Pick and Print Gallery Blogs.

Limitation Of Mercy

2012-01-18T10:41:00.000-08:00

Says the old hymn:

"While the lamp holds out to burn,

The vilest sinner may return."

An old Saxon king had some serious trouble with his subjects: they murmured against him and at last rose up in rebellion. The king set out to subdue them, and soon the well-disciplined troops won a decided victory over the tatterdemalion horde opposing them. Having conquered, the king determined to show mercy. He adopted the novel expedient of placing a candle in the window of his castle and proclaiming that all should be pardoned who returned "while the candle burns." (Text.)

Evil Germinal

2012-01-18T10:23:00.000-08:00

One evil contains within itself the possibilities of all evil. Medical writers have now much to tell touching the convertibility of disease. They have come to the conclusion that the constitutional defect appearing in a family in one generation is not necessarily transmitted in that exact form to succeeding generations. What appears at one time as insanity will reveal itself at another as epilepsy or paralysis; convulsions will reassert themselves as hysteria or insanity; insanity is converted into a tendency to suicide; the suicide tendency will become a mania for drinking; what is neuralgia in the father may be melancholia in the son; what is deformity in one generation may be apoplexy in the next. In an afflicted family the constitutional defect has curious ramifications, and undergoes strange metamorphoses.

It is much the same with evil. Men will indulge in one vice, while they express the utmost abhorrence of other vices of which they could never think themselves susceptible. But this is a mistake. All evils are one in root and essence; and surrendering ourselves to one form of iniquity, we surrender ourselves to all; changing circumstances and temptations will involve the law-breaker in other sins, and in aggravated guilt. --W. L. Watkinson, "The Transfigured Sackcloth."

Evil By Degrees

2012-01-18T09:43:00.000-08:00

Many a man grows so accustomed to his evil environment that he fails to realize how he is being spiritually ruined.

In a certain laboratory experiment a live frog was placed in water heated at the rate of .0036 of a degree Fahrenheit per second. The frog never moved or showed any sign of distress, but was found at the end of two hours and a half to be dead. The explanation was that at any point of time the temperature of the water showed such little contrast with that of a moment before that the attention of the frog was never attracted by it. It was boiled to death without noticing it.

Enticement

2012-01-18T09:24:00.000-08:00

In the legend, the Duchess Isabella, wishing earnestly to obtain some object, was instructed by the crafty court astrologer to kiss day by day for a hundred days a certain beautiful picture, and she would receive the fulfillment of her wish. It was a sinister trick, for the picture contained a subtle poison which stained the lips with every salutation. Little by little the golden tresses of the queenly woman turned white, her eyes became dim, her color faded, her lips became black; but, infatuated, the suicidal kiss was continued until before the hundred days were complete the royal dupe lay dead.

So we yield ourselves to the sorcery of sin; despite many warnings, we persist in our fellowship with what seems truth, beauty, liberty, pleasure, until our whole soul is poisoned and destroyed. (Text)--W. L. Watkinson, "The Transformed Sackcloth."

Environment Inadequate

2012-01-18T09:09:00.000-08:00

Shortly after Chief Justice Chase had gone for the first time to Washington, he was returning to the West. The train stopt at a little station in Virginia, and he was informed that it was the birthplace of Patrick Henry. He immediately left the car and stood upon the platform, admiring the magnificence of the scenery that opens before the traveler. He said, "What an atmosphere! What a view! What glorious mountains! No wonder that Patrick Henry grew here." One of the natives, who was standing by his side, quietly replied, "Yes, sir; but as far as I have heard, that landscape and those mountains have always been here; but we haven't seen any more Patrick Henrys."

