The Home Council

Jesus, The Ideal Life

Jesus, there is no dearer name than Thine,
Which Time has blazoned on his mighty scroll;
No wreaths nor garlands ever did entwine
So fair a temple of so vast a soul.
There every virtue set his triumph seal;
Wisdom conjoined with strength and radiant grace,
In a sweet copy heaven to reveal,
And stamp Perfection on a mortal face.
Once on the earth wert Thou, before men’s eyes
That did not half Thy beauteous brightness see;
E’en as the emmet does not read the skies,
Nor our weak orbs look through immensity.

—Theodore Parker.

Lead Me Deeper Into Life

Lead me, yea, lead me deeper into life,
This suffering, human life wherein Thou livest
And breathest still, and bholdest Thy way divine.
‘Tis here, O pitying Christ, where Thee I seek,
Here where the strife is fiercest; where the sun
Beats down upon the highway thronged with men,
And in the raging mart. Oh! deeper lead
My soul into the living world of souls
Where Thou dost move.
But lead me, Man Divine,
Where’er Thou willest, only that I may find
At the long journey’s end Thy image there,
And grow more like it. For art not Thou
The human shadow of the infinite Love
That made and fills the endless universe!
The very Word of Him, the unseen, unknown
Eternal Good that rules the summer flower
And all the worlds that people starry space!

—Richard Watson Gilder.

Alternate Reading: Acts 14: 1-28.

Brave And True

Whatever you are, be brave, boys!
The liar’s a coward and slave, boys!
Though clever at ruses,
And sharp at excuses,
He’s a sneaking and pitiful knave, boys!

Whatever you are, be frank, boys!
‘Tis better than money and rank, boys!
Still cleave to the right,
Be lovers of light,
Be open, aboveboard, and frank, boys!

Whatever you are, be kind, boys!
Be gentle in manner and mind, boys!
The man gentle in mien,
Words and tempers, I ween,
Is the gentleman truly refined, boys!

Whatever you are, be true, boys!
Be visible through and through, boys!
Leave to others the shamming,
The “greening” and the “cramming,”
In fun and in earnest, be true, boys!

—Henry Downton.

A Lie Never Needed

Dare to be true. Nothing can need a lie.
A fault which needs it most, grows two thereby.

—George Herbert.

The Folly Of Falsehood

He who tells a lie is not sensible how great a task he undertakes; for he must be forced to invent twenty more to maintain that one.

—Alexander Pope.

So long as I have lived I have striven to live worthily.

—Alfred, the Great (His dying words.)

Alternate Reading: Acts 13:1-12.

The Worn Wedding-Ring

Your wedding ring wears thin, dear wife; ah, summers not a few,
Since I put it on your finger first, have passed o’er me and you;
And, love, what changes we have seen,—what cares and pleasures, too,—
Since you became my own dear wife, when this old ring was new!

O, Blessings on that happy day, the happiest of my life,
When, thanks to God, your low, sweet “Yes,” made you my loving wife!
Your heart will say the same, I know; that day’s as dear to you,—
That day that made me yours, dear wife, when this old ring was new.

Years bring fresh links to bind us, wife,—young voices that are here;
Young faces round our fire that make their mother’s yet more dear;
Young loving hearts your care each day makes yet more like to you,
More like the loving heart made mine when this old ring was new.

The past is dear, its sweetness fresh our memories treasure yet;
The griefs we’ve borne, together borne, we would not now forget.
Whatever, wife, the future brings, heart unto heart still true,
We’ll share as we have shared all else since this old ring was new.

—W. C. Bennett.

Alternate Reading: Acts 11: 1-18.

Armistice Day

In Flanders’ Fields

In Flanders’ fields the poppies blow
Between the crosses, row on row,
That mark our place, and in the sky
The larks still bravely singing fly,
Scarce heard amid the guns below.
We are the dead. Short days ago
We lived, felt dawn, saw sunset glow,
Loved and were loved, and now we lie
In Flanders’ fields.

Take up our quarrel with the foe,
To you from falling hands we throw
The torch—be yours to hold it high.
If ye break faith with us who die,
We shall not sleep tho poppies grow
In Flanders’ fields.

—John McCrae.

The Reply

Rest ye in peace, ye Flanders dead,
The fight that ye so bravely led
We’ve taken up, and we will keep
True faith with you who lie asleep.
With each a cross to mark his bed,
And poppies blowing overhead.
Where once his own life blood ran red,
So let your rest be sweet and deep,
In Flanders’ fields.

