The Ministry of Small Things

And whosoever shall give to drink unto one of these little ones a cup of cold water only, in the name of a disciple, verily I say unto you, he shall in no wise lose his reward.—Matthew 10:42.

In ordinary circumstances there is scarcely any act that can have less about it of self-denial and self-sacrifice than the gift to any one of a cup of cold water. The water is so abundant, and the gift of it involves so little cost or care, that it is bestowed without thought of obligation, rendered and received without thought of any gratitude being due. Here, however, our Lord brings into play a principle which dignifies and ennobles the simplest acts, and gives signal value to the smallest gifts. It is not the value of the gift in itself, but the end the giver had in view, and the spirit in which he gave it; it is not the gift, but the motive that the Lord causes to stand out in broadest relief before our eye. The gift may be great in itself, and yet, in so far as the spirit and motive of the giver are concerned, may be valueless. And, on the other hand, the gift or deed may be insignificant in itself, yet when coupled with the spirit and motive may be worthy of special cognizance and honour. More than all this—for here, withdrawing our minds from all vain and selfish motives, striking a death-blow at all self-seeking Pharisaism and hypocrisy, measuring men’s acts by the high standard of genuine love to Himself, as represented in the person of a disciple—our Lord leads us particularly to note that all acts are noble—are worthy of honour and reward—only as the motives of the actor are unselfish and loving, and spring out of regard to Christ Himself and respect to His name and glory. Thus, if we were to place in one scale of the balance what men should reckon the noblest deed or the noblest gift with only the love of self in it, and in the other scale the most insignificant act or gift with the love of Christ, and bestowed upon a disciple for His sake, that insignificant act or gift, thus freighted with love to Him, would immeasurably outweigh the other. Not only so, but if we take the Saviour’s estimate, He reckons the one as valueless, while He tells that the other shall not lack its reward.

I

Little Things

1. Life’s most perfect gifts, life’s most perfect mercies, are little things. “A cup of cold water.” We have sometimes become singularly blind. We set before ourselves as life’s most perfect prizes, the summing up of life, the essence of its bliss, the things which the experience of every age has proved have no relation to genuine bliss at all. We strive and deny ourselves, become untrue to our divinest longings, strangle our noblest instincts in order to possess them, and they leave us hungry and haggard as ever. But it is common things, single things, that quench thirst; not spiced wine, but the “cup of cold water.” Health, work, genuine friendship, the caresses of little children, the love that set its hand in yours one beautiful morning five-and-twenty years ago, which has become deeper, richer, sweeter, as your head has grown grey. God’s sweet, simple gifts! A soul which is always young, which is as fresh in old age as when it came first from the hand of God. That is life’s most precious wealth, life’s most perfect gift—the “cup of cold water.”

I saw a rich man’s Bible a little while ago, and on the inside cover there was gummed a little message of goodwill from a poor man, and the rich man found refreshment in it daily. It is a delightful study to go through the Epistles of St. Paul and to discover how many obscure people ministered to the great Apostle’s refreshment. “The Lord give mercy unto the house of Onesiphorus; for he oft refreshed me, and was not ashamed of my chain.” “I was refreshed by the coming of Fortunatus and Achaius.” These were all subordinate people; their names are linked with no great exploits; but they gave cups of cold water to a mighty Apostle, and kept his spirit strong.1 [Note: J. H. Jowett, in The Examiner, April 27, 1905.]

2. Our real salvation, the things which refresh and put heart into us, are the simplicities of the gospel—the cup of cold water. Charles Kingsley was a scientist, but he was a poet also in every fibre of his soul; and it is only a scientist who is a poet that can expound his own science. Charles Kingsley showed how the great volcanoes have been God’s most glorious workers. Every harvest in the fruitful plains of Europe is due to the beneficent work of the volcanoes ages ago; every grain of the rich soil was melted out of the solid granite. It is a romantic story, a perfect fairy tale, an enchantment, if you know how to read it, if you have the imagination to picture the whole process to yourself. But the embarrassed farmer with a hundred calls upon him, who finds it hard work to provide for his children, has little heart to think of those things; he only wonders what the next harvest is going to be. So the great mysteries of theology—they ought to be studied. Depend upon it that to give up thinking is to impoverish the gospel. But those matters are not our real salvation. There come times when those things are not bread, but stones—a highly flavoured and elaborately cooked feast, but we cannot eat it. You have laid out the table grandly. Like Ahasuerus at his banquet, you have set out “vessels of gold” and poured “royal wine” into them; but I am thirsty, and the fever is in my blood still; I crave for “a cup of cold water.” “God is love”; “God so loved the world, that he gave his only begotten Son”; “Believe on the Lord Jesus Christ, and thou shalt be saved”; “Him that cometh unto me I will in no wise cast out”; “Christ Jesus came into the world to save sinners”; “Where I am, there shall ye be also”; “I go to prepare a place for you”—that is the “cup of cold water”; I drink deep of it; it quenches my thirst; I am young again; despair is gone; I am master of life; nothing can quail me. It is the “cup of cold water” that we need.

