The Bible was once compared to a great tree, with its books as branches, its chapters as twigs, and the verses as leaves. A minister, addressing a Sunday-school gathering, announced his text as "on the 39th branch, the 3d twig, and the 17th leaf." He said to his great audience, "Try to find my text." A little lad who was in the pulpit, owing to the crowded state of the church, answered "Malachi, third chapter, and seventeenth verse." The minister said, "Right, my boy; take my place and read it out." It so happened the boy's brother had died recently, and the sight of the little curly-headed lad, only eleven years old, with his little black gloves reading in silvery tones, "And they shall be mine, saith the Lord of hosts, in that day when I make up my jewels," brought tears to many eyes. The minister laid his hand on the boy and said, "Well done; I hope one day you will be a minister." The lad was Henry Drummond, afterward the loved teacher of thousands in America and Great Britain. (Text.)
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See Religion, Early.
EARNESTNESS
Professor Ticknor, speaking in one of his letters of the intense excitement with which he listened to Webster's Plymouth address, says:
Three or four times I thought my temples
would burst with the gush of blood;
for, after all, you must know that I am
aware it is no connected and compacted
whole, but a collection of wonderful fragments
of burning eloquence, to which his
manner gave tenfold force. When I came
out, I was almost afraid to come near him.
It seemed to me that he was like the mount
that might not be touched, and that burned
with fire.
The lips of the prophet of old were
touched by the live coal. No great
thing is ever done without earnestness.
(Text.)
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When Patrick Henry concluded his well-*known speech in March, 1775, in behalf of American independence, "no murmur of applause followed," says his biographer. "The effect was too deep." After the trance of a moment, several members of the assembly started from their seats. The cry, "To arms!" seemed to quiver on every lip, and glance from every eye. What was the secret of his power? The spirit of freedom so completely filled him that it overflowed into all other lives with which he came in contact.
Every Christian is given a message that makes for eternal freedom. With what earnestness ought we to advocate this much greater cause. (Text.)
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EARTH, CRY OF
M. Guyau, in his "Sketch of Morality,"
relates a dream that he had. He felt himself
soaring in heaven, far above the earth,
and heard a weary sound ascending as of
torrents amid mountain silence and solitude.
He could distinguish human voices—sobs
mingled with thanksgiving, and groans interrupted
by benedictions; all melting into
one heartrending symphony. The sky
seemed darkened. To one with him he
asked, "Do you hear that?" The angel
answered, "These are the prayers of men,
ascending from the earth to God." Beginning
to cry like a child, the dreamer exclaimed,
"What tears I should shed were I
that God!" Guyau adds: "I loosened the
hand of the angel, and let myself fall down
again to the earth, thinking there remained
in me too much humanity to make it possible
for me to live in heaven."
It is that earth-cry that brings God
down to help the needy.
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EARTH INCREASING
Accumulations of surface-matter are astonishingly
rapid. Professor Newton estimates
that 400,000,000 meteors fall to the
earth annually. These add enormous quantities
of matter to the earth, but do not, of
course, account for all surface growth and
changes. Modern London is built on the site
of Roman London, but the ancient city is
seventeen feet lower than the modern. The
Jerusalem streets that Jesus walked through
are twenty feet lower down than the streets
of Jerusalem of to-day. One of the most interesting
resorts in that city, in the time of
Christ, was the pool of Bethsaida. Recently
work being done by the Algerian monks has
laid bare a large tank cut in the solid rock
thirty feet deep.—Public Opinion.
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EARTH SOIL FOR HEAVENLY
FLOWERS
The poor women in the tenements of the
Whitechapel road in London had a contest,
and the flowers that took the prizes were
