But the men who have taken life to be a measure to be filled with the best thinking and the best doing they could pour into itthey are the pride and the glory of history. The biography of every great man like Gladstone, or Lincoln, or Barnardo, or Moody, or General Booth, teaches us how much the measure of life may be made to hold. Study lives like those and it is not a shallow cup. Life is shallow only when we are seeking to exhaust it; it enlarges as we seek to fill it. And the end of such a life is honor and peace. When that heroic man, Bishop Charles C. McCabe, drew near the end, he wrote a friend, a few weeks before the stroke of paralysis ended his toil on earth, of a bad break he had had in his health. He closed the letter by saying that the recent days of weakness and sleepless nights had brought to his mind a little poem found under the pillow of a dead soldier in Port Royal in 1862: I lay me down to sleep And little care Whether my waking find me Here or there. I am not eager-bold; All that is past. I'm ready not to do At last at last. My full day's work is done I give a patient God And grasp His banner still Tho all the stars be dim For stripes no less than stars Lead up to Him. THE LAMPS OF THE SKY "God made the two great lights; the greater light to rule the day, and the lesser light to rule the night: He made the stars also."-Gen. 1:16. W HAT great words these are and with what great themes they deal! Instinctively the mind and heart are lifted up and exalted. David says, "When I consider thy heavens, and the moon and the stars which thou hast ordained," then he is led off into great thoughts concerning God and man and his eternal destiny. Job says the same thing in his own grand way, "Stand still and consider the wondrous works of God." And when God answered Job out of the whirlwind He silenced him with the inquiry: "Where is the way to the dwelling-place of light? And as for darkness, where is the place thereof, that thou shouldest take it with a bound thereof, and that thou shouldest discern the paths to the house thereof? * Canst thou bind the clusters of the Pleiades or loose the bands of Orion? Canst thou lead forth the signs of the Zodiac in their season? Or canst thou guide the Bear with her train? Knowest thou the ordinances of the heavens? Canst thou establish the dominion thereof in the earth?" And again David says, "The heavens declare the glory of God; and the firmament showeth his handiwork." But David does not undertake to teach astronomy. The Bible does not profess to be a book of science. It is the Book of God. It is to reveal to men the presence of God in His world, and the Bible calls attention to the heavens, to the sun and the moon and the stars, as the witnesses of God's power and wisdom as well as the revelation of His benevolence and love. That To the reverent soul the stars in their courses and the moon in all her phases are lessons repeated every night of the thoughtful care of God toward His children. this heavenly witness of the majesty and love of God is silent, only puts terrible emphasis upon its testimony, for in all the great things silence is the law of the universe. The heavens are also universal teachers from pole to pole, o'ershadowing all nations and all peoples, the heavens bear their testimony and speak their message. "Two things," said Kant, "fill the soul with awe and wonder; the starry heaven above and the moral law within." As the moon and the stars speak to us by night and the sun by day, calling us to note and consider our relation with the highest heaven, so there is something in us to which the infinite God can speak. Pascal said, "Man is a worm; but then, he is a worm that thinks." Men may look to be very low and insignificant to us sometimes, but the scene changes when you reflect concerning the humblest man that he has relations with the infinite God who ordained the heavens and who is able to speak to this man in his inner soul and make him comprehend the meaning of such words as "Trust," "Duty," "Obedience," and "Religion." I am sure that it will be instructive and helpful to us to briefly consider some of the messages which come to us from these lamps in the sky. |