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"I surely shall have a good talk with him to-night," the guest consoled himself, "I shall have him all alone, and, with his day's work done, we can shape to-morrow."

But in the evening the host was tired, and his mind was still distracted with the cares of the day. He gave his guest a few short minutes before he went to bed, but his mind was occupied and so jaded that he seemed relieved when he could bid his friend goodnight and sink to rest.

And so day after day went by. And the purpose he had in inviting his guest was almost entirely thwarted because he so gave up his heart and attention to other things that he had no opportunity for quiet and whole-hearted intercourse with his wise and gracious friend.

Brother, the host is yourself, and the guest is Jesus Christ; and though you have invited him to come into your heart and life and be your chief counsellor and guide, is it not true that you are losing very largely the benefit you might have from him through a failure to give him the right of way in your heart? We dishonor Christ unless we give him a whole-hearted affection and devotion.

A Christian man who was riding on the outside of a London omnibus got into a conversation with the driver, and after a time. asked him: "Do you love Jesus?"

With a startled look he replied: "No, sir; I've no time to think of such things."

"Are you married?" was the next question.

"Yes, sir," was the reply.

"How many hours in the day do you work?"

"Sixteen, sir."

"Then I am sorry for your wife.”

"Why are you sorry, sir?" asked the astonished man.

"Because you have no time to love her," was the answer. "Love her!" said the driver. "Why, I loves her every yard I drives!"

Our love for Christ should possess our whole selves and should underlie all the actions of life. He loved us with a full heart, and in giving himself for us on the cross revealed to us a heart at flood-tide of self-sacrificing devotion. And we dishonor him, and are living unworthy of ourselves, when we give his less than a whole-hearted devotion.

Half-hearted service, however brilliant it may be, will surely fail of any great results. King Hiram, of Solomon's day, is a con

spicuous example. Hiram helped Solomon to build the temple, but he never got any good from it. He contributed a hundred and twenty talents of gold towards its erection; certainly no other one person gave anything like so much money to build this famous temple. But he did not do it because his whole heart was given over to the service of God. He turned about and in his own country dedicated a golden pillar to Jupiter. Then he built the temple to Hercules, and gave many rich and valuable gifts to the shrines of other false gods. Hiram was the kind of man who flattered and gave to all churches because he did not give his heart to any of them. And so, though Hiram gave more money to build the temple than anybody else, no one had less benefit from it than he. He gave the money, but he withheld his heart. One talent with the heart in it would have been worth far more than the hundred and twenty without it. There are many people nowadays who patronize religion, and bestow gifts on it in a half-hearted way, and get no good from it, because the heart does not go with the gift to sanctify it. There are some counterfeit half-dollars now on the market that are hard to detect. They are made of silver of the standard weight and fineness, and yet silver is so cheap that they are a great swindle to the government. Though they are made of silver, they are still fraudulent and cannot be given the government's sanction. So there are many persons who are moral, who have many good qualities and are highly esteemed in society, who yet, by withholding their hearts from God, exercise an influence which robs Jesus Christ of the love of multitudes that would be won for him but for the dangerous false evidence of these who are his professed friends.

I am convinced that what the Christian church needs at this time more than anthing else to send it forth with new energy and power is a revival of whole-hearted service and sacrifice, on the part of the individual Christians in our churches. We take our religion too easily. We spend to much attention and thought on the superficial outward circumstances of our worship. There is too much. machinery for the amount of steam to run it. We do not need less machinery perhaps, but we need more power. We need heart power, prayer power. We need the unction of the Holy One. We need a giving of ourselves in a whole-hearted way. Two of the truest and most influential Christian ministers in the East during the last generation were Dr. I. Simmons and Dr. B. M. Adams. They were great friends and lived in closest intimacy. They had their seasons of prayer together, sometimes quite protracted. If they had

any subject of unusual interest to take before the throne of mercy, Brother Simmons would, in his familiar way, say to his comrade: "Bennie, we must pray through on that." And so praying through was the order, and at it they went, with the intent not to stop until a definite answer came. And they won many a victory on the prayingthrough line.

I think the modern church lacks at just that point. We pray too little, and there is not enough abandon and whole-hearted persistency in our praying. I am afraid our hearts do not feel sufficiently our utter helplessness without God. We do not realize as we ought that all prosperity is a sham and a delusion unless God is in it. We need to have our hearts aroused with something of the feeling that Jacob must have had on that night at the Jabbok Ford, when he feared that the sorrow would bring ruin and destruction on all that he loved, and felt that he only had one chance of safety and that was in the direct and signal interference of God. And so he went alone to pray, and God came in the form of an angel, in the figure of a man, and wrestled with him through the night. And the strange wrestler would have left him more than once, but Jacob felt that to let him go was to let go of the life of Rachel, his beloved, was to get go of everything dear, and so he clung on and cried out in his anguish, "I will not let thee go except thou bless me!" Jacob went limping in the morning, and he always limped afterwards; but he went with a great peace in his heart, and he went forth to true prosperity.

