The Home Council

Saint Stephen’s Day; The Second Christian Martyr

“This man,” they said, “is incessantly saying things against this Holy Place and the Law; indeed we have heard him declare that this Jesus of Nazareth will destroy this Place, and change the customs handed down to us by Moses.”

All who composed the Council had fixed their eyes on Stephen, and they saw his face looking like the face of an angel.

Stephen’s Defense

Then the High Priest asked him if he admitted this, on which Stephen spoke as follows:

“Brothers and Fathers, listen. It is not in buildings made by hands that the Most High dwells. As the Prophet says—

“‘The sky is a throne for me
And the earth a stool for my feet.
What manner of House will you build me, saith the Lord,
Or what place is there where I may rest?
Was it not my hand that made all there things?’

“You obstinate race, heathen in heart and ears, you are always resisting the holy Spirit; your ancestors did it, and so do you. Which of the Prophets escaped persecution from your ancestors? They actually killed those who told long before of the coming of the Righteous One; of whom you, in your turn, have now become the betrayers and murderers—you who received the Law as transmitted by angels and yet failed to keep it”

Stephen’s Martyrdom

As they listened to this, the Council grew frantic with rage, and gnashed their teeth at Stephen. He, filled as he was with the holy Spirit, fixed his eyes intently on the sky, and saw the Glory of God and Jesus standing at God’s right hand.

“Look,” he said, “I see Heaven open and the Son of Man standing at God’s right hand.”

At this, with a loud shout, they stopped their ears and rushed all together upon him, forced him outside the city, and began to stone him, the witnesses laying their clothes at the feet of a young man called Saul. And they continued stoning Stephen, while he appealed to the Master.

“Jesus, Master,” he exclaimed, “receive my spirit.” Falling on his knees, he cried out loudly:

“Master, do not charge them with this sin”; and with these words he fell asleep.

Saul assented to his being put to death.

—Luke.

The Voice of the Sea-Shell

I have seen
A curious child, who dwelt upon a tract
Of inland ground, applying to his ear
The convolutions of a smooth-lipped shell;
To which, in silence hushed, his very soul
Listened intensely; and his countenance soon
Brightened with joy: for from within were heard
Murmurings, whereby the monitor expressed
Mysterious union with his native sea.
Even such a shell the universe itself
Is to the ear of faith; and there are times,
I doubt not, when to you it doth impart
Authentic tidings of invisible things;
Of ebb and flow, and ever-during power,
And central peace, subsisting at the heart
Of endless agitation.

—W. S. Landor.

The Heart of the Eternal

There’s a wideness in God’s mercy
Like the wideness of the sea;
There’s a kindness in His justice
Which is more than liberty.
For the love of God is broader
Than the measure of man’s mind,
And the heart of the Eternal
Is most wonderfully kind.

—F. W. Faber.

The highest perfection of human reason is to know that there is an infinity beyond its reason.

—Blaise Pascal.

Alternate Reading: Luke 4:14-30.

Loyalty of Purpose

The shades of night were falling fast,
As through an Alpine village passed
A youth, who bore, ‘mid snow and ice,
A banner with the strange device,
Excelsior!

His brow was sad; his eyes beneath,
Flashed like a falchion from its sheath,
And like a silver clarion rung
The accents of that unknown tongue,
Excelsior!

In happy homes he saw the light
Of household fires gleam warm and bright;
Above, the spectral glaciers shone,
And from his lips escaped a groan,
Excelsior!

“Try not the pass!” the old man said;
“Dark lowers the tempest overhead,
The roaring torrent is deep and wide!”
And loud that clarion voice replied,
Excelsior!

“Oh stay,” the maiden said, “and rest
Thy weary head upon this breast!”
A tear stood in his bright blue eye,
But still he answered, with a sigh,
Excelsior!

“Beware the pine-tree’s withered branch!
Beware the awful avalanche!
“This was the peasant’s last good-night,
A voice replied, far up the height,
Excelsior!

At break of day, as heavenward
The pious monks of Saint Bernard
Uttered the oft-repeated prayer,
A voice cried through the startled air,
Excelsior!

A traveller, by his faithful hound,
Half-buried in the snow was found,
Still grasping in his hand of ice,
That banner with the strange device,
Excelsior!

There in the twilight cold and gray,
Lifeless, but beautiful, he lay,
And from the sky, serene and far,
A voice fell, like a falling star,
Excelsior!

—Henry W. Longfellow.

Alternate Reading: Philippians 3: 7-14.

The Value of Temptation

Why comes temptation, but for man to meet
And master and make crouch beneath his feet,
And so be pedestaled in triumph?

—Robert Browning.

