“Well, there is one thing more, and that is what broke me up.
After you had drest me, you said, ‘You want to look nice, so
I’ll black your boots’; and you did.
“Now I could not tell, to save my neck, what you said about
Christ; I did not want to do better; I did not go to the home;
all I wanted was what I could get out of you. But your blacking
my boots--I have never been able to get away from that.”
“I did not want your religion, but to think that you cared
enough about my soul to black my boots, that has followed me all
these years, and when I have been drunk and stupid that thing
would haunt me. I have thought of it hundreds of times, and now
I thank God has brought me here to meet you again, and I want
you to pray for me.” (Text.)
(2914)
* * * * *
The whole material universe is ever compulsorily engaged in mutual
service. The spheres wait on earth, air, sun, clouds, and sky. But the
spiritual universe has for its grace and its glory the principle of
service consciously rendered by love and sacrifice.
Two ragged street urchins stood one day before the window of a
picture store in London, and one cried out, “Look, Jim, look!”
“What is it?” Jim asked, and the little fellow answered, “Why,
there he is. That’s our earl.” It was the photograph of the Earl
of Shaftesbury, in truth the earl of the poor and opprest. The
motto of his family is “Love--Serve,” and nobly did he live up
to his motto. At his funeral a laboring man was heard to say in
a choking voice, “Our earl’s gone. God A’mighty knows he loved
us. We sha’n’t see his likes again.” (Text.)
(2915)
* * * * *
The flowers got into a debate one morning as to which of them
was the flower of God, and the rose said: “I am the flower of
God, for I am the fairest and the most perfect in beauty and
variety of form and delicacy of fragrance of all the flowers.”
And the crocus said: “No, you are not the flower of God. Why, I
was blooming long before you bloomed. I am the primitive flower;
I am the first one.” And the lily of the valley said modestly:
“I am small, but I am white; perhaps I am the flower of God.”
And the trailing arbutus said: “Before any of you came forth I
was blooming under the leaves and under the snow. Am I not the
flower of God?” And all the flowers cried out: “No, you are
no flower at all; you are a come-outer.” And then God’s wind,
blowing on the garden, brought this message to them: “Little
flowers, do you not know that every flower that answers God’s
spring call, and comes out of the cold, dark earth, and lifts
its head above the sod and blooms forth, catching the sunlight
from God and flinging it back to men, taking the sweet south
wind from God and giving it back to others in sweet and blest
fragrance--do you not know they are all God’s flowers?”
(2916)
=Service and Age=--See AGE AND EXPERIENCE.