The Home Council

The Perfect Man

Love one another as I have loved you. No one can give greater proof of love than by laying down his life for his friends. And you are my friends, if you do what I command you.

—Jesus.

The Universality of Jesus

This is the universality of the nature of Jesus. There was in Him no national peculiarity or individual idiosyncrasy. He was not the son of the Jew, nor the son of the carpenter, nor the offspring of the modes of living and thinking of that particular century. He was the son of Man. Once in the world’s history was born a Man. Once in the roll of ages, out of innumerable failures, from the stock of human nature one bud developed itself into a faultless flower. One perfect specimen of humanity has God exhibited on earth.

The idea of a universal Manlike sympathy was not new when Christ was born. The reality was new. But before this in the Roman theatre, deafening applause was called forth by this sentence:—” I am a man: nothing that can affect man is indifferent to me.” A fine sentiment—that was all. Every pretense of realizing that sentiment, except one, has been a failure. One, and but one, has succeeded in loving man—and that by loving men. No sublime high-sounding language in his lips about educating the masses, or elevating the people. The charlatanry of our modern sentiment had not appeared then; it is but the parody of His love.

What was His mode of sympathy with men? He did not sit down to philosophize about the progress of the species, or dream about a millenium. He gathered round Him twelve men. He formed one friendship, special, concentrated, deep. He did not give Himself out as the leader of the publican’s cause or the champion of the rights of the dangerous classes: but He associated with Himself Matthew, a publican called from the detested receipt of custom; He went into the house of Zaccheus, and treated him like a fellow-creature, a brother, and a son of Abraham. His catholicity, or philanthropy, was not an abstraction, but an aggregate of personal attachments.

—F. W. Robertson.

Jesus Befriends a Roman Soldier

After Jesus had entered Capernaum a captain of the Roman army came up to him, entreating his help.

“Sir,” he said, “my manservant is lying ill at my house with a stroke of paralysis, and is suffering terribly.”

“I will come and cure him,” answered Jesus.

“Sir,” the captain went on, “I am unworthy to receive you under my roof; but only speak, and my manservant will be cured. For I myself am a man under the orders of others, with soldiers under me; and, if I say to one of them ‘Go,’ he goes, and to another ‘Come,’ he comes, and to my slave ‘Do this,’ he does it.”

Jesus was surprised to hear this, and said to those who were following him:

“Never, I tell you, in any Israelite have I met with such faith as this! Yes, and many will come in from East and West and take their places beside Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, in the Kingdom of Heaven; while the heirs to the Kingdom will be ‘banished into the darkness’ outside; there, there, will be weeping and grinding of teeth.”

Then Jesus said to the captain:

“Go now, and it shall be according to your faith.” And the man was cured that very hour.

—Matthew.

Skill of Christlike Touch

Ask God to give thee skull
In comfort’s art,
That thou may’st consecrated be
And set apart,
Unto a life of sympathy;
For heavy is the weight of ill
In every heart;
And comforters are needed much
Of Christlike touch.

—Alexander Hamilton.

Womanhood’s Infinite Worth

I am the poet of the woman the same as the man,
And I say it is as great to be a woman as to be a man,
And I say there is nothing greater than the mother of men.

—Walt Whitman.

Woman’s Mission

Woman’s mission is always the same; it is summed up in one word,—Love. It is the only work in which there can never be too many workers; it grows by cooperation; it has nothing to fear from competition. Women are charged with the education of sympathy, the source of real human unity; and their highest happiness is reached when they have the full consciousness of their vocation and are free to follow it. It is the admirable feature of their social mission, that it invites them to cultivate qualities which are natural to them, it calls into exercise emotions which all allow to be the most pleasurable. All that is required of them in a better organization of society is a better adaptation of their circumstances to their vocation, and improvements in their internal condition. They must be relieved from outdoor labor, and other means must be taken to secure due weight to their moral influence. … As men become more and more grateful for the blessing of the moral influence of women they will give expression to their chivalry in a systematic form. It will be a kind of worship of womanhood; an exaltation of mother-love to universal and thankful reverence.

—Auguste Comte.

Three Roses

Three roses, wan as moonlight, and weighed down
Each with its loveliness as with a crown,
Drooped in a florist’s window in a town.

The first a lover bought. It lay at rest,
Like flower on flower, that night, on Beauty’s breast.

The second rose, as virginal and fair,
Shrunk in the tangles of a harlot’s hair.

The third, a widow, with new grief made wild,
Shut in the icy palm of her dead child.