I have heard that during the battle of Fredericksburg there was a little patch of ground which was occupied in turn by the contending forces. It was covered with the dead and the dying; and all through the afternoon of a weary day the cry was heard, “Water, water!” A Southern soldier begged of his captain to be allowed to answer those piteous cries, but met with the refusal, “No; it would be certain death.” He persisted, however, saying, “Above the roar of artillery and the crack of the muskets I hear those cries for water: let me go!” He set out with a bucket of water and a tin cup; for awhile the bullets sang around him, but he seemed to bear a charmed life. Then, as the Federals beyond the field perceived his purpose, the firing gradually ceased; and for an hour and a half there was an armistice, while the soldier in grey, in full sight of both armies, went about on his errand of mercy. Verily, that was the truce of God!

And this was the kindness of our Lord. He came from heaven to bring the cup of cold water to dying men. Ah, that was the greatest kindness that ever was known. It was the most sublime heroism too. But the firing did not cease when He came to us with the water from the well beside the gate at Bethlehem; His mercy toward us cost Him His life. What shall we render unto the Lord for His loving kindness?1 [Note: D. J. Burrell, The Unaccountable Man, 222.]

II

Small Services

1. There cannot seemingly be a more trivial service than a cup of cold water given to the passing traveller. So we think in this land, where springs of water and rivers abound, and where a cup of cold water can be so easily obtained. If, however, we go to the desert, as the weary traveller passes along it under the burning rays of an Eastern sun, how precious to him is the cup of cold water to allay his thirst! There have been seasons of famine when a loaf of bread was of more value than gold, and when he who brought it was the messenger of life to those who were starving with hunger and staring death in the face. It may seem a very trifling thing to pay a visit to the house of a poor disciple and leave there with him some small token of Christian kindness; yet the visit and the act may have been light and comfort to him in the hour of despondency and distress. The widow on our northern Highland coast who lost her only son in a storm because there was no light to guide his frail bark to the natural inlet of safety by the shore might seem to do a very slight thing when every evening thereafter at sundown she put her little lighted oil-lamp in the end window of her humble abode to burn till dawn of the morning; yet the trifling act, as some might reckon it, was the safety of many of the island fishermen in nights of storm. Could we bring before our eye all the results of the acts that in themselves seem but slight and insignificant, but which love to Christ has evoked, it would be found that they have formed the starting-point of influences that have told materially upon the well-being of mankind.

The other morning I saw an ingenious machine which told with the minutest exactitude the strength of a bar of metal put to the test. You had only to look at the indicator, and it told you within the hundredth fraction of a pound what weight that bar of metal could bear. So the smallest thing may indicate the force of Christian life, the store of Christian self-denial, the power of Christian service, there is in you.1 [Note: J. M. Jones, The Cup of Cold Water, 13.]

2. Few men have the opportunity of performing great things in the cause of the Lord. There are few that have great things, as these words are generally understood, to do in the way either of service or of sacrifice for Christ. All men cannot be missionaries, or devote the whole of their time to direct work in the vineyard of the Lord. All are not blessed with temporal abundance. Most Christian men are occupied in the business of the world, and have to engage in toil for their daily bread. Some, indeed, can command all their time, but most have little more than their Sabbaths and their savings to offer to the Master. They can give only a portion of their means and shreds of their time for labour in the vineyard of the Lord. They can give no more, for they have no more to give. But we can all do little things; and there are a hundred little things round about us which we can do, and which are crying to be done. In one of the very greatest of his poems Wordsworth speaks of

that best portion of a good man’s life,

His little, nameless, unremembered acts

Of kindness and of love.

And that is surely what every good man feels. If ever we have performed Heaven’s highest ministry, and done some service which angels might have coveted, it has been in some hour when on a bleak hillside we found a lost sheep of the Good Shepherd, and bore it home to care, to love, and to safety. And it was all done so simply. No church was near. We came not to God by the path of beautiful service. We preached no sermon. We sat in the house of loneliness, where men go softly, as though they feared a haunting spectre, and simply spoke of the many mansions in the Father’s home. We watched for a brief hour beside a child while the fever held him in its power, and spoke words of delicate sympathy to the woman who was his mother. We smiled upon a man when he was in the bitterness of defeat. We spoke a word of encouragement to one who had a heavy burden to carry. And our acts were cups of cold water to dry and parched lips, and carried God’s great hope and encouragement to hearts that were lonely and sad.

