1877 



GLEANINGS IN BEE CULTURE. 



65 



and desisted. In askina: my heavenly Father 

 to enable me to do as I would be done by, I 

 saw that I was almost nnconsciously iix:vj:<^ern- 

 ting the faults of these brothers, and withhold- 

 ing their good qualities ; yet some note of 

 warning should be uttered, and to save the 

 people's money, it should be uttered at once. I 

 llually let the Feb. No. go out without a word, 

 just because I saw too much prejudice in my 

 own heart, to allow me to write an unbiased 

 article. I prayed that I might be freed from 

 all this, and I will tell you how the prayer was 

 answered. 



I confess dear friends, that a prayer meeting 

 is not a very interesting place to me, unless 

 there is something to be done, and something 

 being done. We had been having such meet- 

 ings every evening for some time, and like 

 many others I suppose, they were poorly at- 

 tended, and not always very interesting. As 

 I passed the hotel on my way there, I often 

 remarked to myself, how many young men 

 were there congregated that could, if they 

 were only led to look at the matter in a proper 

 light, help us as well as themselves, so much. 

 One evening I asked in one of our young men's 

 meetings, how manj^ had the courage to go 

 and invite these brothers to join in with us. 

 The idea cast a silence on the meeting, and 

 tinally was decided to be hardly a pro- 

 per one. A couple of weeks passed, and in 

 one of our meetings the prevailing scepticism 

 of our town was mentioned, and our perfect 

 helplessness in the matter. We knelt in 

 prayer, and asked God to tell us what to do. 

 Before I had even taken time to consider the 

 matter, I recommended that we go out into 

 the streets, and work, as we had tried in vain 

 to have unbelievers come to us, and I volun- 

 teered to commence. I repented of this, as 

 I took a good look at it, and had I not public- 

 ly committed myself, I fear I should never 

 have got up the courage. Sabbath afternoon 

 after walking home from my Sabbath school, I 

 took one street and called at every house, ask- 

 ing them to come out to our young men's 

 meeting, and aid us by their presence and in- 

 fluence. To my astonishment, they pleasantly 

 assented, and did come nearly all of them. 

 Thus encouraged I spoke to the boys in the 

 streets, and they too, came along pleasantly, 

 but wheu I got into the meeting to which I 

 had invited them, I could but feel that those 



was to get every bit of unkind and unfriendly 

 feeling out of the way. If I had undertaken to 

 invade people's homes, woe betide me, if i did 

 not do it with that genuine love for all, that 

 our Saviour showed when here on earth. 



After another day's work of this kind, as I 

 approached a house the thought came, "How 

 about peddlers now, Mr. Novice ? wou'd yon 

 advise shutting the door in their faces?" I 

 stopped and almost said aloud, 



".May God forgive me for the unkind way in 

 which 1 have spoken of and treated these poor 

 brothers, even if they have been in the wrong, 

 and may I ever in future 'near in mind that he 

 who needlessly gives any fellow l)eing pain, 

 certain forgets the real spirit of Christianity." 



"How about your advice recently to your 

 readers, to make any kind of hive or honey 

 box they pleased, regardless of patenisT 



That too was wrong, and may the friends 

 whose feelings I have thus woundt-d, forgive 

 me. I feel more than ever before, the evils 

 that have grown out of selling rights, but I 

 now see that I have no right to advise taking 

 by force what some may feel to be their own 

 property, and which our laws allow them to 

 hold, even though it may be wrong for tliem to 

 sell it. I have no right to smash the bottles- in 

 a groggery even though the owner may be using 

 them to send my neighbor down to ruin, but 1 

 can go to both and talk and pray with them, 

 with their consent, and assuredly, the latter 

 course will do more good than the former. 



A few doors from me, is another jeweler, and 

 I have been able to see this week for the first 

 time, that wheu I liave looked in at his win- 

 dow, it has been with a sort of disdain or en- 

 vy, and since he has failed in business and 

 taken to drinking, — may God forsive me — I 

 have looked in at his humble stock feeling, 

 "Well he don't amount to much now, and he 

 will soon be out of the way." And yet I 

 thought I was a tolerable Christian. In this 

 work among the bo^^s in the streets, I met this 

 ■man, and God showed me my inconsistency. 

 I asked him to come along with us and help 

 us in our Christian work, and in one short 

 week, the man stood up in our morning circle 

 of praying workers, and said that with the 

 Lord's help, he would never drink anotlier drop. 

 Do you know how much I thank God that I 

 can noto look into this window with some- 

 thing of the same feelings I would have if the 



inside, needed the benefit of the street work, i siiop belonged to my own son 'i Shall we lose 

 nearly or quite as much as those who didn't j by loving our neighbor as ourselves'? Mostcer- 

 go to meeting at all. The task that looked so | tainly not, but we shall get into the very spot 

 formidable, was in reality no task at all, after : exactly, to build up a great business. I 

 we once bowed humbly to the Lord, and asked have for some time been in the habit of send- 

 him to give us that love for all these people, j ing ^or all wares, books or implements, .adver- 

 that we must have' to ask them all to come ' t'^ed for bee-culture, and when the article re- 



with us to meeting. The first house I visited 

 was easy enough, but tlie second was the home 

 of one whom 1 had criticized harshly; a little 

 farther on was another where they sold liq- 

 uors, and I had talked all manner of hard 

 things about them. Could I hope thev would 



ceived was not worth the money, or was not 

 what one would expect from the description, I 

 have warned our readers, as you may all 

 know, and very likely much money has been 

 saved b}' so doing, but have I always done it 

 in the real spirit of kindness ? I have imple- 



come with me to meeting with such thoughts | ments for sale, and is it not possible, that I 

 as these against them V Most certainly not ; I have bee;i exhibiting some of the spirit toward 

 I could not skip, for I had advised calling all | other makers and dealers, that I did toward 

 humanity to the Lord, and I could not hoj)e to my neighbor the jeweler'? You who have lost 

 have influence unless I was truthful. The your money, may say that it is of course right, 

 way, that straight and nai'i'ow path, lay right ! to publish letters from those vpho complained, 

 before me ; it began to be plain now, and it i but should we not be very careful? 