—Thomas B. Aldrich.

Alternate Reading: 1 Corinthians 10:1-13.

From Jesus’ Sermon on the Mountain

True and False Teachers

“Beware of false Teachers—men who come to you in the guise of sheep, but at heart they are ravenous wolves. By the fruit of their lives you will know them. Do people gather grapes from thorn-bushes, or figs from thistles? So, too, every sound tree bears good fruit, while a worthless tree bears bad fruit. A sound tree cannot produce bad fruit, nor can a worthless tree bear good fruit. Every tree that fails to bear good fruit is cut down and thrown into the fire. Hence it is by the fruit of their lives that you will know such men. Not every one who says to me ‘Master! Master!’ will enter the Kingdom of Heaven, but only he who does the will of my Father who is in Heaven. On that Day many will say to me ‘Master, Master, was not it in your name that we taught, and in your name that we drove out demons, and in your name that we did many miracles?’ And then I shall say to them plainly ‘I never knew you. Go from my presence, you who live in sin.*

The Two Foundations

“Every one, therefore, that listens to this teaching of mine and acts upon it may be compared to a prudent man, who built his house upon the rock. The rain poured down, the rivers rose, the winds blew and beat upon that house, but it did not fall, for its foundations were upon the rock. And every one that listens to this teaching of mine and does not act upon it may be compared to a foolish man, who built his house on the sand. The rain poured down, the rivers rose, the winds blew and struck against that house, and it fell; and great was its downfall.”

By the time that Jesus had finished speaking, the crowd was filled with amazement at his teaching. For he taught them like one who had authority, and not like their Teachers of the Law.

—Matthew.

The Last Act Crowns the Play

My soul, sit thou a patient looker on;
Judge not the Play before the Play is done:
Her Plot has many changes; Every day
Speaks a new Scene; the last act crowns the Play.

—Francis Quarles.

Be Strong to Achieve

Be strong!
We are not here to play, to dream, to drift,
We have hard work to do, and loads to lift.
Shun not the struggle; face it. ‘Tis God’s gift.

Be strong!
Say not the days are evil,—Who’s to blame?
And fold the hands and acquiesce,—O shame!
Stand up, speak out, and bravely, in God’s name.

Be strong!
It matters not how deep entrenched the wrong,
How hard the battle goes, the day, how long.
Faint not, fight on! To-morrow comes the song.

—M. D. Babcock.

Earnestness

Are you in earnest? Seize this very minute
What you can do, or dream you can; begin it;
Boldness has genius, power, magic in it.
Only engage, and then the mind grows heated;
Begin and then the work will be completed.

—Johann W. Von Goethe.

Kinship to God

Poor vaunt of life indeed,
Were man but formed to feed
On joy, to solely seek and find and feast;
Such feasting ended, then
As sure an end to me;
Irks care the crop-full bird? Frets doubt the maw-crammed beast?
Rejoice we are allied
To That which doth provide
And not partake, effect and not receive!
A spark disturbs our clod;
Nearer we hold to God
Who give, than of His tribes that take, I must believe.

—Robert Browning

Alternate Reading: Romans 12:1-21.

The Soul Wherein God Dwells

The Soul wherein God dwells,—
What church could holier be?—
Becomes a walking tent
Of heavenly majesty.

How far from here to Heaven?
Not very far, my friend,
A single, hearty step
Will all the journey end.

Though Christ a thousand times
In Bethlehem be born,
If He’s not born in thee,
Thy soul is still forlorn.

The cross on Golgotha
Will never save thy soul,
The cross in thine own heart
Alone can make thee whole.

Wait thou! where runnest thou?
Know heaven is in thee—
Seekest thou for God elsewhere,
His face thou’lt never see.

O, would thy heart but be
A manger for His birth;
God would once more become
A child upon the earth.

Go out, God will go in,
Die thou—and let Him live,
Be not—and He will be.
Wait and He’ll all things give.

O, shame a silk-worm works
And spins till it can fly,
And thou, my soul, wilt still
On thine own earth-clod lie.

—Anonymous

Alternate Reading: Romans 8:12-28.

From Jesus’ Sermon on the Mountain

“Do not judge, that you may not be judged. For, just as you judge others, you will yourselves be judged, and the measure that you mete will be meted out to you. And why do you look at the straw in your brother’s eye, while you pay no attention at all to the beam in yours? How will you say to your brother “Let me take out the straw from your eye,” when all the time there is a beam in your own? Hypocrite! Take out the beam from your own eye first, and then you will see clearly how to take out the straw from your brother’s. Do not give what is sacred to dogs; nor yet throw your pearls before pigs, lest they should trample them under their feet, and then turn and attack you.