As the Sandwich Islander believes that the strength and valor of the enemy he kills passes into himself so we gain the strength of the temptation we resist.

—Ralph Waldo Emerson.

The Crossways

It is supposed that among the hills of Iceland there are certain cross-roads, from the center of which you can see four churches, one at the end of each road.

If you sit at the crossing of these roads on New Year’s Eve, elves come from every direction and cluster round you, and ask you, with all sorts of blandishments and fair promises, to go with them; but you must continue silent. Then they bring to you rarities and delicacies of every description, gold, silver, and precious stones, meats and wines, of which they beg you to accept; but you must neither move a limb nor accept a single thing they offer you. If you get so far as this without speaking, elf women come to you in the likeness of your mother, your sister, or any other relation, and beg you to come with them, using every art and entreaty; but beware you neither move nor speak. And if you can continue to keep silent and motionless all the night, until you see the first streak of dawn, then start up and cry aloud, “Praise be to God! His daylight filleth the heavens!”

As soon as you have said this, the elves will leave you, and leave with you all the wealth that they have used to entice you, which will now be yours.

—Jon Arnason, of Iceland.

Alternate Reading: Numbers 6: 22-27.

God Keeps Watch

We move about in God’s great world,
His garden of growing life and love,
And often strike the stinging thorn,
Or dread the darkening cloud above;
Yet Father God is always there,
O’er level plains or mountains steep,
And hears our every whispered prayer,
For over all His watch doth keep.

—Anon.

Thinking of God

I think about God.
Yet I talk of small matters.
Now isn’t it odd
How my idle tongue chatters!
Of quarrelsome neighbors,
Fine weather and rain,
Indifferent labors,
Indifferent pain,
Some trivial style
Fashion shifts with a nod.
And yet all the while
I am thinking of God.

—Gamaliel Bradford.

Alternate Reading: Luke 4:1-13.

Ring Out, Wild Bells

Ring out, wild bells, to the wild sky,
The flying cloud, the frosty light;
The year is dying in the night;
Ring out, wild bells, and let him die.

Ring out the old, ring in the new,
Ring, happy bells, across the snow;
The year is going, let him go;
Ring out the false, ring in the true.

Ring out the grief that saps the mind,
For those that here we see no more;
Ring out the feud of rich and poor,
Ring in redress to all mankind.

Ring out a slowly dying cause,
And ancient forms of party strife;
Ring in the nobler modes of life,
With sweeter manners, purer laws.

Ring out the want, the care, the sin,
The faithless coldness of the time;
Ring out, ring out, my mournful rhymes.
But ring the fuller minstrel in.

Ring out false pride in place and blood,
The civic slander and the spite;
Ring in the love of truth and right,
Ring in the common love of good.

Ring out old shapes of foul disease;
Ring out the narrowing lust of gold;
Ring out the thousand wars of old,
Ring in the thousand years of peace.

Ring in the valiant man and free,
The larger heart, the kindlier hand;
Ring out the darkness of the land,
Ring in the Christ that is to be.

—Alfred Tennyson.

Alternate Reading: Exodus 20:1-17.

Youth at the Parting of the Way

In the lone stillness of the New-Year’s night
An old man at his window stood, and turned
His dim eyes to the firmament, where, bright
And pure, a million rolling planets burned,—
And then down on the earth all cold and white,
And felt that moment that of all who mourned
And groaned upon its bosom, none there were
With his deep wretchedness and great despair.
For near him lay his grave,—hidden from view
Not by the flowers of youth, but by the snows
Of age alone. In torturing thought he flew
Over the past, and on his memory rose
That picture of his life which conscience drew,
With all its fruits,—diseases, sins, and woes;
A ruined frame, a blighted soul, dark years
Of agony, remorse, and withering fears.
Like specters now his bright youth-days came back,
And that cross-road of life where, when a boy,
His father placed him first: its right-hand trade
Leads to a land of glory, peace, and joy,
Its left to wilderness waste and black,
Where snakes and plagues and poison-winds destroy.
Which had he trod? Alas! the serpents hung
Coiled round his heart, their venom on his tongue.
Sunk in unutterable grief, he cried,
“Restore my youth to me! O God, restore
My morn of life! O father! be my guide,
And let me, let me choose my path once more!”
But on the wide waste air his ravings died
Away, and all was silent as before.
His youth had glided by, fleet as the wave;
His father came not,—he was in his grave.
Amid these overboiling bursts of feeling,
Rich music, heralding the young year’s birth,
Rolled from a distant steeple, like the pealing
Of some celestial organ o’er the earth:
Milder emotions over him came stealing;
He felt the soul’s unpurchaseable worth.
“Return! ” again he cried, imploringly;
“O my lost youth! return, return to me!”
And youth returned, and age withdrew its terrors;
Still was he young,—for he had dreamed the whole;
But faithful is the image conscience mirrors
When whirlwind passions darken not the soul.
Alas! too real were his sins and errors;
Too truly had he made the earth his goal;
He wept, and thanked his God that with the will,
He had the power, to choose the right path still.