Expressing Grief

2012-01-17T00:32:00.000-08:00

Great griefs can seldom be borne in silence; nor is it well that they should be. Just as the cry of pain springs to the lips of a child when it is hurt, so the wounded spirit longs for utterance to ease its sorrow. Far from being a rebellious and unnatural desire, this longing to somehow unburden the soul in words is a merciful gift of God, who, even when he chastens, would fain temper the wind to the shorn lamb. See how the noblest souls have sought and found, not only a balm for sorrow, but sorrow's own deeper meaning in uttering their heart's profoundest cry. Think of that magnificent memorial poem in which Tennyson gathered up, as in a sacred urn, the fragments of his broken heart. Was his sorrow for Hallam the less, that he thus robbed it of its bitterest sting, the sting of helpless silence and hopeless brooding? Was Cicero less noble, less heroic, because, after the death of his beloved daughter Tullia, he wrote a treatise, on consolation to alleviate his sorrow? No; utterance sanctifies the grief whose pang it softens. God does not will that we should suffer in white-lipped silence. He never drives the barbed arrow into the human heart. --Zion's Herald.

Greatness Of God

2012-01-17T00:13:00.000-08:00

The following verse from "The Marshes of Glynn," by Sidney Lanier, shows how a reverent poet can see symbols of God and His care in a marsh:

Oh, what is abroad in the marsh and the
   terminal sea?
Somehow my soul seems suddenly free
From the weighing of life and the sad dis-
   cussion 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 in-
   finite pain
And sight out of blindness and purity out of
   a stain.

As the marsh-hen secretly builds on the
   watery sod,
Behold I will build me a nest on the great-
   ness 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
   in the sod
I will heartily lay me a-hold on the great-
   ness of God;
Oh, like the greatness of God is the great-
   ness within
The range of the marshes, the liberal
   marshes of Glynn.

Heavenly Fire!

2012-01-14T05:34:00.000-08:00

It was the first engine on the new railroad running through the wilderness. At night, the puffing, snorting monster, belching forth fire and smoke, came dashing out of a dark forest with its one shining eye in front. As it fairly leapt along the track like a thing of life, green reptiles wriggled out of sight, vultures fled to the tree-tops, and wild beasts ran snarling into the jungle. The fire inside of the engine was what did it.

When the fire of inspiration gets inside of a man, how much he is like a steam-engine. He moves straight ahead, keeps on the right track, has his eye single to the forward line and his whole soul is full of light and heat. The creatures of darkness flee before him as he emerges into the light that shall never fade.

Classes Of Givers

2012-01-14T05:13:00.000-08:00

      First, those who give spontaneously and generously, but only to themselves---auto-givers they might be called.
      Second, those who give thoughtlessly, without any real or high motive---givers of the occasion, as it were.
      Third, those who give as a sop to conscience and self-esteem; in a species of atonement for evil they do---penitential givers.
      Fourth, those who give as a matter of display, to win public applause for their generosity---theatrical givers.
      Fifth, those who give because others give, because they are expected to give, and are ashamed not to give, and therefore give grudgingly---conventional givers.
      Sixth, those who give because they feel they ought to give; who give through a sense of duty and not through love---moral givers.
      Seventh, those who give in the spirit of Jesus; who give because they love their neighbor as themselves, and above all things desire to help him---spiritual givers.
      To which do you belong?
      There are lots of men who will sing with gusto in a missionary meeting:
      "Where the whole realm of nature mine,
      That were a present far too small,"
but, when the collection-plate is put under their nose and they are asked to put their sentiments into cold, hard cash, they drop a five-cent piece upon it with a sigh of regret, which suggests these other will-known lines,
      "When we asunder part,
      It gives us inward pain."

---E. L. Meadows, Pittsburg Christian Advocate

A Free Gift

2012-01-14T04:33:00.000-08:00

There is a legend of a rich man who sent a message to a poor neighbor: "I want to give you a farm." The neighbor set out to get it, but carried with him what he thought was a bag of gold. Arriving at the rich man's mansion, he said: "I got your message. I want your farm. Here is the gold to bye it." "Let me see your gold." said the generous donor. It was not even silver. The poor man's eyes filled with tears. "Alas, I am undone!" "Why, it is not even copper," he added; "it is only ashes. I have nothing to pay. Will you give it to me?" "Why yes," said the rich man; "that was my offer. Will you accept the farm as a gift?" "Yes, indeed," replied the poor man, "and a thousand blessings on your kindness."