Great spiritual revivals would come to the church if its membership were aroused to throw whole-hearted earnestness into their worship of God, and into their efforts to win men to Christ. Dr. Munhall, the evangelist, has recently related that but three weeks before Henry Ward Beecher was laid in the grave he met him. And Mr. Beecher, taking the evangelist's hand in both of his, said: “I understand you are having a great work and blessing at the Tabernacle. I wish we could have you in Plymouth Church for a campaign. I would like to see an old-fashioned Holy Ghost revival in my church before I go hence. But I suppose it cannot be; my people would not stand it." And as he uttered those words Mr. Beecher clasped the hand of the evangelist in tighter grip, while tears ran down his cheeks like rain. They stood thus for some moments, Mr. Beecher sobbing as though his heart would break. Mr. Beecher in his younger life was a great revivalist, and one of the most powerful revivals ever known in the West was held under his ministry in

Indianapolis. For many months he preached every day and won hundreds of souls to Christ. In later years the marvellous preacher was not supposed to be eminent for spirituality in his ministry, though he had, by his matchless personality and ability, gathered about him a great church. But it would have been a great thing for the city of Brooklyn, and for America, if that grand old hero could have had the daring of his earlier years, and with his gray hair falling to his shoulders and tears flowing from his eyes had called his people about the altar of Plymouth Church and seen them receive a fresh anointing of divine power for their great work.

What I long and pray for is that we, both in pulpit and pew, shall feel as Mr. Beecher did, with the added courage to undertake great things in the name of God, in the help of the Holy Spirit, for the glory of Christ, and for the salvation of souls.

FACING TOWARD HEAVEN.

"They shall ask the way to Zion with their faces thitherward." Jeremiah 50:5.

Among the old Romans there prevailed the touching custom of holding the face of every new born babe towards the heavens, signifying by their presenting its forehead to the stars that it was to look above the world into celestial glories. That was only a vain. superstition; but Christ has taught us how to realize the old Pagan yearning.

Zion. was the city of solemn worship among the Jews, and God was present there in a peculiar manner. The Zion of our days is the church of Jesus Christ, and at its mercy-seat God may always be found. I wish to lay the emphasis of our study on the fact that these people who had become convinced that they were going wrong, and were asking the way to Zion and forgiveness, had their faces turned that way.

Everything as to the final result of life depends upon which way our faces are turned. A man may mean well, have many good impulses and desires; but if his face is turned the wrong way, he will finally arrive at the opposite of what he has desired. I suppose no one will doubt that the captain of the steamer City of Paris desired to make a straight course across the ocean and bring his ship and passengers, as usual, in safety into New York harbor. But as he

came sailing around the southwest coast of England at full speed, he drove his ship upon the rocks. If the sea had not been calm as a mirror there must have been great loss of life. As it was, the loss was enormous. The captain stated afterwards before a commission of inquiry that the wreck was due to an unaccountable mistake upon his part. He was acquainted with those waters. He had sailed over them many times. He had followed the sea for fifty years and had commanded the City of Paris several years, but through carelessness he faced his ship the wrong way and was eighteen miles out of the proper course at the time of the accident.

One of the great mistakes that young men and young women are likely to make arises from the temptation to be more anxious as to an early arrival at success in their life career than to make sure that their faces are set like a flint on a path so right that it deserves to succeed. The editor of Zion's Herald, taking Admiral Dewey for his text, comments with rare insight on the fact that every great victory is the result of long preparation. In Dewey's case he succeeded because for forty years his face had been set toward that very time. He had been a good officer, faithful under all circumstances, holding himself well in hand. He was a long time arriving at the fateful hour, but he never would have arrived if he had not for a whole life time been facing thitherward with patience and devotion to duty.

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Every success in life is the expression of a man's ability to recognize and lay hold of opportunity, and no man is ever able to do that extemporaneously; it is the man who has been facing that way for a good while, plodding steadily onward, who writes the great book, or pens the great poem, or paints the great picture, or wins the great battle. Charles Kingsley says of Turner, the great painter, that he spent hours and hours in the mere contemplation of nature without using brush or pencil. An authentic story is told of how Turner was once known to have spent a whole day sitting upon a rock throwing pebbles into a lake. When evening came his brother painters showed him their sketches and railed him upon having done nothing. He said, "I have done this, at least: I have learned how a lake looks when pebbles are thrown into it." The result was that none of his fellow students could ever paint ripples as Turner painted them. His face was ever turned toward nature and he arrived at her secrets. A great many people find to their sorrow and dismay that when the opportunity of a lifetime is presented to them, they are utterly unable to grasp it because of a lack of preparation. They

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