The Home Council

Beauty in Duty

Help the weak, if you are strong;
Love the old, if you are young;
Own a fault, if you are wrong;
If you’re angry, hold your tongue.
In each duty
Lies a beauty
If your eyes you do not shut,
Just as surely
And securely
As a kernel in a nut.

-by Anonymous.

On Helpfulness

The most solid comfort one can fall back upon is the thought that the business of one’s life is to help in some small way to reduce the sum of ignorance, degradation, and misery on the face of God’s beautiful earth.

-George Eliot.

On The Civilizing Citizens

Not all men are of equal value. Not many Platos: only one, to whom a thousand lesser minds look up and learn to think. Not many Dantes: one, and a thousand poets tune their harps to his and repeat his notes. Not many Raphaels: one, and no second. But a thousand lesser artists looking up to him are lifted to his level. Not many royal hearts—great magazines of kindness. Happy the town blessed with a few great minds and a few great hearts. One such citizen will civilize an entire community.

-Newell Dwight Hillis.

Alternate Reading, II Timothy 3:1-17.

Jesus Befriends the President of the Synagogue and a Diseased Woman

On his return, Jesus was welcomed by the people; for every one was looking out for him. And a man named Jaeirus, who was a President of the Synagogue, came to Jesus, and threw himself at Jesus’ feet, with entreaties that he would come to his house, because his only daughter, who was about twelve years old, was dying.

As Jesus was going, the people were pressing closely round him. And a woman, who had suffered from hemorrhage for twelve years, and whom no one could cure, came up behind and touched the tassel of his cloak. Instantly the hemorrhage ceased.

“Who was it that touched me?” Jesus asked; and, while every one was denying having done so, Peter exclaimed:

“Why, Sir, the people are crowding round you and pressing upon you!”

“Somebody touched me,” said Jesus; “for I felt that power had gone out from me.”

Then the woman, when she saw that she was discovered, came forward trembling, and threw herself down before him; and, in presence of all the people, she told him her reason for touching him, and that she had been cured instantly.

“Daughter,” he said, “your faith has delivered you. Go, and peace be with you.”

Before he had finished speaking, some one came from the house of the President of the Synagogue and said:

“Your daughter is dead! Do not trouble the Teacher further.”

But Jesus, hearing this, spoke to the President:

“Do not be afraid; only have faith, and she shall yet be delivered.”

When he reached the house, he did not allow any one to go in with him, except Peter, John, and James, and the child’s father and mother. And every one was weeping and mourning for her.

“Do not weep,” Jesus said, “she is not dead; she is asleep.”

They began to laugh at him, for they knew that she was dead. But, taking her by the hand, Jesus said in a loud voice:

“Child, rise!”

The child’s spirit returned to her, and she instantly stood up; and Jesus ordered them to give her something to eat. Her parents were amazed, but Jesus impressed on them that they were not to tell any one what had happened.

—Luke.

Living in Eternity

Fool! All that is, at all,
Lasts ever, past recall;
Earth changes, but thy soul and God stand sure:
What entered into thee,
That was, is, and shall be:
Time’s wheel runs back or stops; Potter and clay endure.

—Robert Browning.

Death and All Good

I wish I could translate the hints about the dead young men and women,
And the hints about old men and mothers, and the offspring taken soon out of their laps.

They are alive and well somewhere,
The smallest sprout shows there is really no death,
And if ever there was, it led forward life, and does not wait at the end to arrest it,
And ceased the moment life appeared.

All goes onward and outward—nothing collapses,
And to die is different from what any one supposed, and luckier.
Has any one supposed it lucky to be born?
I hasten to inform him or her, it is just as lucky to die, and I know it.

I pass death with the dying, and birth with the new-washed babe, and I am not contained between my hat and boots,
And peruse manifold objects, no two alike, and every one good,
The earth good, the stars good, and their adjuncts all good.

—Walt Whitman.

Life, as we call it, is nothing but the edge of the boundless ocean of existence where it comes on soundings.

—Oliver Wendell Holmes.

Alternate Reading: I Timothy 6: 5-14.

Napoleon’s Greatness and Failure

And what care we for war and wrack,
How kings and heroes rise and fall?
Look yonder, in his coffin black
There lies the greatest of them all!

To pluck him down, and keep him up,
Died many million human souls;—
‘Tis twelve o’clock and time to sup:
Bid Mary heap the fire with coals.

He captured many thousand guns;
He wrote “The Great” before his name:
And dying, only left his sons
The recollection of his shame.

Though more than half the world was his,
He died without a rood his own;
And borrowed from his enemies
Six foot of ground to lie upon.

