No. 12.] FRIENDLY CORK. DECEMBER, 1883. The Girls' Friendly Society. Motto: 'Bear ye one another's burdens.' 1. To bind together in one Society ladies as Associates and working girls and young women as Members, for mutual help (religious and secular), for sympathy, and prayer. 2. To encourage purity of life, dutifulness to parents, faithfulness to employers, and thrift. 3. To provide the privileges of the Society for its Members wherever they may be, by giving them an introduction from one Branch to another. CENTRAL RULES. I. ASSOCIATES to be of the Church of England (no such restriction being made as to Members), and the organization of the Society to follow as much as possible that of the Church, being diocesan, ruridecanal, and parochial. II. Associates (Working and Honorary), and Members, to contribute annually to the funds; the former not less than 2s. 6d. a-year, the latter not less than 6d. a-year. Members' payments to go to the Central Fund. III. No girl who has not borne a virtuous character to be admitted as a Member; such character being lost, the Member to forfeit her Card. A Friendly Greeting. A TO OUR READERS. MERRY Christmas and a happy New Year' is a greeting which never comes amiss to any one, and most heartily do we desire to convey it to you, dear readers of Friendly Work. Also we should like you, in return, to be ready to wish a happy New Year to our magazine, which depends quite as much upon you as upon its Editor for its value, and even for its very existence. What we want to do now is to take you into our counsels, and ask your help; and to this end we had better let you into a secret at once, namely, that unless we can get a better circulation for Friendly Work we cannot make it suc A FRIENDLY GREETING G. F. S. CALENDAR ADVENT THOUGHTS. By Rev. Canon Awdry BESSIE'S ENGAGEMENT. By C. R. Coleridge. Chap. XII. THE ANCIENT Capital of TYROL. By M. E. Townsend THE SEA PEARL. By Alice L. Dundas NOBLE WOMANHOOD. By C. M. Hallett. Chap. XXI. A FAIR SOUL. From the German THE ZOOLOGICAL GARDENS VARIETIES CORRESPONDENCE, ANNOUNCEMENTS, &c... FRIENDLY WORK COMPETITIONS :— 1. Scripture..... 2. English Literature 3. Domestic Economy 4. Riddles and Puzzles OUR PRIZE LIST FRIENDLY WORK, 1884 All Communications for the Editors of FRIENDLY WORK should be addressed to the care of the Secretary, G. F. S. Central Office, 3 Victoria Mansions, Victoria Street, Westminster, s.w. ceed, and that its present circulation is too small. to be successful. You will see by our announcements for the year 1884 that we are doing all we can on our part to make our programme an attractive one, and if we could only ensure 500 copies being taken monthly in each of the 30 Dioceses in England, we should then have a sale of 15,000 copies, which, in addition to the welcome we should hope by degrees to obtain in Ireland, Scotland, and America, would enable us fairly to float our new venture. Now who will help towards this, and how can they help? Those that can help us most are our elder Members themselves, and those of our Associates who are working for and with our elder Members. We were told before we started Friendly Work that our elder Members wanted something stronger and better and more advanced than Friendly Leaves-meat, in fact, instead of milk and water, as was intimated to us very plainly! Now we hold that milk is a very good thing in its way (though we must confess we prefer it without the water), and we still hope to make Friendly Leaves a welcome friend and counsellor to our younger Members whom we love so well, as we venture to think and hope it has been to these for many years past; but we should like our Friendly Work to take the same place to our elder Members, and to those who have a little more time perhaps for reading and self-improvement than the younger ones; we should like to bring them also some cheer, and help, and sympathy in their toiling and often very lonely lives, well knowing that the more they advance into womanhood, the more they realise its high and deep responsibilities, the more they will welcome such sympathy and such cheer from one of their own friendly band. To you, then, dear readers, each and all, we appeal, and if you ask how best you can help, we answer-in many ways:— answers to letters received will appear and the letters themselves too, if desired, and if thought suitable for publication; and also of the Correspondence Class announced in this number. In short, we would take every means in our power to make our Society a reality to our elder Members, to stir their hearts to give more through it, and to take more from it; and we would make Friendly Work the medium of communication between ourselves and them. An ambitious aim is ours, perhaps you will say; but where should we be without a little well-directed ambition; or rather-how should we accomplish any work for good at all without a great faith? At all events, dear friends, we will do our best, and if you will put your shoulders to the wheel, the wheel will turn, and we shall succeed. We ask your prayers for our 'friendly work' of all kinds during the coming year, and may He, whose blessing alone has prospered our G. F. S. till now, use even this our humble 1. By taking in the magazine yourself, and magazine to His honour and glory. May His inducing your friends to do so too. 2. By communicating with your Editor as to what will make the magazine most pleasing and helpful to yourselves. 3. By using the magazine as a means of promoting your own 'friendly work' for others; encouraging each other in starting work for the good of your fellow-Members, and suggesting plans for such work which many of you might often do far more easily than we could, from your more intimate knowledge of their surroundings. 