The Birmingham age-herald. [volume] (Birmingham, Ala.) 1902-1950, 1906-11-25

the person with whom / want to talk.
You say you are Il family man. You
say you would be willing to give up GER
tain evenings Of your life to serve Christ
If thereby you would not have to neglect
your home duties. Go forth and invite
to your own homo the young men and
the young women who are living In
boarding houses. Ask them sometimes to
supper. Surround them with the influ-
ences of your Christian home. You cam
not serve God better than by working
for Him In just this way. want to tell
YOU the history of a noble Christian wo-
man and what she did In city of the
east.
This lady was not wealthy She had
but little money and a family of growing
children She had to do her own house
work. Man may go forth into work and
to his labor until the evening but this
woman had to work in the evenings as
we'll So she said to herself: Il can do
little, but that little l will do for my
Master" My home shall always be my
Saviour's home. and every one l can
welcome here in His name l gladly will.
She went to work for Christ. She gath
cred up a large Sunday school class or
bows who for the most part were home
less By that I mean those boys who
were away from their fathers and moth
ers and living in boarding houses. There
were eighteen or twenty of them. These
she used to invite to her home. Every
week she would have some of them to
dinner. Her parlors were their parlors.
Her books were their books. When they
were sick she took them into her own
home and cared for them. Would you
like to know the result of that humble
Christian wornan's life? When I was
called to my Chicago church l found
every one of the members of that Chris
tian ladys Sunday school class harnessed
up in Christian work. Although these
young men had been boarding house
bows when they first came to Chicago,
they were then grown up men, all OF
them members of the church of Jesus
Christ and working in His vineyard. Can
not YOU do the same for Christ? Can you
not make your Christian home the place
Of spiritual refuge for those who have
no Chr stian homes and who can be won
for Jesus by gathering them around your
freside during the winter evenings?
But I cannot close this talk on evening
occupations without placing special en-
phasis upon the fact that at least a part
of each evening should be consecrated to
God for studying His holy word and for
PRAYER 1t should be the time when we
should go off alone to read the Bible or to
open the dear book in the midst of our
loved ones and find in it the messages
which God has written for US and the
divine commandments which teach MS
how to live and how to die The major
ity of people never study the Bible intel
ligently They rarely read it alone. Tt is
to them a sealed book except as 1t is in
terpreted for them by the pulpit. 1t is
lust as much a sealed book as during the
dark ages when no layman was allowed
to touch 1t any more than profane hands
could touch the holy of holes during
Mosaic times
Reading the Bible.
You rarely read the Bible. Yet you are
an intelligent woman. You are one of
the leaders of the womans club You
take a very active part in that organi-
cation. Only short time ago you read
before il an essay on Robert and Eliza
beth Barrett Browning. Why lid you
not take that Sunday school class of
young girls the other day when our sun
day school superintendent asked you to
do 1t? You made this excuse and that
excuse and the other excuse. You did
not tell the real reason. The real reason
why you did not become teacher OF
that class Of young girls was because
you did not know your Bible, and you
were ashamed to expose your ignorance
Your ignorance OF the Bible is so ap-
pallng that ! do not believe you know
whether the Book of Corinthians is in
the Old Testament or the New. do not
believe you could tell me, to save your
life. why Jesus was born in Bethlehem
or why Moses was not allowed to enter
the promised land. Now, you would
laugh at a woman who was ignorant as
to suppose that Goethe wrote Hamlet
or that Alfred TennNson was the author
of "Thanatopsis" Yet YOU are so igno-
rant of Gods word that you could not
become a teacher OF a Sunday school
class Of little girls So, my friends. some