The Home Council

The Coming Man

Oh, not for the great departed,
Who formed our country’s laws,
And not for the bravest-hearted
Who died in freedom’s cause,
And not for some living hero
To whom all bend the knee,
My muse would raise her song of praise—
But for the man to be.

For out of the strife which woman
Is passing through to-day,
A man that is more than human
Shall yet be born, I say.
A man in whose pure spirit
No dross of self will lurk;
A man who is strong to cope with wrong,
A man who is proud to work.

A man with hope undaunted,
A man with godlike power,
Shall come when he most is wanted,
Shall come at the needed hour.
He shall silence the din and clamor
Of clan disputing with clan,
And toil’s long fight with purse-proud might
Shall triumph through this man.

Mourn not for vanished ages
With their great heroic men,
Who dwell in history’s pages
And live in the poet’s pen.
For the grandest times are before us,
And the world is yet to see
The noblest worth of this old earth
In the men that are to be.

—Ella Wheeler Wilcox.

The greater homes of the present will produce the greater men of the greater future.

Alternate Reading: Acts 4: 5-20.

Truth Never Defeated

Truth, crushed to earth, shall rise again;
The eternal years of God are hers;
But Error, wounded, writhes in pain,
And dies among his worhippers.

—William Cullen Bryant.

Jesus Sees Glory In Approaching Death

When Judas had gone out, Jesus said:

“Now the Son of Man has been exalted, and God has been exalted through him; and God will exalt him with himself—yes, he will exalt him forthwith. My children, I am to be with you but a little while longer. You will look for me; and what I said to the Jews— ‘You cannot come where I am going’ —I now say to you. I give you a new commandment—Love one another; love one another as I have loved you. It is by this that every one will recognize you as my disciples—by your loving one another.”

—John.

Spoken Of Christ

Alexander, Caesar, Charlemagne, and myself founded empires, but upon force. Jesus Christ alone founded His empire upon love; and at this hour millions of men would die for Him. He speaks, and at once generations become His by stricter, closer ties than those of blood. He lights up the flame of a love which consumes self-love, and prevails over every other love. In every attempt to effect this thing, namely, to make Himself beloved, man deeply feels his own impotence; so that Christ’s greatest miracle undoubtedly is the reign of character.

—Napoleon on St. Helena.

Wife, Children, And Friends

When the black-lettered list to the gods was presented
(The list of what Fate for each mortal intends),
At the long string of ills a kind goddess relented,
And slipped in three blessings—
Wife, children, and friends.

In vain surly Pluto maintained he was cheated,
For justice divine could not compass its ends;
The scheme of man’s penance he swore was defeated,
For earth becomes heaven with—
Wife, children, and friends.

The dayspring of youth, still unclouded by sorrow,
Alone on itself for enjoyment depends;
But drear is the twilight of age, if it borrow
No warmth from the smile of—
Wife, children, and friends.

Let the breath of renown ever freshen and nourish
The laurel which o’er the dead favorite bends;
O’er me wave the willow, and long may it flourish,
Bedewed with the tears of—
Wife, children, and friends.

—W. R. Spencer.

The Richest Man

The richest man on earth is the man who lives in the purest, sweetest and happiest home.

Alternate Reading: Acts 10:1-43.

Hallow E’en

Awake, arise, you dead men all—dead women, waken you,
The hunters’ moon is in the sky—her cruse of frosty dew
Earth empties; throw your covers off, of grave grass, rank and green.
This is the dead men’s holiday, ’tis Hallow E’en.
Brother and sister parted long by bitter words and blind
Forget the years of severed ways with old love in their mind.
The beggar that of hunger died, the girl that died of shame,
Are playing in that spirit land some childish game.
Husband and wife forget the wrong that kept their souls apart—
Hand lies in hand so tenderly as heart beats for dear heart.
This is the day for buried love to see as it is seen,
This is the dead men’s holiday—All Hallow’s E’en.

—Nora Hopper.

Be Cheerful

Laugh, and the world laughs with you;
Weep, and you weep alone.
For the sad old earth must borrow its mirth,
But has trouble enough of its own.

Sing, and the hills will answer;
Sigh, it is lost on the air.
The echoes bound to a joyful sound,
But shrink from voicing care.

—Ella Wheeler Wilcox.

Perseverance

We must not hope to be mowers,
And to gather the ripe gold ears,
Unless we have first been sowers
And watered the furrows with tears.