Mrs. Deane, who had often been a guest at Bishopscourt, writes: “When I first went out to Capetown in 1898, a friend gave me an introduction to the Archbishop and Mrs. West Jones, and said to me, ‘I have written about you to the Archbishop, and you will be right.’ And so, indeed, I was! The friendship I found at Bishopscourt, and my frequent visits to that lovely home, were the greatest happiness in my life at the Cape. Whatever the Archbishop did, he put his whole heart into it at the time, and this, I think, was largely the secret of his great charm. When he was talking to any one, he made that person feel that, for the moment, he or she was his one interest in life. And so, again, his heart was in his work or in his recreation, whichever it might be. I think that the Archbishop will be remembered much by his ‘faithfulness in little things’—all those small details which go to make life pleasant. He liked to recollect and mark birthdays and other anniversaries, to give wedding presents, and to do all sorts of little, charming, unexpected acts of friendliness. He never omitted to answer a letter, either personally or by deputy, and I believe that he really enjoyed being asked to do kindnesses, if he had not already discovered his own way first. In more important matters he was ever ready to give advice and sympathy. Every one who knew him loved him. And no wonder!”1 [Note: M. H. M. Wood, A Father in God: The Episcopate of W. West Jones, 448.]

What are we set on earth for? Say, to toil;

Nor seek to leave thy tending of the vines,

For all the heat o’ the day, till it declines,

And Death’s mild curfew shall from work assoil.

God did anoint thee with His odorous oil,

To wrestle, not to reign; and He assigns

All thy tears over, like pure crystallines,

For younger fellow-workers of the soil

To wear for amulets. So others shall

Take patience, labour, to their heart and hand,

From thy hand, and thy heart, and thy brave cheer,

And God’s grace fructify through thee to all.

The least flower, with a brimming cup, may stand,

And share its dewdrop with another near.1 [Note: E. B. Browning.]

3. The greatest things are poor, if the little things are not done—those minor courtesies which do so much to oil the wheels, to soften the jars, and to heal the heartaches of the world.

The most miserable homes I have ever known have often been those that ought to have been the happiest; I envied them before I got to know the whole story. The house was a palace; the head of the household had worked hard, had made money; he could command every luxury, and it was his one pride that everything that money could command was at the disposal of every member of his home-circle; art had done its best, culture had added its sweetest ministries; everything there—everything but the delicate courtesies, the ingenious devices of love, which are life’s most perfect graces.2 [Note: J. M. Jones, The Cup of Cold Water, 11.]

In Oscar Wilde’s tragic book, De Profundis, the author tells us how unspeakably he was helped in his shame, when a friend paid him the common courtesy of lifting his hat in his presence! But when these simplicities of life are consecrated they become sublimities, and they work the Lord’s will with amazing fruitfulness. I think what is needed, above many things in our time, is the sanctification of conventionalities. Some men’s “Good morning” falls upon your spirits like morning dew. There is one man in this city whom I sometimes meet upon a Sunday morning, and his “The Lord be with you” revives my spirit with the very ministry of grace. All these are cups of cold water.3 [Note: J. H. Jowett, in The Examiner, April 27, 1905.]

III

The Motive

The true value of an action is to be measured by its motive. The cup of cold water must be given “in the name of a disciple,” or, as St. Mark puts it, “because ye are Christ’s.” There is nothing uncommon in the act of giving a cup of cold water to the thirsty one. But when we give the cup of cold water to the little ones upon whose brow we read the name of Christ, who died for them, then the action is raised to the moral sphere and wins the commendation of the Lord of the little ones. A common deed becomes uncommon when done in the name and for the sake of Christ. Right motives transform men and their actions.

1. The expression, “these little ones,” refers to His disciple-band, whom He regards as little children in their want of experience and advantage. They had the undeveloped perceptions of a little child; their spiritual senses were not sure and certain. They had a child’s immaturity of mind, and a great thought overpowered them. They had a child’s uncertainty of limb, and were easily made to stumble. They were “little ones” in the sphere of advantage. None of the “great ones” of the earth were among them. None of them occupied rank, or possessed wealth, or were adorned with culture. We find among them children of disadvantage with their powers undisciplined and unknown. Mr. Feeble-mind was there. Mr. Little-faith was among them. Mr. Limp-will was of their number. And these “little ones” are among us in all times. The roads are full of them. We may find them by every wayside. And the Lord looks upon them with tender pity and solicitous love.