Infidelity Answered

2012-01-14T03:55:00.000-08:00

While Ingersoll was still living, in answer to an inquiry by some of his students as to whether the arguments of Ingersoll are unanswerable, a collage president answered them in the Andover Review as follows:

"So there is about one infidel to a million sane men. The most of these noisy fellows are amateur infidels. They talk Ingersoll in fair weather and pray themselves hoarse every time it thunders. A well-developed case of cholera morbus will knock their infidelity out of them, and leave them in a cold sweat like a china dog in an ice-house. I know them. The most of them are like the boy who runs away from home, and comes back to stay with his father nights. Then, again, boys take a look around you when you invest another fifty cents to hear Ingersoll talk on "liberty," and compare the crowd with the kind of people you find in almost any church. Is it the odor of sanctity you smell? Hardly, boys, hardly. But you can eat peanuts there, and choke on the shells, while you applaud the funny jokes and about heaven where you know in your hearts your dear mother is; or hear the humble Nazarene ridiculed, who, you think, and always will think, gave a home to your weary old father when he left the earth."

Unfortunately, I think the million to one ratio may have changed.

Influence

2012-01-14T03:37:00.000-08:00

A little clock in a jeweler's window in a certain Western town stopt one day for half an hour, at fifteen minutes of nine. School-children, noticing the time, stopt to play; people hurryng to the train, looking at the clock, stopt to chat a minute with one another; working men and women noted the time and lingered a little longer in the sunshine, and all were half an hour late because one small clock stopt. Never had these people known how much they had depended upon that clock till it had led them astray.
Many are thus unconsciously depending upon the influence of Christians; you can not go wrong in one little act without leading others astray. ---Seattle Churchman.

Inequalities

2012-01-14T03:24:00.000-08:00

Twenty little maidens

Sighing at a hop,

Wishing twenty fellows

Would come there to stop.

Twenty dapper clerkings

Sitting in a row,

Dipping pens in ink-stands,

Much would like to go.

Ah! this world's an odd one,

Things don't even up;

When we want a quartful,

We only get a cup.

Ignorance

2012-01-14T03:03:00.000-08:00

      However wise a man may himself be, he does well to guard himself against the ignorance of others:
      Ah Wing Lee was walking down the street the other morning when a dog ran up behind him, yelping and barking horribly. The end of the Celstial's pigtail rose in the breeze as he leapt aside in great alarm.
      A benevolent passer-by, seeing the terror painted upon the his countenance, hastened to pat him reassuringly on the shoulder.
      "Come, come, my friend, you need not be afraid. The dog won't hurt you. Don't you know the proverb, 'A barking dog never bites?' Surely you---"
      "That's all very good." interrupted Ah Wing doubtfully; "you know proverb and me know proverb, but do the dog know proverb?"

Christ A Guide To The Father

2011-09-01T11:46:00.000-07:00

Mr. Robert E. Speer met a poor blind Christian in Korea whose only knowledge of the word of God had come through the kindnesses of his friends, when they would read, translating out of a Chinese Bible and giving chapter and verse as they read. His knowledge of the life of Christ was wonderful, and when Mr. Speer asked him what incident he liked best of all the gospel, he said, "I like best the ninth chapter of the Gospel of John, that tells the story of the blind man to whom the Lord restored his sight." Mr. Speer asked the man what he looked forward to most, and he replied "I look forward most to Christ's meeting me at the gate of heaven. I wouldn't dare to go up to see the Father alone, a poor blind man from Korea, but I shall wait at the gate, and He will find me out just as he did that poor blind man in the ninth of John, and He will lead me up to his Father and mine."

Fruit of the Spirit

2011-07-17T03:05:00.000-07:00

The scripture here is from Galatians 5:22-23. I worked with pastel on rice paper for this piece. I don't recommend using rice paper, it just so happened that someone had given some to me and I felt obligated not to waste it.