Fear not that ye have died for naught.
The torch you threw to us we caught,
Ten million hands will hold it high,
And freedom’s cause will never die—
We’ve learned the lesson you have taught,
In Flanden’ fields.

—R. W. Lillard.

Be the first to hold out the hand of peace.

He who maketh peace among strivers will inherit eternal life.

When two men quarrel, he who first is silent is the better man.

—The Talmud.

Alternate Reading: Isaiah 2: 2-4.

The Sum Of True Righteousness

This is the sum of true righteousness—
Treat others as thou wouldst thyself be treated.
Do nothing to thy neighbor which hereafter
Thou wouldst not have thy neighbor do to thee.
In causing pleasure or in giving pain,
In doing good or injury to others,
In granting or refusing a request,
A man obtains a proper rule of action
By looking on his neighbor as himself.

—The Maha-Bharata

God The Builder Of The World

When we see a stately house, although we see not the man who built it, yet will we conclude shus: Surely some wise artificer has been working here. Can we, when we behold the stately theatre of Heaven and Earth, conclude other than that the finger, arms, and wisdom of God have been here, although we see not Him that is invisible, and although we know not the time when He began to build? Every creature in Heaven and Earth is a loud preacher of this truth. Who set those candles, those torches of Heaven? Could any frame a man but one wiser and greater than man? What power of men or angels can make the least blade of grass, or put life into the least fly, if once dead? There is, therefore, a Power over all created power, which is God.

—Thomas Shepard.

Duty

When duty comes a-knocking at your gate,
Welcome him in, for if you bid him wait,
He will depart only to come once more
And bring seven other duties to your door.

—Edwin Markham.

Alternate Reading: I Peter 2: 13-22.

God On Earth As The Spirit Of Truth

“If you love me, you will lay my commands to heart, and I will ask the Father, and he will give you another Helper, to be with you always—the Spirit of Truth. The world cannot receive this Spirit, because it does not see him or recognize him, but you recognize him, because he is always with you, and is within you. I will not leave you bereaved; I will come to you. In a little while the world will see me no more, but you will still see me; because I am living, you will be living also. At that time you will recognize that I am in union with the Father, and you with me, and I with you. It is he who has my commands and lays them to heart that loves me; and he who loves me will be loved by my Father, and I will love him, and will reveal myself to him.”

“What has happened, Master,” said Judas (not Judas Iscariot), “that you are going to reveal yourself to us, and not to the world? “

“Whoever loves me,” Jesus answered, “will lay my Message to heart; and my Father will love him, and we will come to him and make our home with him. He who does not love me will not lay my Message to heart; and the Message to which you are listening is not my own, but that of the Father who sent me.

” I have told you all this while still with you, but the Helper—the Holy Spirit whom the Father will send in my Name—he will teach you all things, and will recall to your minds all that I have said to you. Peace be with you! My own peace I give you. I do not give to you as the world gives. Do not let your hearts be troubled, or dismayed. You heard me say that I was going away and would return to you. Had you loved me, you would have been glad that I was going to the Father, because the Father is greater than I. And this I have told you now before it happens, that, when it does happen, you may still believe in me. I shall not talk with you much more, for the Spirit that is ruling the world is coming. He has nothing in common with me; but he is coming that the world may see that I love the Father, and that I do as the Father commanded me. Come, let us be going.”

—John.

The Culture Of The Home

The true culture of the home is that of the spirit. The best way of keeping the father, the wife, the boys and the girls from evil is to make the home attractive and sufficient in itself. A man’s home ought to be enough for him so that if everything else in the world were taken away he might console himself with its abiding treasures.

—C. S. Macfarland.

I Will Build Me A Nest On The Greatness Of God

Oh, what is abroad in the marsh and the terminal sea?
Somehow my soul seems suddenly free
From the weighing of fate and the sad discussion of sin,
By the length and the breadth and the sweep of the marshes of Glynn.
Ye marshes, how candid and simple and nothing withholding and free
Ye publish yourselves to the sky and offer yourselves to the sea!
Tolerant plains, that suffer the sea and the rains and the sun,
Ye spread and span like the catholic man who hath mightily won
God out of knowledge, and good out of infinite pain,
And sight out of blindness, and purity out of stain.

As the marsh-hen secretly builds on the watery sod,
Behold I will build me a nest on the greatness of God:
I will fly in the greatness of God as the marsh-hen flies
In the freedom that fills all the space ‘twixt the marsh and the skies:
By so many roots as the marsh-grass sends into the sod
I will heartily lay me a-hold on the greatness of God.

