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December 3, 1913.
A FAMILY
PAPER,
THE CLEARING tlOUSE.
The few weeks yet remaining in the year
may be wisely used iu striking a balance, and
making the way clear for another year. WiU
not each one go into the clearing-house of the
heart, and wipe out every unpaid obligation?
.\ mortgage on the new year, to pay old
debts, will cripple us all the way through.
Let the mqrtgages be burned.
Our offerings to the Lord in His house
ou£;ht, as far as possible, to be presented
week by week. But, however watchful, the
account may be overlooked, or left unbalanced,
till there be a startling deficit. Why
should the deficit be either ignored, or carried
acrqss the line, into a year which will
have requirements that will test the strongest
heart!
The Covenanted Church has accepted great
responsibility of her .Lord in the missionfields.
The gospelizing of three and a quarter
The Guildhall speech of the British Prime
iMinister voiced his contentment with the desionaries;
million people; the support of forty misfacto
Mexican government. How about
the annual offering of $80,000 for Afghanistan and Thibet?
home and foreign missions; how great the
Henry Lane Wilson, the ex-United States
faith needed to grapple the task! Shall the
iMinister to Mexico, was also content with the
service be Tendered unto the Lord, with a
de facto situation, morals aside. The IVorld of
heroic will, and a strong heart? Or shall the
Church become as "a cart," creeking beneath
the load ?
Surely the Lord would not have laid the
work upon our hands, were not w^e fully able
this city said on November 25 :
"Hundreds of people in Washington paid
money to hear Henry Lane Wilson, now a
lecturer, say, as if proclaiming a great dis-'
to go up and possess the land. Let us not
covery: 'The finalresult of the present Mexican
policy will be to involve this country
argue ourselves into a fatal fallacy, by saying
that these obligations have been created
by Synod. The fields have been entered at
in a responsibility for the kind of rule existing
the command of Jesus-—"Go." The work has
in all countries between the Rio Grande
increased On our hands by the law of growth.
Our obligations to follow up the work are
and the canal.' If that is not the President's
precise purpose he has written and spoken
surely of the Lord.
many times in vain. The canal itself is no
What we need, first of all, for a happy
more a fact than the determination of this administration
to safeguard that waterway
clearance on December 31, is a glad
spirit, the heart joyful in the Lord
Jesus, overflowing with praise, glorying
against foreign aggression and domestic disorder.
in the cross of Christ and triumphant in salvation
We may readily admit that this pohcy
wrought by the Lord. Such is the involves a moral idea. But like every other
life of those who live by faith. This is the correct idea, the policy has force behind it
rich life, the strong life, the onward life; the
and it will prevail."
life that crosses rivers, burns bridges, vanquishes
giants, overleaps walls, levels mountains.
Nothing is too hard foir the life of
faith to accomplish; for the Lord is its
strength. Will all our people get rid of every
vestige of pusillanimity before the year
is gone?
Then we need to cherish expectation. At
our last meeting oif Synod, the Holy Spirit
wrought wondrously. We were amazed as
Synod received a baptism of the Spirit and
of fire. Great expectations were created; visions
of the baptism of the Church and her
missions arose in many minds. Have the visions
vanished like a pleasant dream? Surely
not. Will we not prepare during these weeks
fcr the latter rain that will make all our
fields ripen with an unprecedented harvest?
Let u? get r\(\ of om embarrassments, mis-
EDITORIAL PAGE
JOHN W. PRITCHARD, Editor.
givings, unbeliefs and frettiiigs, and prepare
for our best Church year at home and in the
missions.
If the heart of each be deeply conscious of
salvation, singing all day long the praises of
the Lord, and ghirying in the privilege of serving
Jesus Christ, then will giving be a joy,
the giver will become hilarious (hilaros,
(ireck), each call for greater gifts will be
(hailed with delight; the $80,000.00 will be
so easily raised, that it will become a basis
for a larger call. Also, by the outpouring of
the Lloly Spirit we may expect each missionary
to bear fruit manifold above the present
rate.
AT PAN-AMERICAN MASS.
A Washington, D. C, dispatch of November
27, said: President Wilson, Secretary
Bryan and other Cabinet officers, all the diplomats
from Latin America, Chief Justice
White and Justice McKenna of the Supreme
Court and Senators, Representatives and
other public officials attended the fourth annual
Pan-American Thanksgiving celebration
with its attendant mass at St. Patrick's Church
today. At the luncheon held afterward in
the rectory toasts were drunk to President
Wilson, Secretary Bryan, Ambassador Da
Gama of Brazil and others, and appropriate
responses made. Monsignor Russell, in
toasting Secretary Bryan, said: "When we see
the representative^ pf 167,000,000 peo-ple
join together here in prayer and afterward in
amiable, cheerful communion around this
table, may we not rightly hope for some results
in peace, results that will warrant a
truer ami broader sigiiificance to Thanksgiving
Day ?"
A MORE SUT>^E WORD.
By Prof. D. B. Willson.
In Western Pennsylvania, some years ago,
a young man lay on his bed, wasting with
disease, and near his end. His sister, known
to me, was near him; and for his comfort,
came over familiar words of the hymn of
Dr. Watts:
"Jesus can make a dying bed
Eeel soft as downy pillows are.
While on his breast I lean my head,
And breathe my life out sweetly there."
The sufferer looked up to his sister and
said: "Not that, but where it is said:
" 'Like as a father pitieth his children, so
the Lord pitieth them that fear him. For he
knoweth our frame; he remembereth tihat we
are dust.' "
During the siege of Petersburg by the
Union Army in the winter of
1864-5, the
family of Roger A. Pryor occupied the farm
house on the outskirts near Fort Gregg. General
Pryor was a prisoner in Fort Lafayette,
and the family had little for their support.
Mrs. Pryor says in her Reminiscences of
Peace and War:
"One night all these things weighed more
heavily than usual upon me—the picket-firing,
the famine, the military executions, the
dear one 'sick and in prison.' I sighed audibly,
and my son, Theodorick, who slept
near me, asked the cause, adding: 'Why can
you not sleep, dear mother?' 'Suppose,' I replied,
'you repeat something for me.' He at
once commenced, 'Tell me not in mournful
numbers'—and repeated the 'Psalm of Life.'
I did not sleep, thO'Se brave words were not
stujng enough for the situation. He paused,
and presently his young voice 'broke the stillness
: 'Bless the Lord, O my soul, and all
that is wdthin me, bless His holy name,'—going
on to the end of the beautiful Psalm of
adoration and faith which nineteen centuries
have decreed to be in very truth a Psalm
of -Life." (Page 323,)
Yes, the Christian centuries have endorsed
this Old Testament Psalm. What it is to
stbre the mind with such a treasure as this
103rd Psalm! Shall we not continue to teach
these Psalms to our children, that they may
set their Ihope in God and have words of conr
solation in hotirs of darknt'ii?