"But the fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, forbearance, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness and self-control."

The photographs/artwork and articles found on this page are not for public use or downloading.

Hit It Hard

2011-06-30T17:19:00.003-07:00

The temper of life is to be made good by big, honest blows; stop striking and you will accomplish nothing; strike feebly, and you will do almost as little. Success rides on every hour--grapple it, and you may win; but without a grapple it will never go with you. Work is the weapon of honor, and who lacks the weapon will never triumph. --Ik Marvel.

Faith Better Than Sight

2010-09-05T04:27:00.000-07:00

There is a true story of a man who crossed the river Usk, England, under circumstances where faith was far better than sight:

He had been absent on business for some time, and in the meantime the bridge had been washed away, and a new one was being constructed. While the buttresses were in place, he drove up in his gig one very dark night, and gave the reins to his horse, who, he knew, was well accustomed to the road. They crossed safely over what he took to be the bridge, and came to an inn near the river. The landlady asked him, being an old acquaintance, what part of the country he had come in from. "From Newport," he answered. "Then you must have crossed the river?" said the woman in astonishment. "Yes, of course. How else could I have come?" "But how did you manage it, and in the dark too?" "The same as usual; there is no difficulty in driving over the bridge, even tho it be dark." "Bless the man!" said the landlady, "there is no bridge to drive over. You must have come along the planks left by the men." "Impossible," was the answer; and nothing could persuade the traveler that night that there was no bridge. But early next morning he went to the river-side, and found, as he had been told, that the bridge was gone. His horse had taken him safely over three planks, left by the workmen, where one false step, to the right or to the left, would instantly have plunged him into the swollen river beneath. The man stood aghast at the dreadful danger he had gone through, and so marvelously escaped. (Text)

Faith And Prayer.

2010-09-05T04:12:00.000-07:00

As the Lucania was in mid-Atlantic a young man came to the purser and asked him to lend him ten pounds, as he was without money, and every hour was bringing him nearer to London. The purser said he had made it a rule not to lend money and suggested that the young man should borrow from some friend on board. "But I have no friend. The only person who would give me ten pounds is my mother, and she left London for New York the same day as we sailed from New York." The purser thought for a moment, and then he said, "We may get into speaking touch with the vessel on which your mother is, and then you could ask her to lend you the money by wireless telegraphy." The next night the young man was roused from sleep with the news that the Lucania was in communication with the boat on which his mother was a passenger. She readily handed a ten pound note to the purser on her ship, and he authorized the purser on the Lucania to give the young man this sum. The vessels were many miles apart in the darkness of the night, and yet the need on the one ship was met by the love on the other. What a light that throws on the force of prayer! "Ask and ye shall receive." (Text)

Faith That Is Inadequate

2010-09-05T04:04:00.000-07:00

A great many people's faith is like the old woman's trust. the horse ran away with a wagon in which she was seated and she was in imminent peril. But she was rescued, and some one said to her: "Madam, how did you feel when the horse ran away?" "Well," said she, "I hardly know how I felt; you see, I trusted in Providence at first, and when the harness broke, then I gave up."--John B. Gough.

Faith Fulfilled By Works

2010-09-05T03:44:00.000-07:00

A youthful owner of swine had a wealthy uncle. His uncle cribbed corn for the market. One day he told his nephew that he could have all the corn that he could carry in a blanket from the cribs, where the men were shelling, across the alley to the barn where the swine were kept. To his uncle's surprise and delight, the boy took him at his word, and carried corn all day. The boy did this because he had faith in his uncle's word. The nephew's faith pleased him when he sow how much corn he had. It the boy had professed belief in his uncle's promise without acting upon it, there would have been intellectual assent but no real faith.

This is a type of our relation to God. Faith takes God at his word. "His divine power hath given us all things that pertain to life and Godliness through the knowledge of Him who hath called us to glory and virtue, whereby are given unto us exceeding great and precious promises." Every gift of God that we accept and use for Him is a new proof of our faith.

Faithfulness Unto Death.

