EASTER

Once upon a time a Persian king was marching westward with a great army to fight against Greece. In the evening, after the army had encamped for the night, someone found the king looking over the host of people spread out before him, and he was in tears. When he was asked the cause of his sadness, he replied that he had been thinking that one hundred years from that time not one of all these men in his army would be alive.

That was long before Christ lived, and had risen from the dead on Easter morning. These people had no Easter. They did not believe in the sort of everlasting life in which we believe. And even long after the resurrection of Christ there were many people in Greece and Rome who had not heard the wonderful news. Here is a letter that someone wrote over a hundred years after that first Easter to a mother whose son had just died:

"I was much grieved, and shed as many tears over your son as I did over my own, and I did everything that was fitting, as so did my whole family.... But still there is nothing one can do in the face of such trouble. So I leave you to comfort yourselves. Good-bye."

If these people had known about our Easter they would not have felt so hopeless and sad. For since Christ has risen from the dead, we know that all who love Him and try to be like Him shall also rise from the dead, and be with Him in a life beyond the grave.

He said to His disciples before He was crucified: "In my Father's house are many mansions; if it were not so I would have told you; for I go to prepare a place for you. And if I go and prepare a place for you I will come again and receive you unto myself; that where I am, there ye may be also." When we know this, then to die is not so terrible as it was to the Persians and Greeks. It is like going to sleep in our home, and waking up in a place much more beautiful than we had ever dreamed of, and being with Christ, the Friend of little children, forever. But we must know Christ in this life if we are to enjoy His friendship in the next.



THE WHISPERING GALLERY

If you ever go to London, one of the many buildings which will be pointed out to you will be Saint Paul's Cathedral, which is capped by a wonderful dome. And if you ask the guide, he will show you in that dome a strange room known as the "Whispering Gallery." In this gallery your lowest whisper can be heard on the other side of the room, a great distance away. It would be hard to tell secrets in a room like that.

But there is a still more wonderful whispering gallery than that. It is the one which each one of us carries about in his own soul. In that gallery even things we think, whether we say them or not, are heard by God, our Creator. No thought escapes Him. "In Him we live, and move, and have our being." If we "take the wings of the morning, and fly to the uttermost parts of the earth," even there God is still.

This would be a very terrible thing to realize if all our thoughts were evil thoughts, unkind and unlovely. For then we should be like the man who, when he was young, ill-treated his old father and mother. When he grew up, this young man became very wealthy, and he used to carry candy in his pocket as he walked in the parks to give to the children, because he wanted their love. But the children would take his candy, then scamper away like frightened squirrels, because something inside seemed to tell them that the man was not really kind at heart. Older people felt the same way about him, and a chill came over them when they were with him. So they avoided him. It would be unbearable to think that only our evil thoughts were open to God in that way.

But while God knows all the wickedness in our hearts, and we cannot hide anything from Him, God also knows the good thoughts that are whispered in the gallery of our soul. And when we wish ever so greatly that we could do something to help somebody, but cannot do it; or when we would like to be good, but are tripped up by some temptation, God knows then how hard we try, and gives us credit for our effort, even though we fail to do what we wanted to.

Let us remember the Whispering Gallery of the soul, then, and when we think evil thoughts, even though we never tell them to our nearest friend, let us be sure God knows them. And when we try hard to be good and to do good, but fail, let us also remember that God sees it, even though none else knows. Our prayer each morning ought to be like the psalmist's: "Let the words of my mouth, and the meditations of my heart be acceptable in Thy sight, O Lord, my strength and my redeemer."



THE HE-SAID GIRL

Sometimes, when I am walking along the street, I catch snatches of conversation as I pass by a group of little girls. And often I hear the phrase "He said" this, or "He said" that. There are girls who do not seem to talk about much else but what this boy or that boy has said, and these girls I call "he-said" girls.

Now, of course it is all right for girls to think about the boys. We could not stop that if we would, and we would not stop it if we could. The danger comes when a girl thinks of little else. The girl who begins by devoting all her thought to boys is apt to end by being a very unattractive and unpopular sort of woman. Every girl ought to get along well with the girls of her own age as well as with the boys. There is something wrong with the girl who cannot get along with her girl friends. And so I say to you that if you do not want to be thoroughly unhappy as a woman, try to win the friendship of girls as well as boys.

A good plan for the "he-said" girl is to take her father as her ideal, and hero and lover. Then, as she grows to womanhood, she will not be satisfied with any man who is not in some measure as good as her father. In the meanwhile beware of being a "he-said" girl.