Encouragement to Prayer

“Ask, and your prayer shall be granted; search, and you shall find; knock, and the door shall be opened to you. For he that asks receives, he that searches finds, and to him that knocks the door shall be opened. Who among you, when his son asks him for a loaf, will give him a stone, or when he asks for a fish, will give him a snake? If you, then, wicked though you are, know how to give good gifts to your children, how much more will your Father who is in Heaven give what is good to those that ask him!

The Golden Rule

“Do to others whatever you would wish them to do to you; for that is the teaching of both the Law and the Prophets.

The Two Roads

“Go in by the small gate. Broad and spacious is the road that leads to destruction, and those that go in by it are many; for small is the gate, and narrow the road, that leads to Life, and those that find it are few.”

—Matthew.

And I smiled to think God’s greatness flowed around our incompleteness,
Round our restlessness His rest.

—Elizabeth B. Browning.

Christianity is a New Kind of Life

What must strike every person about Jesus’ Sermon on the Mount is that it is not metaphysical, but ethical. What He lays stress upon are such points as these: the Fatherhood of God over the human family; His perpetual and beneficent providence for all His children; the excellence of simple trust in God over the earthly care of this world; the obligation of God’s children to be like their Father in heaven; the paramount importance of true and holy motives; the worthlessness of a merely formal righteousness; the inestimable value of heart righteousness; forgiveness of sins dependent on our forgiving our neighbor; the fulfilling of the law, and the play of the tender and passive virtues.

Upon the man who desired to be His disciple and a member of God’s Kingdom were laid the conditions of a pure heart, of a forgiving spirit, of a helpful hand, of a heavenly purpose, of an unworldly mind. Christ did not ground His Christianity in thinking, or in doing, but, first of all, in being. It consisted in a certain type of soul—a spiritual shape of the inner self. Was a man satisfied with this type, and would he aim at it in his own life? Would he put his name to the Sermon on the Mount, and place himself under Jesus’ charge for its accomplishment? Then he was a Christian according to the conditions laid down by Jesus in the fresh daybreak of His religion.

When one turns to the creeds, the situation has changed, and he finds himself in another world. They have nothing to do with character; they do not afford even an idea of character; they do not ask pledges of character; they have no place in their construction for character From their first word to the last they are physical or metaphysical, not ethical.

—John Watson.

Uniformity of thought and belief is impossible; uniformity of good feeling alone is essential. That is the mission of Christianity, not to make people think and believe alike.

Alternate Reading: Proverbs 28.

From Jesus’ Sermon on the Mountain

“Do not store up treasures for yourselves on earth, where moth and rust destroy, and where thieves break in and steal. But store up treasures for yourselves in Heaven, where neither moth nor rust destroys, and where thieves do not break in or steal. For where your treasure is, there will your heart be also. The lamp of the body is the eye. If your eye is unclouded, your whole body will be lit up; but, if your eye is diseased, your whole body will be darkened. And, if the inner light is darkness, how intense must that darkness be!

“No one can serve two masters, for either he will hate one and love the other, or else he will attach himself to one and despise the other. You cannot serve both God and Money.

“That is why I say to you, Do not be anxious about your life here—what you can get to eat or drink; nor yet about your body—what you can get to wear. Is not life more than food, and the body than its clothing? Look at the wild birds—they neither sow, nor reap nor gather into barns; and yet your heavenly Father feeds them! And are not you more precious than they? But which of you, by being anxious, can prolong his life a single moment? And why be anxious about clothing? Study the wild lilies, and how they grow. They neither toil nor spin; yet I tell you that even Solomon in all his splendor was not robed like one of these. If God so clothes even the grass of the field, which is living to-day and tomorrow will be thrown into the oven, will not he much more clothe you, O men of little faith? Do not then ask anxiously “What can we get to eat?” or “What can we get to drink?” or “What can we get to wear?” All these are the things for which the nations are seeking, and your heavenly Father knows that you need them all. But first seek his Kingdom and the righteousness that he requires, and then all these things shall be added for you. Therefore do not be anxious about tomorrow, for tomorrow will bring its own anxieties. Every day has trouble enough of its own.”

—Matthew.

Let them fear bondage who are slaves to fear, the sweetest freedom is an honest heart.

—John Ford.