"Among the old war pictures I remember one of a captain of artillery bringing his battery into action. His whole soul was in the effort to rally his men and guns on the line. You could hear the thunderous roll of the wheels, crushing over all unevenness and hindrance, the frantic straining of the horses, the fearless, intense resolution of the men, and above all, the captain waving his sword, shouting his commands - but shot dead just as the guns wheel into line. Our Captain died rallying us, but He rose again, and He still has His dying enthusiasm of love for each one of us." - Franklin Noble, "Sermons in Illustration."
"My thoughts are nothing like your thoughts," says the LORD. "And my ways are far beyond anything you could imagine. Isaiah 55:8
It is folly to think that only those things are of value to us which we can intellectually understand. Is the vast deep of the ocean nothing to me, since I can not move about freely and closely examine its depths? And if I must confess that 'way down are untold mysteries which human eye has never seen, what matters it? Can not I rejoice in the roar of the waves, in the ebb and flow of the tides, and in the flight of the clouds? Why will men insist, their poor, finite reasoning, on fathoming the deep things of God, instead of drinking to the full from the inexhaustible source of assurance and consolation? -- E. F. Stroter, "The Glory of the Body of Christ."
" I can do all things through Christ which strengtheneth me." Philippians 4:13 (KJV)
Mr. Edmund Driggs, of Brooklyn, gives a motto that came into his life like an influence, and greatly helped him toward success. At the age of fifteen he left home to engage with an older brother in the freighting business on the Hudson River. The first duty he performed on the vessel was to go aloft to reef the pennant-halyards through the truck of the topmast, which was forty feet above the top of the mainmast, without any rigging attached thereto. When the sailing-master had arranged the halyards over his shoulder, with a running bowline under his right arm, he ordered him aloft. The new sailor looked at the sailing-master and then aloft, and then asked the question, "Did anybody ever do that?" "Yes, you fool," was the answer. "Do you suppose that I would order you to do a thing that was never done before?" The young sailor replied, "If anybody ever did it, I can do it." He did it. That maxim has been his watchword through life. Though he is now over seventy years of age, he is still engaged in active business life, and whatever enterprise he undertakes the watchword still is, "If anybody ever did it, I can do it."(Text.) - Wilbur F. Crafts, "Successful Men of To-day."
As an illustration of adaptability to circumstances and the willingness to take chances in order to achieve results of any kind, of the men who open up another country to civilization, a recent incident is instructive:
A little schooner reached Seattle recently from Nome, on Bering Sea. She had madethe voyage down during the most tempestuous season of the year in the North Pacific, and had survived storms which tried well-found steamships of the better class. Yet there was not a man on board, from the captain down, who had ever made a voyage at sea, save as passengers, on a boat running to Alaska. There were no navigating instruments on board save a compass and an obsolete Russian chart of the North Pacific.
These men wanted to come out for the winter, and there was no other way within their means to accomplish the trip. They got hold of the schooner and they started with her. They were not seamen or navigators, simply handy men who were accustomed to doing things for themselves. This was out of the routine, but they did it.
The men who made the voyage down from Nome in a little schooner without any previous knowledge of seamanship probably nothing remarkable in the feat. They were used to doing things that had to be done with the material that came to hand, whether they knew anything about how it should be done or not.Seattle Post-Intelligencer
A friend once asked an aged man what caused him to complain so often at eventide of pain and weariness, "Alas," replied he, "I have every day so much to do. I have two falcons to tame, two hares to keep from running away, two hawks to manage, a serpent to confine, a lion to chain and a sick man to tend and wait upon."
"Well, well," commented his friend, "you are busy indeed! But I didn't know that you had anything to do with a menagerie. How, then, do you make that out?"
"Why," continued the old man, "listen. Two falcons are my eyes, which I must guard diligently; the two hares are my feet, which I must keep from walking in the ways of sin; the two hawks are my hands which I must train to work, that I may provide for myself and those dependent on me as well as for a needy friend occasionally; the serpent is my tongue, which I must keep ever bridled lest it speak unseemly; the lion is my heart, with which I have a continual fight lest evil things come out of it, and the sick man is my whole body, which is always needing my watchfulness and care. All this daily wears out my strength." Du Quoin Tribune
There is a peculiar propriety in the name "No Man's Land," which has been applied to the group of rocky snow-clad islands four hundred miles to the north of the North Cape of Norway, once spoken of as East Greenland, and appearing on all modern maps as Spitzbergen. Wintering on these islands is practically impossible to civilized man. There are myriad petrels and gulls and wild geese in summer.
For two centuries the whalers and sealers - Swedes, Danes, Dutch, Norwegians -frequented these islands in summer months. The right whale disappeared. The seals became fewer. Visits to the islands became less frequent. Now coal has been discovered in such beds as to justify civilization in taking cognizance of "No Man's Land."
The United States accepted the invitation of Norway to take part in an international conference, at Christiana, to consider the government of Spitzbergen. Russia, Great Britain, Sweden, Germany and Denmark were invited. There is not much doubt that a form of government will be devised and a full agreement reached.
This is a significant movement toward extending law in some form to every bit of territory on the earth's surface. A century hence it will perhaps be impossible to find a square foot of earth that can be called "No Man's Land." Brooklyn Eagle. (1910)
"The wild animals honor me, the jackals and the owls, because I provide
water in the wilderness and streams in the wasteland, to give drink to
my people, my chosen, the people I formed for myself that they may proclaim my praise." Isaiah 43:20-21
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