ON DECK

When I was a boy I belonged to a baseball team in the village where I lived, and when we played games with a team from another village we had a scorer who not only kept tally of the runs, but also told us who was to be the next at the bat. He would say, "So-and-so is at the bat, So-and-so is on deck." And when he told a boy he was "on deck," that boy knew he was to be the next one at the bat.

Boys and girls are always on deck, whether they are playing ball or not, for a boy or girl never knows when he is going to be called upon to play some part in the game called Life. And the strange thing about it is, there is no scorer who tells you that you are on deck. So you never get any warning, and you may be on deck and not know it, and so miss your chance.

Samuel, for instance, was a boy who used to close the curtains and put out the candles at night in the temple away back hundreds of years before Christ was born. One evening he had put out the lights and closed the curtains, just the same as he had a hundred times before, and then lay down to sleep. He little thought that this particular day he was on deck, and was to be called into the game by God. But that night God called him, and sent him on a very important errand that was to change his whole life and the history of his people.

And things like that are happening in America to-day. I read a story the other day of a young student who was overtaken by a rainstorm, and borrowed an umbrella of a lawyer. He returned it a few days later with a note of thanks. Not long afterward he received a letter from the lawyer offering him a position in his office on account of his good handwriting. The student took the position, kept on with his studies in college, and after he graduated from college went right along in that office till he became a man of influence. He didn't know what it meant when he wrote that note. He was on deck.

The lesson that I want to draw is this: That you must be on the lookout and do well the things that come to you each day, for who knows but you may be on deck that very day, and be called to play some important part? For only those are called who are on deck; that is, ready to play. The boy or girl who does not do his work well day by day may miss his chance of being called to take some larger place in life when the times comes. Take this motto from the Old Testament: "Whatsoever thy hand findeth to do, do it with thy might."



THE TERROR BY NIGHT

In some parts of Canada, where the country is still thinly settled by people, wild animals are quite numerous. In one of these communities there once lived a boy who was in the village late one night. He had been at the village-store, and had heard the men talking about a wildcat that had been seen in that neighbourhood a short time before.

The boy was not a coward, but when he started for his home, three miles away, in the country, he was nervous. Nothing happened, however, until he was climbing over a set of bars at the end of a lane leading through a piece of woods near his home. Then he heard the bushes moving and twigs crackling under the feet of some animal the other side of the lane-fence. He thought of the wildcat. He jumped to the ground, picked up a heavy stick he had seen under a tree on his way through that day and listened. Nearer and nearer came the rustling of the bushes, and every little while he could hear an animal sniff the air. Finally it came to the fence, clambered up opposite him. The boy raised his club and waited, and when the animal jumped down beside him, its eyes shining in the darkness, he struck with all his might. Off the beast went into the darkness. All was silence again, and the boy stood listening and trembling. Then from the top of a nearby hill he heard a dog howl with pain. He found, next morning, that it was only a neighbour's dog that had frightened him so.

That boy is not the only one who has seen things mistakenly, just because he was afraid. If you are dreading something, you will think that everything that happens brings the thing you dread. Usually nothing happens at all. The trouble was only in the person's mind, just as that wildcat was in the boy's mind, and so every noise he could not explain was a wildcat.

I am sure David must have known something about that fear when, as a boy, he watched his sheep out on the lonely hills at night. But David learned that there was One who was able to protect him by night as well as by day. It was God. And so he wrote of God: "He that keepeth thee will not slumber. God is thy keeper. God is thy shade upon thy right hand. Thou shalt not be afraid for the terror by night, nor for the arrow that flieth by day; for the pestilence that walketh in darkness.... It shall not come nigh thee."

Let us remember that no real harm can come to us unless it comes from within ourselves. God is our protector. In His love we can trust by day, and in His care we can lay us down to sleep at night without a fear.



THE BRAMBLE-BUSH KING

There is a story in the Old Testament which says that once upon a time the trees gathered together to choose a king to rule over them.

First they invited the olive-tree; but the olive-tree said it was too busy bearing fruit. Then they asked the fig-tree to be king; but the fig-tree had its work to do, and also declined. Next they waited upon the vine with an invitation; but, like the others, it did not wish to be their king.

Finally the trees asked the bramble to accept the position, and the bramble gladly agreed. The first order it gave was for all the trees to take shelter under its branches or be burned with fire. That sounds just like a prickly, thorny, little bramble, does it not?

That is usually the way of people who like to lord it over other people when they have no ability for it. There are some who want to do so when they are at a party. They want to be the hitching-post to which all the people are tied when they talk. If the bramble takes the form of a boy, he wants to be captain of his team, or he will not play. If it happens to be a girl, she insists upon everybody playing the game she wants, or she will go home in a sulk. These people cannot agree long with anybody. They are quarrelsome and peevish.

