Insignificant Agents

       ''Nature shows how the weakness of God is immeasurably stronger than men; so does history with equal clearness. The oft-quoted saying, ''Providence is always on the side of the big battalions," is one with an imposing sound, but it is disproved by history over and over again. Some of the decisive battles of the world were won by the small battalions. More than once has the sling and the stone prevailed against the Philistine army. Battles are won by the big brain; and wherever that may be, slight weapons and resources are sufficient for splendid victories. Now the all-wise God sits on the throne of the world, and we are often filled with astonishment at the insignificant agents with which heaven smites its foes, and causes victory to settle on the banners of right and justice. The world's Ruler defeated Pharaoh with frogs and flies; He humbled Israel with the grasshopper; He smeared the splendor of Herod with worms; on the plains of Russia, He broke the power of Napoleon with a snowflake. God has no need to dispatch an arch- angel; when once He is angry, a microbe will do.'' W. L. Watkinson

A Motto for Every Home

 Whoe'er thou art that entereth here,
Forget the struggling world
And every trembling fear.

Take from thy heart each evil thought.
And all that selfishness
Within thy life has wrought.

For once inside this place thou'lt find
No barter, servant's fear,
Nor master's voice unkind.

Here all are kin of God above-
Thou, too, dear heart: and here
The rule of life is love.

What Do The Wrinkles Mean?

        I often wonder when I look in the faces of a large congregation of men and women, and see the furrows and wrinkles on the brows of the people before me, what has wrought these scars on the various faces. Sometimes I can see, plainly enough, that the man is a money-getter, and has worshiped day and night, through many years, before the altar of Mammon. I know that man got his scars in the service of gold. On another face there are certain indications of the worship of fashion ; and the scars, however it may be sought to cover them up, are unmistakably there. On other faces there are the lines of dissipation that tell of the gross worship of lust and appetite. But I see other wrinkles that warm my heart. They seem to me like the scars I saw on a sugar-maple in New Hampshire. It was an old tree, and every year for a hundred years somebody had been tapping it for the sweet sap in the springtime, and it had been giving its sugar to sweeten the world. The old tree's scars seemed beautiful to me, and I said to myself: "They are like the wrinkles on the face of a good man, or a noble woman; they are signs of age and burden-bearing, and are the scars that show where they have been tapped for sweetness."

The missing people...

       The loss of a friend is like that of a limb; time may heal the anguish of the wound, but the loss cannot be repaired. Southey

Song by a choir called 'The missing people'