Apostle Paul says in the second chapter of his Epistle to the Philippians: "Work out your own salvation with fear and trembling; for it is God which worketh in you both to will and to do of His good pleasure." God works, and we work. All that we need is sincerity that will cause us to keep trying, and that is the one and only condition of God's helping. For all the purposes of our Christian lives we are as strong as God is, however weak and unworthy we may be in ourselves. The bruised reed does not break, the smoking flax is not quenched. The sacrifices of God are a broken spirit and a contrite heart. Not the self-righteous, but the self-emptied, are accepted of Him. To will and to do are right in their place. To wait and still to wait, when strength is gone, in patience possessing our souls, pleases God no less.

ON THE WING

From Sayings Here and There.'

JACOB'S ladder has its foot where rests the head of any trusting disciple in every clime under every sky: its top is in the light that always shines undimmed.

A creed that says nothing about holiness cannot have in it much concerning the heaven described in the Bible-for which heaven, holiness is the preparation.

A unified Church, an edified individual sainthood, and a glorified humanity—this is the logical order and the sure word of promise.

The New Testament teaching with regard to fraternal reconciliations is very explicit. This teaching applies to organizations as well as to individuals. The mock dignity and the wrath that is kept warm by nursing have no New Testament sanction.

The holy scriptures allow a reasonable regard for the good opinion of our fellow-man as an allowable motive for a human life; but all history, both sacred and profane, demonstrates that in all cases where this motive is dominant the lives are blasted.

Job's well-meaning friends gave him more comfort before they began to talk than they did afterward. When you do not know what to say, be silent.

Any believer who allows himself or herself to be easily diverted from secret prayer will not keep it up long.

The tree that fell in the high wind had been rotting at the heart for years. The end of secret sin is a catastrophe.

Heavenly grace does not insure infallibility of judgment and taste. Your friends have to bear with you; try to bear with them.

The sin that pleases your imagination has already damaged your soul.

A hopeful sign of growth in grace is the abatement of the fault-finding spirit. The man who hears nothing but discords is himself out of tune.

Faith is practical choice. If you stop short of actual choice you may call it desire or aspiration, but it is not faith.

That is a notable climax in the description of a good man where it is said he shall not be afraid of evil tidings. That was an Old Testament believer; have you reached that plane?

Your secret trouble is the pivot on which your life is turning, the crucial test of your innermost quality and tendency. Weak natures wither under the effects of non-appreciations; strong natures grow stronger.

Many a true disciple who keeps hoping that God will open to him a sphere of service will at last awake to see that he has all the time been doing the very work his Master wanted done, and his heart will be filled with a great surprise and a mighty joy.

Keep impatience from your voice, and you will thereby find a help in keeping it from your spirit as well. The physical and the spiritual react on each other by a law of God.

The love of scholarship for its own sake is little better than the love of money for its own sake. Some of our idolatries have soft names.

Early in the history of the New Testament Church the disciples were warned against "doubtful" disputations. That is the kind against which a warning is always in order. The average disciple ought to be able to discern, and be resolute in avoiding all such.

When the Old Testament philosopher and saint exhorted us to trust God for deliverance in six troubles, with the assurance that in seven no evil shall touch us, he spoke a word in season for many to whom has come the seventh trouble. It always comes before life's battle is ended. But it brings discipline and strength and blessedness to the trusting soul. We may not escape our seventh trouble, but we may be all the better for having had it.

The average young man is more or less conceited. So is the average old man. But conceit is more resented in the young man, and therefore it is well for him to take special care to avoid it. The conceited old man is usually regarded as incurable, and it is thought to be of no use to dig around a dead tree.

The wording of the promise of our Lord is: "Lo, I am with you alway." This means that from the moment you look to that Sun of righteousness with the eye of faith, there is no need that you should ever thereafter walk in darkness for one

moment.

When you have done your part, the visible results seem to depend largely upon the volition and coöperation of other parties. But you may rest assured that in the spiritual sphere cause and effect are as certain as in the natural. No good work was ever thrown away in this world, which belongs to God.

HENRY LYNDEN FLASH

[1835- 1

WH

CLARENCE OUSLEY

HILE Edmund Clarence Stedman has demonstrated that finance is not altogether incompatible with poetry, still it is no doubt true that he would have been the greater poet if he had been the less banker. On the other hand, perhaps he would have been the greater banker if he had not been a poet. So it is with Henry Lynden Flash, one of the Southern war poets, whose Pegasus was somewhat fettered by the prosy business of merchandising. It is a great pity, from the standpoint of art, that the making of poetry is no sort of an occupation for the man who desires the comforts of life. While we do not live by bread alone, still, bread is the staff of life; and we must live, and only in rare instances can one earn his bread by applying the rule of verse. When Flash said, "The South prefers potatoes to poetry," and turned his attention to business, he declared a fact of universal observation and the experience of many men and women who have the talent to sing, but not the time or opportunity to listen to the muse or vocalize her inspiration. Many clever poets are unknown-or undeveloped and little known— and the world waxes fat without realizing that a little less provender and a little more literature would promote a healthier state of society, spiritual as well as physical.

Let us be thankful, therefore, that this poet was not wholly devoted to the fleshpots. He has given us some poetry that takes high rank by any standard and deserves a prominent place in literary annals. His poems, "Confederate Flag," "Zollicoffer," and "Leonidas Polk," are the children of a warrior poet-full blooded and high-minded-for he was a soldier as well as a singer, and as aide to General Joseph Wheeler in the war between the States, he lived the thrilling experiences of the camp, the march and the charge, and these gave him the color and the action for stirring lines. Like other Southern soldiers of broad patriotism, he became reconciled in due time to the verdict of the court of war, and learned to love anew the flag of our reunited country. His poem upon the occasion of the Confederate Reunion at Los Angeles, California, September 25, 1897, easily ranks with the best class of notable poems that have celebrated the mutual esteem and patriotism of those who wore the

gray and those who wore the blue. This stanza will suffice to show the pathos and simple eloquence of the poem:

"We are gathered here a feeble few

Of those who wore the gray

The larger and the better part

Have mingled with the clay;
Yet not so lost but now and then,
Through dimming mist, we see

The deadly calm of Stonewall's face,

The lion front of Lee."

The last two lines exhibit the poet's talent for striking metaphor and tense realism:

"The deadly calm of Stonewall's face,

The lion front of Lee."

They recall to my mind a powerful description of the burning of a Christian in the days of religious persecution. I cannot place the author or the incident, but I shall never forget the phrase, "The pale-faced martyr, in his shirt of flame." I can see the pallid, firmset, heroic countenance, framed in fire, and I can hear the resolute words of the Master, "Not my will, but Thine, be done," smothering the involuntary cries of mortal agony. Flash has much the same power of expression. These two lines of eleven words carve the figures of the two great Confederate generals more enduringly upon the mind of the imaginative reader than a whole volume of descriptive prose.

In another poem, "The Shadow of the Valley," we find illustration of a far different mood. While this poem is lacking in the finished art and delicate phrasing which come by painstaking and tedious effort, still there runs through it all the genuine poetical spirit and the true poetical observation. We find imagery and no small genius for expression. This stanza is very beautiful:

"And no slab of pallid marble

Rears its white and ghastly head,

Telling wanderers in the valley

Of the virtues of the dead;

But a lily is her tombstone,

And a dewdrop, pure and bright,

Is the epitaph an angel wrote,

In the stillness of the night."

There is something here of Poe's touch, with just a suggestion