Some boys and girls are like horses: they make good single-drivers, but they will not work with anyone else. Some horses go well enough alone, but when you hitch them with another horse they crowd, or bite, or kick it. They cannot "go double," as we say. That is the bramble-nature showing out in a horse.

This is a bad trait, whether you find it in a horse, a man or woman, a boy or girl. Christ says: "You know the rulers of the Gentiles lord it over them. Not so shall it be among you; but whosoever would become great among you shall be your minister; and whosoever would be first among you shall be your servant." Jesus also said, "I am meek and lowly in heart." So must all His followers be.

If you are getting any of the bramble-nature, and want to lord it over everybody, you had better give it up. Some of the unhappiest people in the world are bramble-bush kings.



WHERE IS HEAVEN?

Our great-grandfathers and great-grandmothers used to talk much about where heaven was. And some thought it was up above the clouds, and others thought it would be here on earth, after all the wickedness and selfishness were done away. Every one, however, used to think that the New Jerusalem, with its pearly gates and golden streets, was a real place like the cities of to-day.

But we think of heaven more as the feeling in our hearts when we are happy from being with our friends, or when we have done right and unselfish things. We know what it is, then, to have heaven on earth. And when we have heaven on earth, we know pretty nearly what the real heaven is like.

Let me show you what I mean. Not long ago a speaker in a rescue mission asked the children if they could tell him where heaven was. Immediately a boy from the poorest section of the city sprang up, raised his hand and cried shrilly: "I know; I know." "Well, my boy, where is heaven?" the astonished leader asked. "Back in our street since mother got acquainted with Jesus," was the answer.

That boy was on the right track. Whenever Christ comes into the heart there comes with Him love and thoughtfulness of others. And when we do kind things for others, we find happiness for ourselves, and that is heaven. Christ says, "If any man hear my voice and open the door, I will come in to him and sup with him and he with me." That means, when we do things that we believe Christ would like to have us do, then He comes in to sup with us. And when we feel Christ as our Companion, then it is heaven.

We may go to a beautiful place called heaven when we die, but it will be Christ who will make the place full of joy and gladness. And if we are to see Him in that land and enjoy that heaven, we must first make a heaven here on earth for ourselves and others by trying to please Him and to be like Him every day.



THE CHRISTIAN ARMY

Saint Paul, in writing to the Christians of his day, urges them to be "good soldiers of the Lord Jesus Christ." If every Christian is a soldier, then the Church ought to be called "the Christian Army." And this makes plainer to us what it means to join the Church.

Armies, as you know, are divided into regiments, and regiments into companies. Every soldier in the army belongs to a certain company. If a man said that he wanted to belong to the United States Army, but that he did not want to join any particular regiment or company, but that he intended to be a soldier "in general," people would laugh at him. He would be like a man who took his gun and went out all alone to fight against Spain when we were at war with her. Or it would be as if a man in a city should say that he wanted to fight fire, but instead of joining a fire company, he would snatch up his pail and run alone to put out the fire every time there was an alarm.

Now, in the Christian army there are also regiments and companies. The different denominations, like the Presbyterians, the Methodists, the Baptists, the Congregationalists, and so on, are the regiments. The Churches like this and other Churches are the companies in the army.

So, when anyone says he wants to make war on wickedness and to bring in the reign of love and peace and good-will which Christ started His Church to fight for, we ask him to join one of the companies of the Christian army. That is, we ask him to join a Church.

You may ask if one cannot be a Christian outside of the Church. I answer, Yes, he can. But he is very much like the man with his pail running to put out the fire, or the lone soldier. He can do better work if he works with others. Furthermore, Christ said, "He that confesseth me before men, him will I confess before my Father which is in heaven, and he that denieth me before men, him will I deny before my Father which is in heaven." In joining the Church you confess Christ.

You may ask me too, how old one should be before he can join the Christian army, known as the Church of God. I answer, there is no set age. Some boys and girls are ready to join before others. One little girl who was going to join the Church was told by some of the members of her Sunday-school class that she wasn't old enough. She replied, "Anyone who is old enough to know right from wrong is old enough to join the Church." If you are trying honestly day by day to be like Christ and to do His will, and you wish to be a better soldier of the cross, then you are ready to join the Church.

In the Christian army there are old and young, rich and poor, wise and simple, all under the one flag,—the banner of the Cross; all under the one Captain,—even Jesus Christ. And the best thing about our Captain is, He has never lost a battle yet, and never will. All those who enlist under His flag are sure to win, and to hear God's "Well done."

THE END