1897 



GLKANINGS IN HI'Iv Cl'I/rURK. 



749 



several feet in the center; and some beautiful 

 jfoUlfisli (ieli<;ht the urchins and other people 

 as they sport in the sparkliui^ sprinj^ water. 

 Half a dozen teams can drive up to tlie tank 

 and drink all at once ; and in consecjuence of 

 the severe drouth now prevailing, farmers are 

 coming for miles aroui.d with sleds, stone- 

 boats, etc., loaded with barrels, drawing water 

 home to their slock ; and these sleds and stone- 

 boats did the writer quite a service, for they 

 converted the loose dusi into a bicycle-track 

 almost equal to asphalt pavements. The head 

 of water is suflicient to pipe it right into the 

 greater part of the dwellings of the little town, 

 and, in many places, clear into the upper 

 rooms. The well belong.^ to ISIr. A. K. TVeedt, 

 who owns the store and runs the postoffice on 

 the corner. 



Now, then, ye people who live in little 

 towns like the above, you prol)ably can not all 

 have an artesian well ; but you do not know 

 this really until you have drilled down a hun- 

 dred feet, more or less, to find out. But every 

 little town can have a windmill and a beauti- 

 ful watering-place right in the center of the 

 town. The watering-place I have just de- 

 scribed did not cost more than ten or fifteen 

 dollars, goldfish and all. 



Our Homes. 



Come unto nie, all ye that labor and are heavy 

 laden, and 1 will give you rest. — Matt. II :28. 



Permit me to say that most of my talk on 

 this text is borrowed from a sermon delivered 

 by Rev. A. T. Reed, at Canaan Center, Wayne 

 Co., O., on Sunday evening, Oct. 'A. I shall 

 take only one point of his discourse. Jesus 

 calls all men unto him. "Come unto me," 

 he says. He does not sa}-, " Come to truth, 

 come to honesty, come to temperance," nor 

 even to purity of thought. He simis it all up 

 by saying, "Come unto »ie, all ye that labor 

 and are heavy laden." Now, since the world 

 began, people have tried to substitute some- 

 thing in place of Christ Jesus the Son of God, 

 the mediator between God and man. They 

 have said, and do sa}- now, " My religion con- 

 sists in being honest; in being upright in deal, 

 and in doing as I would be done b}-." These 

 people reject the idea of Christ and the Chris- 

 tian religion. They say, if a man would do as 

 he would be done by, is honest and fair toward 

 all his fellow-men, pure in heart, and temper- 

 ate in his habits, that is enough ; and they 

 declare that they are willing to take their 

 chances with the best professing Christian 

 among us. Ver\' likely there are people who 

 set a better example in many of these things 

 than do a good many professing Christians. 

 I confess it has always seemed very hard for 

 me to admit that honesty, purity, and tem- 

 perance, count for nothing — or, if you choose, 

 count for comparatively nothing when the 

 person refuses to accept Christ Jesus as the 

 Son of God. Perhaps you have heard min- 

 isters talk on this subject ; and very likely 

 you have not been satisfied with their argu- 

 ments and statements. Let me give you an 



illu.stration, from Bro. Reed, that has made it 

 plainer to me than it ever was before. 



Suppose a man in your neighborhood wants 

 to get some public office. He knows what 

 people demand or desire in a puhlic officer. 

 He sets to work with energy and zeal to be a 

 l)etter man. He begins to be kind and neigh- 

 borly ; pays up old debts that nobody ever 

 expected to get; apologizes for his past short- 

 comings, stops using tobacco, possibly beer- 

 drinking al.so, becomes an advocate of tem- 

 perance, has respect for the Bible and Chris- 

 tianity, and makes a sudden and ap]xirently 

 complete change in his whole life. Does this 

 make him a Christian ? He may, for the time 

 being, present so clean a record as to put the 

 average Christian to shame. But it is all a 

 policy matter. His heart is not changed at 

 all. He simply wants to get elected to office; 

 after that he may hold out in his new " de- 

 parture " or he may not. Pehaps I may say, 

 parenthetically, that the chances are that he 

 will not. What do you think of such a man ? 

 Is he a better man than he was before ? Well, 

 it seems a little hard to say he is not any bet- 

 ter. The effect of his whole life on his neigh- 

 bors and on the community is certainly better; 

 and we all rejoice to see even such reforms. 

 But how about the man's heart? He is trying 

 to make all his friends and neighbors think 

 he is a better man than he really is. To call 

 things by their right names, he is now, with 

 all his goodness, purity, and temperance, only 

 one sort of hypocrite. Before, he acted out 

 just as he felt. He seldom "put on" any 

 thing, or even tried to make believe he was 

 something he was not. I am sure you see the 

 difference. The man who cultivates all of 

 these virtues from the right motives desires to 

 be better in God's sight ; as to what the com- 

 munity or neighbors may think of it. is a 

 secondary matter. 



Now, the Bible teachings are to the effect 

 that accepting Christ as the Son of God sums 

 up all these virtues I have enumerated, and 

 even many more; in fact, it sums up all that 

 is good in the human heart. Accepting Christ 

 as your Savior, and your only hope of pardon, 

 embraces all of these things. He is the very 

 essence and embodiment of truth. When 

 Pilate asked him, "Art thou a king?" Jesus 

 an,swered, "To this end was I born, and for 

 this cause came I into the world, that I should 

 bear witness unto the truth." Permit me to 

 say that I have never yet found a moral man 

 who lived up to all these things as he claimed 

 to do. For a time it would seem as if he were 

 an honest doubter ; but where I become in- 

 timately acquainted with such people I have 

 always, sooner or later, discovered something 

 that seemed to be a reasonable explanation 

 why they should so persistently refuse to 

 accept Jesus Christ as the .Son of God. 



Now, friends, permit me to use an illustra- 

 tion that Bro. Reed did not use ; and it is a 

 subject that has been lying on my mind, and 

 has been making me feel troubled and anxious. 

 Jesus, when he .said, "Come unto ;«r," did 

 not say, " Come and be a Congregationalist, a 

 Methodi.st, a Baptist, an Episcopalian," nor 

 anv of these different sects or denominations. 



