The laboring man who last year 

 turned over $1,000,000 to them; who divided the 

 loaf that should have gone to his family with the 