2010-09-05T03:37:00.000-07:00

A little girl one day, whose mother had entrusted her with a penny for some small purchase, was crushed in the streets. She did not drop the penny. Recovering from a fainting fit, dying, she opened her firmly-closed fist, and handed her mother the humble penny, whose small value she did not realize, saying to her: "I have not lost it." (Text)

Road To Faith.

2010-09-05T03:12:00.000-07:00

Take the little "radioscope" in your hand-- a tiny tube less than an inch in length, closed at one end, with a small magnifying lens at the other. In the closed end of the tube you observe a small disk of paper covered with microscopic particles of yellow crystals--sulfid of zinc. In front of the yellow crystals is a small metallic pointer, like the second-hand of a very small watch, and on the end of the pointer is--nothing, absolutely nothing, so far as your eye can see. Look at it very carefully. No! Nothing! Now, take the little tube, go into a darkened room, and look into it through the lens end, and you will see a sight incredible. The metal pointer does have a minute speck of something on its tip, and between that tip and the yellow crystals are leaping showers of sparks of light. Will the shower stop after a few minutes? No. After an hour? No; nor after a thousand years! The calculation is that that all but invisible speck on the tip of the pointer will keep that shower of sparks going day and night, for thirty thousand years! For that speck is radium, which actually seems as tho it were a hot fragment struck off from God's great white throne, so amazing is its radiant energy.

It operates, not merely by setting "waves" in motion, but it throws off a stream of actual particles which move with an inconceivable velocity (at the rate, some physicists allege of 200,000 miles a second), and without--and here is the miracle--without any apparent diminution in the morsel of radium itself. It can hurl these particles literally through six inches of armor plate. It can and does send them right through your own head while you are looking at them, just as if your brain were a loose sieve, as perhaps it is, or a grove of trees quite wide apart, and a bright, flashing bird, all crimson and gold, were flying right through the trees, without even hitting his wings.

Now, what I want to say is that the modern discovery of such marvels as these, as being real, actual, objective, demonstrated facts, stretches the mind out into a thrilling series of undreamed-of possibilities, and this is a preparation for faith. This is the first step. This is the first lamp on the modern road to faith.--Albert J. Lyman.

Faith Necessary.

2010-09-05T03:00:00.000-07:00

-in 1910, United States-

If all the world did not trust all the world, we could not do business for a single day. The amount of coin and bank-notes in circulation is ridiculously inadequate to the needs of business. By far the larger part of every day's transactions of every kind is conducted by means of promises to pay.

The National Monetary Commission has just reported an investigation of this matter. About seventy per cent of the daily bank deposits consists of checks, and even more than half of the retail business is conducted in the same way, while the banks report weekly pay-rolls aggregating $134,800,000, seventy per cent of which is settled by checks.

This is a gigantic illustration of the principle of faith. We have faith in the integrity of the average man. We have faith in the business institutions of the country. We have faith that the future will be as good as the past. And in this faith we continue to accept bits of paper in return for most of our labor and the goods we sell.

In exalting the principle of faith in our relations toward God and the concerns of the next world, religion is merely applying to the Owner of all things the same rules that we apply without question to the petty properties of earth. --Christian Endeavor World.

Faith In Men.

2010-09-05T02:51:00.000-07:00

A graphic account of how Adjutant S. H. M. Byers, of the Faith Iowa Infantry, carried to Grant before Richmond the news of General Sherman's advance through North Carolina on his march to the sea in 1865 is told in Harper's Weekly. After a perilous trip, he finally reached Grant's headquarters at City Point.

" I ripped open my clothing, handed him my dispatches, and excitedly watched the pleased changes on his flushed face while he hurriedly read the great news I had brought from Sherman," says Mr. Byers. "General Ord happened in at that moment, and the good news was repeated to him. Ord clanked his spurs together, rubbed his hands and manifested joy. 'I had my fears, I had my fears,' he muttered. 'And I, not a bit,' said Grant, springing from his seat by the window, 'I knew Sherman--I knew my man.'"