It is not just as we take it,
This mystical world of ours,
Life’s field will yield as we make it
A harvest of thorns or of flowers.

—Johann W. von Goethe.

Alternate Reading: Hebrews 12:1-6.

A Lesson In Brotherliness

Before the Passover Festival began, Jesus knew that the time had come for him to leave the world and go to the Father. He had loved those who were his own in the world, and he loved them to the last. The Devil had already put the thought of betraying Jesus into the mind of Judas Iscariot, the son of Simon; and at supper, Jesus—although knowing that the Father had put everything into his hands, and that he had come from God, and was to return to God—rose from his place, and, taking off his upper garments, tied a towel round his waist. He then poured some water into the basin, and began to wash the disciples’ feet, and to wipe them with the towel which was tied round him. When he came to Simon Peter, Peter said:

“You, Master! Are you going to wash my feet?”

“You do not understand now what I am doing,” replied Jesus, ” but you will learn by and by.”

“You shall never wash my feet!” exclaimed Peter.

“Unless I wash you,” answered Jesus, “you have nothing in common with me.”

“Then, Master, not my feet only,” exclaimed Simon Peter, “but also my hands and my head.”

“He who has bathed,” replied Jesus, “has no need to wash, unless it be his feet, but is altogether clean; and you,” he said to the disciples, “are clean, yet not all of you.” For he knew who was going to betray him, and that was why he said “You are not all clean.” When he had washed their feet, and had put on his upper garments and taken his place, he spoke to them again.

“Do you understand what I have been doing to you?” he asked. “You yourselves call me ‘the Teacher’ and ‘the Master,’ and you are right, for I am both. If I, then—’the Master’ and ‘the Teacher’—have washed your feet, you also ought to wash one another’s feet; for I have given you an example, so that you may do just as I have done to you. In truth I tell you, a servant is not greater than his master, nor yet a messenger than the man who sends him. Now that you know these things, happy are you if you do them.”

—John.

The Man With The Hoe

God made man in His own image, in the image of God made He him. (Genesis)

Bowed by the weight of centuries he leans
Upon his hoe and gazes on the ground.
The emptiness of ages in his face,
And on his back the burden of the world.
Who made him dead to rapture and despair,
A thing that grieves not and that never hopes,
Stolid and stunned, a brother to the ox?
Who loosened and let down this brutal jaw?
Whose was the hand that slanted back this brow?
Whose breath blew out the light within this brain?

Is this the Thing the Lord God made and gave
To have dominion over sea and land;
To trace the stars and search the heavens for power:
To feel the passion of Eternity?
Is this the Dream He dreamed who shaped the suns
And marked their ways upon the ancient deep?
Down all the stretch of Hell to its last gulf
There is no shape more terrible than this—
More tongued with censure of the world’s blind greed—
More filled with signs and portents for the soul—
More fraught with menace to the universe.

O masters, lords, and rulers in all lands,
How will the future reckon with this Man?
How answer his brute question in that hour
When whirlwinds of rebellion shake the world?
How will it be with kingdoms and with kings—
With those who shaped him to the thing he is—
When this dumb Terror shall reply to God,
After the silence of the centuries?

—Edwin Markham.

Alternate Reading: I Kings 21: 1-20.

Growth From Within By The Law Of Love

All that does not grow out of one’s inner being, all that is not one’s own original feeling and thought, or that at least does not awaken that, oppresses and defaces the individuality of man instead of calling it forth, and nature becomes thereby a caricature. Shall we never cease to stamp human nature, even in childhood, like coins? to overlay it with foreign images and foreign superscriptions, instead of letting it develop itself and grow into form according to the law of life planted in it by God, the Father, so that it may be able to bear the stamp of the Divine, and become an image of God?

This theory of love is to serve as the highest goal and pole-star of human education, and must be attended to in the germ of humanity, the child, and truly in his very first impulses. The conquest of self-seeking egoism is the most important task of education; for selfishness isolates the individual from all communion, and kills the life-giving principle of love. Therefore the first object of education is to teach to love, to break up the egoism of the individual, and to lead him from the first stage of communion in the family through all the following stages of social life to the love of humanity, or to the highest self-conquest by which man rises to Divine unity.

—Friedrich Froebel.