4. We hope that you may tell us how best we could help you to join together for mutual benefit and improvement, whether as to Lodges, Classes, or Club-rooms; or how we could help you individually in your reading, or your study of the Bible, or your work. We trust that you will avail yourselves of the Correspondence column which we intend to open, in which Spirit breathe through its pages, and 'consecrate their service' unto Him, that so they may foster all that is true, and pure, and womanly, and loving, amongst our Elder Members, the future wives and mothers of England. Once more, dear readers, 'A Merry Christmas and a happy New Year when it comes'!From your old Friend in the Girls' Friendly Society, M. E. TOWNSEND, BY THE REV. CANON AWDRY. HEN Advent comes round, and our minds are turned to the 'Coming' of our Lord, two 'Comings' divide our thoughts. We think first, perhaps, how He came as man in weakness and poverty, born into this world on the first Christmas Day to save us, and then we pass on to His second coming as God to judge us. These are His two Advents to the whole world at once, and if we like we may add to them the many times and ways in which He makes His presence known to us one by one. In sickness, in unexpected invitations to work or suffer for Him, in shame or penitence, suddenly bringing home to us a sin which we had before indulged and not been conscience-smitten, under the influence of some sermon, or prayer, or companionship, or at Holy Communion, we become aware that Christ has come to us. These, and such as these, are advents of our Lord to us for our salvation. They are ways in which that first coming of His for all the world on Christmas Day is made our own-yours and mine. He seems to say to us 'I came to save you, and see, here I am; your own heart, your own experience shall bear witness that I am come and offer you the salvation which I purchased for all.' real. Such times, times when we are sure that Christ is with us, are very precious, and very Store up the memory and the certainty of them, and keep it safe against the dry, hard times, when He seems far away, and we may be tempted to think that it was after all a fancy, a mistake. And if these are His comings to us one by one for our salvation, so the death of friends, and those losses of health and strength which are the stepping-stones towards death, and above all our own death itself, are warnings that each one has of that second coming to judgment. Thus Jesus Christ has His little advents to each of us, which are symbols of His two great comings for salvation and for judgment to all mankind To us one of those great Advents is past, the other future. But to the writers of the Old Testament both were future, and much of what is difficult in their prophecies becomes clear if we remember this. we remember this. They prophesied the Advent of Christ, and they knew of only one Advent; but two were before the mind of God Who was speaking by them, and the two were often blended together in those prophecies. Thus Malachi says,' Behold, I will send My messenger, and he shall prepare the way before Me: and the Lord, whom ye seek, shall suddenly come to His temple, even the Messenger of the covenant, whom ye delight in; behold, He shall come, saith the Lord of hosts. But who may abide the day of His coming? and who shall stand when He appeareth? for He is like a refiner's fire, and like fullers' soap.' We know that in these verses there is a prophecy of our Lord's first coming, for our Lord Himself quotes the first words in speaking of John the Baptist: This is he of whom it is written, Behold, I send My messenger before Thy face.' Yet it is clear that the meaning of these and the verses that follow is not exhausted yet. They look forward also beyond our day to a new Jerusalem, and to a trial of all mankind in which the Lord whom we seek shall come and sit' as a judge upon His throne, refining and purifying His people, and burning away the dross from the gold and silver in a far sterner judgment. Malachi knew and foretold that Christ should come, and that the result would be the salvation of some and the judgment of all. But that there would be two Advents he did not foresee. We who live between the two can recognise that part of the prophecy has been wonderfully fulfilled, and we are sure therefore that the rest will be fulfilled in God's good time, and we see, too, that God from the beginning knew and purposed it all, though He revealed only a part of His purpose to the prophet. And what is true of this prophecy is true of many more. They are but half fulfilled as yet. We look back to part of them and forward for the rest. Does this idea seem fanciful to any one? Look, then, at St. Matthew, xxiv. and xxv., our Lord's wonderful prophecy of the destruction of Jerusalem and the end of the world. The disciples, as He left the temple for the last time, called His attention to its glorious masonry, which looked as if it would stand for ages. 'Master,' they said, 'see what manner of stones and what buildings are here!' and He replied, 'Seest thou these great buildings? There shall not be left one stone upon another that shall not be thrown down.' And so the holy company passed out through the city gate, and down the mountain on which the city was built, and across the bed of the brook Cedron, and began to climb the steep side of the Mount of Olives, and then on the hillside our Lord sat down to rest, looking straight across the valley at those beautiful buildings, scarcely half a mile off, whose doom He had just pronounced in such brief, solemn words. They had gone so far, probably, in silence, pondering over what He said; and now, as He sits down, those two pairs of brothers, Peter and Andrew, James and John,' who were the nearest to Him of all the Apostles, came to Him and asked Him privately, 'Tell us, when shall these things be?' When, that is, shall not one stone be left upon another in the temple of Jerusalem; and what shall be the sign of Thy coming and of the end of the world?' Probably they thought, like Malachi, that all their questions referred to the various features of but one great event, the Advent of the Lord in glory. They supposed that the overthrow of Jerusalem would be a part of the great crash at the end of the world. If so, our Lord certainly did not enlighten