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Many a parent stands in the very place of God to the children; and yet the parent is timid or backward or indifferent, and does not make the child feel that it is a matter about which the father or mother thinks and cares a great deal; that nothing is so near the heart of the parents whom they love as that they should take Jesus Christ as a personal Savior, and love him and serve him openly. I know families where a religious revolution would be brought about speedily if children were made to feel that.

Paul was wise in his adaptation; he adapted himself to the circumstances; he became all things to all men in order that he might save some of them. We lose immensely because we do not seem to feel keenly the necessity of using all the common sense we have in devising methods of adaptation by which we may win men and women, and show them the value of turning to Christ. Mrs. Oliphant tells the story of how Edward Irving was once assisting Dr. Chalmers, the great Scotch preacher. One day Irving called upon a shoemaker, a thoroughgoing infidel with a most disagreeable temper. All who had previously called upon him were met by a cold shoulder and a grunt of disgust. Irving, knowing his man, took up a piece of patent leather and expatiated on it. This he could do admirably, as his father was a tanner, and he knew the process well. The shoemaker did not look up, but said roughly, "What do you ken about leather?" Irving, unabashed, went on, and described how shoes were being made by machinery. Then the shoemaker slackened up his work and looked up, and said, "Od, you're a decent kind of a fellow; do you preach?" The next Sunday the shoemaker was at church. On Monday Irving met him on the street, and walked arm in arm with him for several blocks. He was overcome, and soon became a most devoted Christian. Ever afterward, when taunted with his change, he justified himself by saying, "He's a sensible man, yon; he kens about leather." Irving had caught Paul's secret of being all things to all men in order to save some of them.

Dear friends, let us arouse ourselves to our great opportunity! Life is passing away very swiftly. A little while ago you were a boy, to-day you are middle-aged or past; already you are beginning to take medicine to patch up the body against the drafts that time and toil are making on it. Only yesterday and you lifted your feet like a hind's feet, but to-day when you got to the top of the stairs. you were short of breath. Life is passing with us; what we are to do that is to count forever must be done soon. When the work of

life is over we shall care more to have helped somebody to know Christ and to make sure of heaven than of any other achievement that the most successful life could bring to us. Whatever we miss or win in life let us not fail in the most important thing of all.

JOY AT FINDING THE LOST

"Either what woman having ten pieces of silver, if she lose one piece, doth not light a candle, and sweep the house, and seek diligently till she find it? And when she hath found it, she calleth her friends and her neighbors together, saying, Rejoice with me; for I have found the piece which I had lost. Likewise, I say unto you, there is joy in the presence of the angels of God over one sinner that repenteth."—Luke 15: 8-10.

This is one of those beautiful stories of the Master; one of the stories of the kind he loved to tell; a story of common life as simple and beautiful as a cottage on a hillside with a spring gushing out beside it, and love and hope and happiness living within; a story full of homely joy in little things. There is nothing of complex, artificial society about it. It is a story great because it runs down deep into the common life of men and women. It is a story which touches our humanity at many points. All our lives we are losing and finding; most of life is made up seeking after lost things, and no joy is quite so keen as the finding of something we had almost given up as lost. A business man told me a while ago that he had had a man owing him several thousand dollars for a long time, and he had tried to collect it for a good while, but finally had given it up as a bad debt, and had carried it over to profit and loss, and in his mind it was all loss. Several years passed away, and he had almost entirely forgotten about it. Once in awhile it would come back with a little sting of bitterness in it; when he was a little hard put in his business he would recall the incident and say, "If I only had the money I lost in that case everything would go smoothly." Suddenly there came a letter from the man who had owed him, and who had gone into bankruptcy and been entirely discharged from his debts. His former debtor said, "I have been fortunate and am on my feet again. Legally I do not owe you anything, of course;

but morally I owe you just as much as ever, and I intend to live and die an honest man, and you will please find enclosed a draft for my indebtedness to you and interest on it to date." Well, my friend said to me, "Do you know I was never so happy over any money matter as I was over that letter and draft. It wasn't that I specially needed the money at the time it came, but it was because I had given it up for lost and suddenly I found it, and there was more of it than when I lost it." And he felt so good over finding that money that he had the letter framed, and kept it hanging up in his business office as a testimony to the honesty of the man who paid the money he did not need legally to pay. I was struck with the remark this gentleman made several times in talking about it, "It was just like finding money!" It was finding it, and that is what made him so happy about it. It is a characteristic of our human nature to have joy in finding things.