He fought a thousand glorious wars,
And more than half the world was his;
And somewhere now, in yonder stars,
Can tell, mayhap, what greatness is.

—W. M. Thackeray.

Four Essentials

Four things a man must learn to do
If he would make his record true:
To think without confusion clearly;
To love his fellow-men sincerely;
To act from honest motives purely;
To trust in God and Heaven securely.

—Henry Van Dyke.

Parable of the Tares

Another parable which Jesus told them was this—

“The Kingdom of Heaven is compared to a man who sowed good seed in his field. But, while every one was asleep, his enemy came and sowed tares among the wheat, and then went away. So, when the blades of corn shot up, and came into ear, the tares made their appearance also. On this the owner’s servants came to him, and said ‘Was not it good seed that you sowed in your field? Where, then, do the tares in it come from?’

“‘An enemy has done this,’ was his answer.

“‘Do you wish us, then,’ they asked, ‘to go and gather them together?’

“‘No,’ he said, ‘for fear that, while you are gathering the tares, you should root up the wheat as well. Let both grow side by side till harvest; and then I shall say to the reapers, Gather the tares together first, and tie them in bundles for burning; but bring all the wheat into my barn.'”

—Matthew.

Sowing and Reaping

Sow an act and you reap a habit;
Sow a habit and you reap a character;
Sow a character and you reap a destiny.

—Anon.

So teach us to number our days that we may apply our hearts unto wisdom.

—Psalms.

Training Character

Teach the child self-respect; train it in self-respect, just as you train a plant in better ways. No self-respecting man was ever a grafter. Above all, bear in mind repetition, repetition, the use of an influence over and over again. Keeping everlastingly at it, this is what fixes traits in plants—the constant repetition of an influence until at last it is irrevocably fixed and will not change. You cannot afford to get discouraged. You are dealing with something far more precious than any plant —the precious life of a child.

—Luther Burbank.

St. Patrick’s Day

The Shamrock

Scattered all over the face of creation,
From the green mountain tops to the great ocean sprays;
The militant sons of a marvelous nation,
Are wearing the tender green shamrock to-day.

Working men, thinking men, lawyer men, writing men,
With muscles like iron and intellect keen;
Gentlemen, husbandmen, family men, fighting men.
And every one gallantly wearing the green.

Some till the soil by the beautiful Shannon,
While some through the billowy seas plow their way;
And some face the shells from the thundering cannon,
Some rear their sons in the good U. S. A.

But when the spring wakes the year from its slumber,
Which time comes along about March seventeen,
The sons of old Erin, a grand goodly number,
Are decked with the shamrock so tender and green.

—Agnes C. Quinlan.

Mother Machree

There’s a spot in me heart which no colleen may own.
There’s a depth in me soul never sounded or known;
There’s a place in my mem’ry, my life, that you fill,
No other can take it, no one ever will.

Sure I love the dear silver that shines in your hair,
And the brow that’s all furrowed, and wrinkled with care.
I kiss the dear fingers, so toil-worn for me,
Oh, God bless you and keep you, Mother Machree!

Ev’ry sorrow or care in the dear days gone by,
Was made bright by the light of the smile in your eye;
Like a candle that’s set in a window at night,
Your fond love has cheered me, and guided me right.

—Rida J. Young.

Alternate Reading: Colossians 3: 5-17.

God’s Lovingkindness

Thy lovingkindness, O God, is in the heavens;
Thy faithfulness reacheth unto the skies.
Thy righteousness is like the mountains of God;
Thy judgments are a great deep:
O God, thou preservest man and beast.
How precious is thy lovingkindness, O God I
And the children of men take refuge under the shadow of thy wings.
They shall be abundantly satisfied with the fatness of thy house;
And thou wilt make them drink of tire river of thy pleasures.
For with thee is the fountain of life:
In thy light shall we see light.
Oh continue thy lovingkindness unto them that know thee.
And thy righteousness to the upright in heart.

—Psalms.

Love Indespensable

So long as we love we serve; so long as we are loved by others I would almost say that we are indispensable; and no man is useless while he has a friend.

—Robert L. Stevenson.

From beginning to end, God’s law teaches kindness.

—The Talmud.

Hate and anger are poisons that are more dangerous to a home than vipers.

“Home—a world of strife shut out, a world of love shut in.”