Set Your Mind On Things Above

In moral and spiritual culture we must seek not only for reverence and readiness, but also for loftiness of mind. Set your mind on things above. Contemplate lofty themes. Let your thoughts move among the august and sublime. Don’t let them grovel among the mire. It is a heartening truth that the Mind can be trained to feel so much at home among things that are pure as to feel orphaned and lonely when the pure is absent.

—J. H. Jowett.

Alternate Reading: II Corinthians 10:1-6.

Genuine Hospitality

Above all things, let your love for one another be very earnest, for love throws a veil over countless sins. Never grudge hospitality to one another.

—Peter.

Evils That Love Would Prevent

The mutual attacks of state on state; the mutual usurpations of family on family; the mutual robberies of man on man; the want of kindness on the part of the sovereign and of loyalty on the part of the minister; the want of tenderness and filial duty between father and son—these, and such as these, are the things injurious to the empire. All this has arisen from want of mutual love. If but that one virtue could be made universal, the princes loving one another would have no battlefields; the chiefs of families would attempt no usurpations; men would commit no robberies; rulers and ministers would be gracious and loyal; fathers and sons would be kind and filial; brothers would be harmonious and easily reconciled. Men in general loving one another, the strong would not make prey of the weak; the many would not plunder the few; the rich would not insult the poor; the noble would not be insolent to the mean; and the deceitful would not impose upon the simple.

—Mo Ti.

The Road To Happiness

I wonder why it is that we are not kinder than we are! How much the world needs it. How easily it is done. How spontaneously it acts. How infallibly it is remembered. How super-abundantly it pays itself back—for there is no debtor in the world so honorable as love.

There is no happiness in having and getting, but only in giving. Half the world is on the wrong scent in the pursuit of happiness.

—Henry Drummond.

Alternate Reading: I Corinthians 12:1-31.

The Dignity Of Service

And a dispute arose among them as to which of them was to be regarded as the greatest. Jesus, however, said:

“The kings of the Gentiles lord it over them, and their oppressors are styled Benefactors. But with you it must not be so. No, let the greatest among you become like the youngest, and him who leads like him who serves. Which is the greater—the master at the table or his servant? Is not it the master at the table? Yet I myself am among you as one who serves. You are the men who have stood by me in my trials; and, just as my Father has assigned me a Kingdom, I assign you places, so that you may eat and drink at my table in my Kingdom, and be seated upon twelve thrones as judges of the twelve tribes of Israel.

Peter’s Fall Foretold

“Simon! Simon! listen. Satan demanded leave to sift you all like wheat, but I prayed for you, Simon, that your faith should not fail. And you, when you have returned to me, are to strengthen your Brothers.”

—Luke.

Self Mastery

Our desires are bonds, fettering us as well as others. It is only when we get to the point of letting the bird out of its cage that we can realize how free the bird has set us. Whatever we cage, shackles us with desire whose bonds are stronger than those of iron chains. I tell you, Sir; this is just what the world has failed to understand. They all seek to reform something outside themselves.

But reform is wanted only in one’s own desire, nowhere else, nowhere else!

We think that we are our own masters when we get in our hands the object of our desire—but we are really our own masters only when we are able to cast out our desires from our minds.

—Rabindranath Tagore.

The Little Child That Never Was

The Little Child That Never Was is a very beautiful child. He is absolutely without faults or flaws or disfigurements of any kind. He is all, all. All that his father, his mother, would have him to be. And he has a great work to do in the world—that Little Child That Never Was. He will either sweeten the life of his poor lonely father or mother or else make it as bitter as wormwood. He will wonderfully soften or cruelly harden them. The Little Child That Never Was calls his solitary father and lonely mother to the service of the world’s childhood. It is a great thing for the world that there are men and women with no children of their own. For there are little children without fathers and without mothers, and there are little children with fathers and mothers who would be better off if they had none. And the lonely men and women are called by the Little Child That Never Was to devote their lives to the service of the lonely little children. And in ministering to the world’s childhood they will lose their loneliness and their longing, for the Little Child That Never Was will become incarnate in the little children around them, and they will hear his laughter and wipe away his tears after all.

—F. W. Boreham.

Sowing And Reaping

Every sower must some day reap
Fruits from the seed he has sown;
How carefully then it becomes us to keep
A watchful eye on the seed, and seek
That we may not weep to receive our own.

—Anon.

Be True

To conscience be true, and to man true,
Keep faith, hope, and love in your breast,
And when you have done all you can do,
Why, you may trust for the rest.

—Alice Cary.

Alternate Reading: I Corinthians 2: 1-16.