—Jean Paul Richter.

Alternate Reading: Luke 3:1-20.

Destiny

The moving finger writes; and, having writ,
Moves on: nor all your piety nor wit
Shall lure it back to cancel half a line,
Nor all your tears wash out a word of it.

—Edward Fitzgerald.

Ere suns and moons could wax and wane,
Ere stars were thundergirt, or piled
The heavens, God thought on me His child:
Ordained a life for me, arrayed
Its circumstances every one
To the minutest.

—Robert Browning.

Behold the rocky wall
That down its sloping sides
Pours the swift rain drops, blending, as they fall,
In rushing river tides!

Yon stream, whose sources run
Turned by a pebble’s edge,
Is Athabasca, rolling towards the sun
Through the cleft mountain-ledge.

The slender rill had strayed,
But for the slanting stone,
To evening’s ocean, with the tangled braid
Of foam-flecked Oregon.

So from the heights of will
Life’s parting stream descends,
And, as a moment turns its slender rill,
Each widening torrent bends—

From the same cradle’s side,
From the same mother’s knee—
One to long darkness and the frozen tide,
One to the Peaceful Sea!

—Oliver Wendell Holmes.

Alternate Reading: Joshua 1: 5-9.

John, the Baptizer, and his Message

And John said to the crowds that wait to be baptized by him:

“You brood of vipers I who has prompted you to seek refuge from the coming judgment? Let your lives, then, prove your repentance; and do not begin to say among yourselves ‘Abraham is our ancestor,’ for I tell you that out of these very stones God is able to raise descendants for Abraham! Already, indeed, the axe is lying at the root of the trees. Therefore every tree that fails to bear good fruit will be cut down and thrown into the fire.”

“What are we to do then?” the people asked.

“Let the man who has two coats,” answered John, “share with him who has none; and the man who has food do the same.”

Even tax-gatherers came to be baptized, and said to John:

“Teacher, what are we to do? “

“Do not collect more than you have authority to demand,” John answered. And when some soldiers on active service asked “And we—what are we to do?” he said:

“Never use violence, or exact anything by false accusation; and be content with your pay.”

Then, while the people were in suspense, and were all debating with themselves whether John could be the Christ, John, addressing them all, said:

“I, indeed, baptize you with water; but there is coming one more powerful than I, and I am not fit even to unfasten his sandals. He will baptize you with the Holy Spirit and with fire. His winnowing-fan is in his hand, that he may clear his threshing-floor, and store the grain in his barn, but the chaff he will burn with inextinguishable fire.”

And so with many different exhortations John told his Good News to the people. But Prince Herod, being rebuked by John respecting Herodias, the wife of Herod’s brother, and for all the evil things that he had done, crowned them all by shutting John up in prison.

—Luke.

The Boyhood of Jesus

When the child’s parents had done everything enjoined by the Law of the Lord, they returned to Galilee to their own town of Nazareth.

The child grew and became strong and wise, and the blessing of God was upon him.

Every year the child’s parents used to go to Jerusalem at the Passover Festival. When Jesus was twelve years old, they went according to custom to Jerusalem, and had finished their visit; but, when they started to return, the boy Jesus remained behind in Jerusalem, without their knowing it. Thinking that he was with their fellow-travellers, they went one day’s journey before searching for him among their relations and acquaintances; and then, as they did not find him, they returned to Jerusalem, searching everywhere for him. It was not till the third day that they found him in the Temple Courts, sitting among the Teachers, now listening to them, now asking them questions. All who listened to him marvelled at his intelligence and his answers. His parents were amazed when they saw him, and his mother said to him:

“My child, why have you treated us like this? Your father and I have been searching for you in great distress.”

“What made you search for me?” he answered. “Did not you know that I must be in my Father’s House? “

—Luke.

Jesus devoted nine-tenths of His entire life on earth to His own home, thereby indicating in the most eloquent manner possible what God thinks of the supreme importance of the home.

Don’t Send My Boy Where Your Girl Can’t Go

Don’t send my boy where your girl can’t go
And say, there’s no danger for boys, you know,
Because they all have their wild oats to sow;
There is no more excuse for my boy to be low
Than your girl. Then please don’t tell him so.
Don’t send my boy where your girl can’t go;
For a boy or a girl, sin is sin, you know,
And my baby boy’s hands are as dean and white
And his heart as pure as your girt’s to-night.

—Anon.