This book written in wartime to minister comfort and if it may be to reinforce hope and faith is dedicated by permission to Sir John R. Jellicoe G.C.B., K.C.V.O. Admiral of the Grand Fleet...

“There are nettles everywhere, But smooth green grasses are more common still; The blue of heaven is larger than the cloud.” E. B. Browning...

If any one of us knows a word of hope or has picked up a message of comfort anywhere, it is his plain duty to share it, these days. We owe it to each other to cherish as exceeding precious, and to pas...

The prophet Ezekiel once had an extraordinary vision of God. He tries to tell us about it, but his description seems to be a meaningless jumble of cherubim, and wheels⁠—wheels within wheels, complex, ...

Some time ago I came across the life-motto of George Stephenson, the “father of the locomotive,” as he has been called, the man whose brains and sagacity made possible the network of railways which sp...

When a man like the writer of Ecclesiastes gives his views on life, it is worth everybody’s while to listen. A tabloid of experience is worth a ton of theory. And it is from his own knowledge of men a...

Jesus is Himself the best witness as to what He was, and what He wished to do for men. It is a fact, moreover, for which we cannot be too thankful that, in explaining Himself, Jesus used not the langu...

In popular and condensed form, the golden rule according to Ecclesiastes is, “Do it well and do it now.” His own words are, “Whatsoever thy hand findeth to do, do it with thy might, for there is no wo...

That is what Joseph did when his feelings nearly overmastered him at the sight of his brother Benjamin standing before him, all unconscious of who he was. He “sought where to weep,” says the record wi...

When Jesus said, upon one occasion, that He had not where to lay His head, He was speaking the bitter and literal truth. He had really no home of His own, but was everywhere a wanderer, dependent on o...

“It is vain for you,” says the writer of the 127th Psalm, “to rise early and sit up late and eat the bread of sorrow, for so He giveth to His beloved (in their) sleep.” That is the true reading, and I...

We read the 42nd chapter of Isaiah now as if it were a part of the Christian Evangel. And that is right. For whoever the Servant may have been, of whom Isaiah was thinking, it is Christ and only Chris...

In his letter to the Christians at Rome, the Apostle Paul counsels them not to let their “good be evil spoken of.” And at first we ask ourselves if this is a possible thing. Can you have good that is ...

We are proud to believe that, in the article of courage, our men are second to none in the world. They have glorious traditions to live up to, and they are adding to these pages⁠—nay, a whole volume, ...

Once upon a time Jeremiah the prophet had asked for only one thing, that he might get away from that strange cityful of perverse men to whom it was his hard lot to be the mouthpiece of a God they were...

It is never hard to connect the presence of our Lord and Master Jesus Christ with our Sabbaths and our hours of worship. If ever Christ comes near us in spirit at all, we say, it is when in the quiet ...

Gashmu is a mere name in Scripture. He is mentioned only three times⁠—twice as acting with Sanballat against Nehemiah, and once as the authority for a false piece of news. It is reported, wrote Sanbal...

You know how, in a happy home, the near approach of a birthday is signalised, how parcels are mysteriously smuggled in and hidden in secret places, and, though everything seems to be going on as usual...

We are often told that this is not an age of faith, that the day of the beautiful, old, simple acquiescence is past, whether it ever comes again or not. Someone has wittily suggested that the coat of ...

Let us talk about joy, and especially that kind of it of which Nehemiah was thinking when he said, “The joy of the Lord is your strength.” It is strange that while practically everybody would agree as...

There is a phrase which echoes through the Old Testament like the refrain of some solemn music⁠—the “God of Jacob.” “The God of Jacob,” says the 46th Psalmist, “is our refuge.” Yet when you think of i...

A well-known writer relates that, when passing through Edinburgh once, he saw a procession of Friendly Societies, and observed on one of the banners the name emblazoned, The Order of the Juniper Tree....

When John Wesley was on his way home from Georgia, he wrote this record of the voyage in his Journal:⁠—“Being sorrowful and very heavy (though I could give no particular reason for it) and utterly unw...

The world has a scheme of redemption of its own, and men can themselves do something for the brother who has fallen. But the plan involves, invariably, a change of surroundings. Worldly wisdom says, o...

Nabal, says the Bible, was a churl. When David sent his men to request some provender, in return for services rendered, this ill-mannered sheep-farmer broke out, “Who is David? There be many servants ...

It sounds improbable that though a whole army was trying to kill Ahab, it should be an arrow which a man shot at a venture, or as the Hebrew has it, quaintly, “in his simplicity”⁠—when twanging his bo...

“Wherever this Gospel is preached, this that she had done shall be told as a memorial of her.” What a gracious memorial, and how worthy of it was Mary’s beautiful outburst of generosity! But what a pi...

In one of his letters, Paul declares that he knows both how to be abased and how to abound. Most people, who did not stop to think, would be inclined to assert that the second of these lessons did not...

Moses, adds one commentator significantly, was then eighty years of age. By the ordinary standards, he was an old man, yet he had not lost his youthful sense of wonder. It is a good sign, the best of ...

If it were a conceivable thing that we had to part with all the words of Scripture save one, and if we were allowed to choose that one, there are some of us who would elect to retain that great declar...

Christmas in war time was like an evil dream. Easter is like a breath from Heaven itself, a wind from the pure and blessed heights of God blowing the clouds of battle-smoke apart for a brief space so ...

“The sky,” says Ruskin, “is the part of Nature in which God has done more for the sake of pleasing man, more from the sole and evident purpose of touching him, than in any other of His works.” It look...

Written in February. ↩ I wish to acknowledge my indebtedness to Sir Wm. Robertson Nicoll’s “When the Wounded Go Home,” a tender and courageous message. ↩...