—Sidney Lanier.

Reverence of God is the basis of morality.

—The Talmud.

Alternate Reading: Acts 8:14-25.

Living In Eternity Now

“Do not let your hearts be troubled. Believe in God; believe also in me. In my Father’s Home there are many dwellings. If it had not been so, I should have told you, for I am going to prepare a place for you. And, since I go and prepare a place for you, I shall return and take you to be with me, so that you may be where I am; and you know the way to the place where I am going.”

“We do not know where you are going, Master,” said Thomas; “so how can we know the way? ” Jesus answered: “I am the Way, and the Truth, and the Life; no one ever comes to the Father except through me. If you had recognized me, you would have known my Father also; for the future you will recognize him, indeed you have already seen him.”

“Master, show us the Father,” said Philip, “and we shall be satisfied.”

“Have I been all this time among you,” said Jesus, “and yet you, Philip, have not recognized me? He who has seen me has seen the Father, how can you say then, ‘Show us the Father’? Do not you believe that I am in union with the Father, and the Father with me? In giving you my teaching I am not speaking on my own authority; but the Father himself, always in union with me, does his own work. Believe me,” he said to them all, “when I say that I am in union with the Father and the Father with me, or else believe me on account of the work itself. In truth I tell you, he who believes in me will himself do the work that I am doing; and he will do greater work still, because I am going to the Father. Whatever you ask, in my Name, I will do, that the Father may be honored in the Son. If you ask anything, in my Name, I will do it.”

—John.

The Successful Life

Forenoon, and afternoon, and night;—forenoon.
And afternoon, and night; Forenoon, and—what?
The empty song repeats itself. No more?
Yea, that is life; make this forenoon sublime,
This afternoon a psalm, this night a prayer.
And time is conquered, and thy crown is won.

—E. R. Sill.

If We Only Understood

Could we but draw back the curtains
That surround each other’s lives,
See the naked heart and spirit,
Know what spur the action gives,
Often we should find it better,
Purer than we judge we should;
We should love each other better
If we only understood.

Could we judge all deeds by motives,
See the good and bad within,
Often we should love the sinner
All the while we loathe the sin.
Could we know the powers working
To o’erthrow integrity,
We should judge each other’s errors
With more patient charity.

If we knew the cares and trials,
Knew the effort all in vain,
And the bitter disappointment—
Understood the loss and gain—
Would the grim external roughness
Seem, I wonder, just the same?
Should we help where now we hinder?
Should we pity where we blame?

Ah! we judge each other harshly,
Knowing not life’s hidden force;
Knowing not the fount of action
Is less turbid at the source;
Seeing not amid the evil
All the golden grains of good;
Oh, we’d love each other better,
If we only understood!

—Anon.

Alternate Reading: Acts 5: 17-42.

Our Trysting-Places

There are no chance meetings. We keep tryst. “It is a strange truth of life,” says Stopford Brooke, “that unknowingly we are continually hovering close to our destiny. We think again and again, in the street, at night before sleep attacks us with her envious silence, that perhaps to-day we met, or perhaps to-morrow we shall meet, him or her who will upturn our life and make it new.”

Think of our courtships, for example. Is it not G. K. Chesterton who says that the spectacle of a pair of lovers wandering in a leafy lane is a greater slice of history than the record of a battle? For a battle is a grim story of the past; whilst, as you gaze upon the happy man and maid, you look down the long avenues of future generations. Can anyone believe that our courtships come about by chance? If so, our homes are the temples of chance, our children are the offspring of chance, the race is the creation of chance, and we have expelled God from His own universe.

Yes; that pair of lovers met by appointment, not only in the leafy lane last night, but when they first saw each other’s faces, and felt a tingling consciousness that their destiny had saluted them. Edwin Arnold sings:

Somewhere there waiteth in this world of ours
For each lone soul another lonely soul.
Each chasing each through all the weary hours
And meeting strangely at some sudden goal.
Then blend they, like green leaves with golden flowers,
Into one beautiful and perfect whole; And life’s long night is ended, and the way
Lies open, onward to eternal day.

“A woman cannot find rest,” says Dr. Alexander Whyte, “but in the house of her husband. Knit as her heart is, and will forever be, to her father and to her mother, yet there is a soul somewhere in God’s hand to whom she was knit before she was born, and when God opens His hand twin-soul leaps out to meet twin-soul, and she is married in the Lord.”

—F. W. Boreham.

Two loving hearts in a true home are more capable of making future history than a million soldiers on the battle-field.

Alternate Reading: Acts 5:12-16.