them on this. He answered both parts of their question, and we can say that the earlier part of His reply tells of the fall of the city. It speaks of Jerusalem compassed with armies, and the escape through those armies of the Christians, while the unbelievers remained and perished in the city. But though, before the end of chapter xxiv. we are quite sure that we are reading about the 'signs of His coming, and of the end of the world,' and the *Compare St. Mark, xiii. whole of chapter xxv. has to do with the great Judgment Day, we cannot say at what point in His prophecy our Lord's glance passes on from the judgment which was to fall upon the Holy City only forty years after He spoke it, and sweeps away into the far future to things not yet fulfilled. As He carried the eyes of His disciples onward to the end, so let our Advent thoughts lead us thither too, looking for and hasting unto the coming of our Lord Jesus Christ.' Let Christmas and the bright days which follow it tell their own sweet tale of Christ coming to save, and let us prepare ourselves to value it as we should when it comes by using these weeks of Advent in looking forward to His Second Coming to judge us with the world. And first, I say, Look forward; Live for the future, not in the past. Self-examination and sorrow for sin are good; but why? Not for themselves, but because by them our future life may be better. Our Christian life is compared to a race and a battle. But the man who is running a race keeps his eyes on what is before him in the course. 'Forgetting the things which are behind, and reaching out unto those things which are before, he must press towards the mark for the prize.' The soldier must keep his face turned forward towards the enemy, not backward to his comrades, unless it is to call them forwards too. And that to which we must look forward as the real end of our race-or rather as the prize-giving to the winners of it-is the Coming of the Lord. Not even the best thoughts and memories of things that are past can take the place of this earnest looking forward to the Lord's return. For remember how, as soon as ever our ascending Lord had passed through the cloud from His disciples' sight, angels were at hand to bid them not to gaze at His departing, but to look, and, of course, to prepare for His return: 'Ye men of Galilee,' they said, 'why stand ye gazing up into heaven? This same Jesus which is taken up from you into heaven shall so come in like manner as ye have seen Him go into heaven.' And we too, like the early Christians, may often recall ourselves and one another to duty with the words Maran angels, and even from His own Son when He atha*The Lord is at hand.' And, next, if we are looking forward to the Coming of our Lord, we shall watch; we shall keep our souls awake and on the alert, that whenever He comes, He may find us at our post doing what He would wish us to do. And if you ask what our post is, and what the duty is which we should wish to be found doing when He comes, I answer, Anything that is innocent in itself, and suitable for us to do, and which does. not go against our conscience. If He comes and finds you at your work or at your play, at the table, asleep in bed, or praying, it does not matter, so long as what you were doing was right for you to do at that time. You are at your appointed post, and may welcome Him when He comes. Only be always at your proper post where you ought to be, and doing the things you ought to do, 'for at such an hour as ye think not the Son of Man cometh.' And this leads on to another thought. If we are to look onward to our Lord and wait for His return, if it is one of our chief duties to watch for Him, we may naturally ask, When will He come? But the answer is that we cannot know, for it is God's intention that we should not. We can be ready, we can be watching, but we cannot know. Even to the Apostles it was, 'At such an hour as ye think not the Son of Man cometh.' Nay, more; to our Lord Himself as man on earth it was unknown, for 'Of that day and that hour knoweth no man; no, not the angels which are in heaven; neither the Son, but the Father.' He may come before these words have time to reach your hands, or he may wait yet millions of years, and we must watch as though we knew that He was to come this-night; but we are not to guess how soon it will be, and we may be quite sure that such guessing is both useless and wrong. think that we shall find out the 'secret times and seasons which the Father has put in His own power,' and concealed from the Apostles, the Do we * Maran atha (1 Cor. xvi. 22) seems to have been a sort of Advent watchword with which Christians greeted one another. In the language spoken by the Jews of our Lord's day it means, 'The Lord cometh." was living upon earth? People sometimes are disturbed by guesses and calculations of this kind; more than once the whole Christian world. has been upset by them. Let us put them aside and wait on in quietness and patience, sure that by guessing neither we nor any one can find it out, but that if we stay quietly at our post doing our duty, it will find us ready, and bring us nothing but good. And when it comes we shall all know. All mankind on the earth and in the grave will know it at once. No fear that we shall not see His coming, or that we shall see it late. Wherever we are, whichever way we are looking, we instantly perceive the lightning flash, and as the lightning cometh out of the East, and shineth even unto the West, so shall also the Coming of the Son of Man be.' God grant that when the day comes we may be found looking forward, ready, watching, waiting patiently for God's good time, and then we shall rejoice to welcome Him at His last great Advent. The Holy Child. OME to the Manger in Bethlehem, A Child with a heart so loving and large, But the heart of the world is far too small Come to the Manger in Bethlehem ; We will think of the Child, and the thought of Him We will kiss His Holy Hands and Feet, And the more the cold world turns Him out, E. H. MITCHELL. |