Re-Birth into Personality

Before birth a child is dependent entirely on his mother for all that makes up his life. At birth he becomes an individual human being, physically liberated from his mother. But he is still unborn mentally; for his soul, during childhood, is entirely dependent on others for his impulses; he is still in the spiritual womb of environment. A day comes when he awakes to become an independent free personality, to think for himself, to will for himself, to direct his own destiny, and to consciously relate himself to God and his fellows.

There is a beautiful, and very old, custom among the American Indians which illustrates this experience. When a boy comes to manhood, he is sent into the wilderness alone to fast for four days. Arriving in the solitude of the mountain, he begins singing this song: “O God! here, poor and needy, I stand.” He continues to sing this appealing heart cry in the hope that he may find himself in fellowship with God, that be may rightly face the mystery of life and destiny, that he may discover himself as an independent, free personality, responsible to God for all his future career.

The Eternal Solitude of the Soul

If there be any truth which Christianity has brought out into marvelous clearness before the human soul, it is this, that each soul really lives in awful solitude beneath the eye of God; that in the soul within us we possess a principle of imperishable life, which, moreover, is capable of infinite bliss and of unspeakable agony. Now the world endeavors in its literature, in its modes of language and thought, to lower this master truth by suggesting to us, what indeed is true, but what does not include that other truth, that we are members of a family, of a town, of a nation. It would fain make us forget that we live and that we shall die—alone.

—Henry P. Liddon.

Moral Equipoise

It is true that many pious men in ages gone by have broken the universal rule to select the just mean in all actions of life; at times they went to extremes. Thus they fasted often, watched through the nights, abstained from flesh and wine, wore sackcloth, lived among the rocks, and wandered in the deserts. They did this, however, only when they considered it necessary to restore their disturbed moral equipoise; or to avoid, in the midst of men, temptations which at times were too strong for them. These abnegations were for them means to an end, and they forsook them as soon as that end was obtained.

Thoughtless men, however, regarded castigations as holy in themselves, and imitated them without thinking of the intentions of their examples. They thought thereby to reach perfection and to approach to God. The fools! as if God hated the body and took pleasure in its destruction. They did not consider how many sicknesses of soul their actions caused. They are to be compared to such as take dangerous medicines because they have seen that experienced physicians have saved many a one from death with them; so they ruin themselves. This is the meaning of the cry of the Prophet Jeremiah: “Oh that I had in the wilderness a lodgingplace of wayfaring men, that I might leave my people and go from them.”

—Moses Maimonides.

Temperance

Temperance, in the nobler sense, does not mean a subdued and imperfect energy; it does not mean a stopping short in any good thing, as love or in faith; but it means the power which governs the most intense energy, and prevents its acting in any way but as it ought.

—John Ruskin.

The Penalty of Untruth

We cannot command veracity at will; the power of seeing and reporting truly is a form of health that has to be distinctly guarded, and as an ancient rabbi has solemnly said, “The penalty of untruth is untruth.”

—George Eliot.

Alternate Reading: Philippians 3: 5-14.

Jesus Misunderstood by His Kinfolk and the Theologians

Jesus went into a house; and again a crowd collected, so that they were not able even to eat their food. When his relations heard of it, they went to take charge of him, for they said that he was out of his mind. And the Teachers of the Law, who had come down from Jerusalem, said:

“He has Baal-zebub in him, and he drives the demons out by the help of Baal-zebub, their chief.”

So Jesus called them to him, and answered them in parables:

“How can Satan drive out Satan? When a kingdom is divided against itself, it cannot last; and when a household is divided against itself, it will not be able to last. So, if Satan is in revolt against himself and is divided, he cannot last—his end has come! No man who has got into a strong man’s house can carry off bis goods, without first securing him; and not till then will he plunder his house. I tell you that men will be forgiven everything—their sins, and all the slanders that they utter; but whoever slanders the Holy Spirit remains unforgiven to the end; he has to answer for an enduring sin.” This was said in reply to the charge that he had a foul spirit in him.

The True Brotherhood

And his mother and his brothers came, and stood outside, and sent to ask him to come to them. There was a crowd sitting round Jesus, and some of them said to him:

“Look, your mother and your brothers are outside, asking for you.”

“Who is my mother? and my brothers?” was his reply. Then he looked around on the people sitting in a circle round him, and said:

“Here are my mother and my brothers! Whoever does the will of God is my brother and sister and mother.”

—Matthew.

The Inclusiveness of Home

If you wanted to gather up all tender memories, all lights and shadows of the heart, all reunions, all filial, fraternal, paternal and conjugal affections, and had only just four letters with which to spell out the height and depth and length and breadth and magnitude and eternity of meaning, you would write it all out with these four capital letters: H O M E.

—T. D. Talmage.