Rensselaer Republican, Volume 19, Number 49, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 11 August 1887 — RELIGIOUS NOTES. [ARTICLE]

RELIGIOUS NOTES.

Phillips Brooks: You picture to yourself the beauty of bravery and steadfastness. You let your imagination wander in delight over the memory of martyrs who have died for truth. And then some little, wretched, disagreeable duty comes, which is your martyrdom, the lamp for your oil; and if you will not do it, how your oil is spilt! How flat and thin and unilluminated your sentiment about the martyrs runs out over your sejf-indulgent, lifa The Rev. Dr.- Tillett, of Vanderbilt University, recently visited a Mormon Sunday-school while in Salt Lake City, As he entered the infant class department a temporary teacher was saying: “Well, boys, where is your teacher?” They all replied promptly in concert: “In the penitentiary.” The teacher then asked, “Is he there for doing right or for doing wrong?” All replied, “For doin right.” Dr. Tillett learned afterward that the man in question was serving a term for bigamy. Dr. Arnold’s daily prayer was as follows: “0 Lord, I have a busy world round me; eye, ear, and thought will

be needed for all my work to be done in this busy world. Now, ere I enter on it, I would commit eye and ear ana 1 thought to Thee. Do Thou bless them, and keep their work Thine, that as through Thy natural laws my 'heart beats and my blood flows withodl anythought of mine, so my spiritual life may hold on its course at these times when my mind cannot conspicuously turn to Thee to commit each particular thought to Thy service? Hear my prayer, for my dear Redeemer’s sake. Amen.” Rev. William Taylor: The nearer you come to the end of your days, you ought to hold earthly things more loosely and prize heavenly things more highly. When your business day is drawing to a close, you hasten to conclude your work, dipatching sometimes in an hour more than in all the day that went before. When Napoleon went on the field of Marengo it was late in the afternoon, and he said that the battle was really lost, but looking at the western sun, he said: “There is just time to recover the day!” and giving out his orders with rapid, and energy, he turned defeat into a victory. So, although your sun is near to setting, there is time to recover the day. Avail yourself of the eventide, lest your life end in eternal failure.

We are not in this world merely for the little things we can do, but also to have a work done in us, to be trained and disciplined for the higher service thilt awaits ns in the other life. Parents Beek to train their children, but in doing so thiy are themselves trained. Teachers teach their classes, but the reflex work which is wrought upon thenown lives is ofttimes greater than that which they do for their scholars. We sometimes chafe at the commonness and the littleness of the tasks that the day brings to us. We think we might do finer things. But possibly these are the very duties in the patient doing of which our lives shall grow into the rarest beauty and grace. At least, we shonld remember always that the things we do are not halfso important as the way we do them and the effects upon ourselves of the doing of them.