To go back to our story, you must remember that this was one of those little old dark houses in the East. The windows, if there were any, were very small, and the corners and nooks inside would be dark even if it were broad day, so that it was not necessarily at night that this woman lit the candle in order that she might sweep the house well and find her coin. The floor probably was of earth, and that would explain why it was neccessary to sweep in order to get sight of the coin. It is interesting, I think, to notice that the woman did not call in her neighbors until after she had found the coin. She had nothing to tell about it until then. She was gloomy and depressed while the coin was lost. It was when she had found it that she must have somebody to tell. That, too, is characteristic of human nature. "The blues" are solitary. A man who has met with a big loss is likely to keep it to himself. The loser is tempted to unsociability. The man who makes a big strike in the mines is a rare man if he can keep it to himself long. So this woman, when she found her coin, was so happy she had to run to her neighbors to tell about it. The finder is inclined to be sociable; happiness wants fellowship.

Now our Savior gives this story for the single purpose of showing us the interest there is in heaven over men and women who have become sinful, and have wandered away from God and are lost. Christ compares God's lost children to this woman's lost coin. The house in which it is lost is this world of human life where we are. The dust that has gathered over it is the worldliness which is for

ever covering over out of sight the image of God which was stamped on our hearts in our creation. And God is seeking after these lost souls. Through the preaching of his Word, through the searching of the Holy Spirit, through the prickings of conscience and through the whippings of remorse God is sweeping this human life of ours diligently that he may find the lost soul and save it from being lost eternally.

God gives to every Christian the blessed opportunity of becoming a seeker after these lost children. He gives us a light, a candle of light, to aid us in the search. God's Word is that light, and a great many people who were painfully conscious of their own lack of wisdom have been marvellously successful by the aid of the light of God's Word in finding lost sinners and rescuing them. One of the greatest, if not the greatest, of the soul-savers among laymen this country ever saw used to work in a brewery over in Poughkeepsie, N. Y., but was finally converted to Christ, and without much education started out with the light of God's Word to persuade individuals, one at a time, to become Christians. Only the Judgment Day can tell how many hundreds and thousands of people Uncle John Vassar hunted out in the darkness by the aid of his Scripture texts, and brought to the Lord. It will surely be a great multitude he will have up there. He knew he had not much wisdom, and was always humble about himself. He called himself God's "shepherd dog," but he never went anywhere without the lamp of the Word with him. If you are in a dark and tangled wilderness, out of the path, catching your feet in the vines, tumbling over the logs, and miring now and then in a swamp, what you need is for somebody to come with a lantern and lead you into the path, and light up the way home. It does not make much difference who carries the lantern; whether he is well educated or ignorant about other things, so long as he knows the path, and will carry the light so that you can see where to put your feet. If you want to save souls, carry God's lantern and show the path of life.

Mark Guy Pearce tells the story of an old miller over in England who was local preacher, but the squire in the neighborhood did not like his preaching.

"I don't like the idea of your going about preaching," he said, when the miller came to pay his rent.

"Oh, no, sir, I don't praich."

"But you conduct the service, and go into the pulpit, and take a text and explain it."

"Yes, sir, I do that; but I don't call it praichin'."

"Well," said the squire, "you really are; and you must know you are very ignorant."

"Oh, yes, sir; terrible ignorant; if I don't know nothin' else, I do know that."

"Well, now," continued the squire, "I want you earnestly and seriously to consider whether a man ought, with so few advantages as you have, to take upon himself the responsibility of setting up as a teacher of others. Suppose you make a mistake."

"Aw, sir, I've thought of that. I do pray God every day to guide me with his Holy Spirit."

"We send our men to Oxford and Cambridge to have their training and to learn the evidences in support of our holy religion."

The miller, lifting up his eyes to the wall, saw upon it the map of the estate. "Squire," he said, "is that the map of your estate?"

The squire, a perfect gentleman, desiring to turn a conversation of which he thought the miller had had enough, readily answered, "Yes, it is."

"Well, squire, I s'pose you do know that map perty well, don't ye?"

"Yes, I know it by heart."

"I s'pose you know every road and every pathway and every waterway?"

"Yes, yes."

"Well, squire, do you remember the other day you was down to the mill, and you asked my little Mary to show you the pathway through the woods?"

"Oh, yes," assented the squire, "and she showed me beautifully."

"Well, sir," said the miller, coming to his point, "I've been thinken 'tis like this 'ere. You know that road on the map. If you'd ask little Mary what it was called-on the map, mind-she wouldn't 'ave been able to tell ye. She couldn't tell ye where she lived on the map. But little Mary showed ye the way up through the woods. You knowed the way on the map, but little Mary knowed the way by walkin' in it; and if I don't know the way on the map so well as some people, bless the Lord I do know the way to heaven by walkin' in it."

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