There is an Eastern story of a king who built a great temple at his own cost, no other one being allowed to do even the smallest part of the work. The king’s name was put upon the temple as the builder of it. But, strange to say, when the dedication day came it was seen that a poor widow’s name was there in place of the king’s. The king was angry and gave command that the woman bearing the name on the scroll should be found. They discovered her at last among the very poor and brought her before the king. He demanded of her what she had done toward the building of the temple. She said, “Nothing.” When pressed to remember anything she had done, she said that one day when she saw the oxen drawing the great stones past her cottage, exhausted in the heat and very weary, she had in pity given them some wisps of hay. And this simple kindness to dumb animals, prompted by a heart’s compassion, weighed more in God’s sight than all the king’s vast outlay of money. What we truly do for Christ and in love is glorious in His sight.1 [Note: J. R. Miller, Our New Edens, 132.]

The Vision of Sir Launfal, by James Russell Lowell, glows with the glory of the right motive. Sir Launfal was a knight of the North Countree, who made a vow to travel over sea and land in search of the Holy Grail. Before his departure, he sleeps, and in the dreams of the night he sees a vision of what is and what will be. From the proudest hall in the North Countree, Sir Launfal flashed forth in his unscarred mail, and saw a leper crouching by his gate, who begged with his hand and moaned as he sat. A loathing came over the knight, for this man, foul and bent, seemed a blot on the summer morn. In scorn he tossed him a bit of gold. Years seemed to pass, for in our dreams we live an age in a moment. Sir Launfal, old and grey, returns from his weary quest to find his heir installed in his place. Unknown, he is turned away from his own door.

As he sits down in the snow outside the gates, musing of sunnier climes, he hears once more the leper’s voice, “For Christ’s sweet sake, I beg an alms.” The knight turns to the sound and sees again the leper cowering beside him, lone and white:

And Sir Launfal said, “I behold in thee

An image of Him who died on the tree;

Thou also hast had thy crown of thorns,

Thou also hast had the world’s buffets and scorns,

And to thy life were not denied

The wounds in the hands and feet and side:

Mild Mary’s Son, acknowledge me;

Behold, through Him, I give to thee!”

So he parted in twain his single crust, and broke the ice of the stream and gave the leper to eat and drink. Then, lo! a wondrous transformation took place.

The leper no longer crouched at his side,

But stood before him glorified,

Shining and tall and fair and straight

As the pillar that stood by the Beautiful Gate,—

Himself the Gate whereby men can

Enter the temple of God in Man.

And the voice that was softer than silence said,

“Lo, it is I, be not afraid!

In many climes, without avail,

Thou hast spent thy life for the Holy Grail;

Behold, it is here,—this cup which thou

Didst fill at the streamlet for Me but now;

This crust is My body broken for thee,

This water His blood that died on the tree;

The Holy Supper is kept, indeed,

In whatso we share with another’s need;

Not what we give, but what we share,

For the gift without the giver is bare;

Who gives himself with his alms feeds three,

Himself, his hungering neighbour, and Me.”

Thus, with the true instinct of a prophet, did Lowell portray the right motive in its recognition. When Sir Launfal in scorn tossed the bit of gold to the leper, the Holy Grail was far away from the seeker; but when he shared his crust in the name of Christ, he found what he sought. “Ye ask and receive not, because ye ask amiss.”1 [Note: J. C. Owen.]

2. Real goodness can never be confined to great acts only. It invests with sudden glory the life of him who ventures all and, leaving those things which men count dearest, goes to tell the story of the love of Jesus to men who sit in darkness and the shadow of death. But it also clothes with exquisite graciousness those who, by the lesser ministries of life, strive in all things to interpret the beauty of the spirit of God, and hour by hour to give fine revelations of the heart of Christ. It blazes out in some great piece of sacrifice or self-renunciation, but it shines with a persistent light in the exquisite self-forgetfulness of a life that desires only to do the will of Jesus. David consecrating great wealth to the building of a temple, and a poor widow casting two mites into the treasury; Moses delivering a whole people from cruel bondage, and a simple unknown man giving a cup of cold water only to one who is hot after life’s fierce battle—all these manifest one and the selfsame goodness, which is the heart’s love and loyalty to God flowing through all our deeds and consecrating them all.

When Edward Payson was dying, he said, “I long to give a full cup of happiness to every human being.” If with such urgency of desire we should daily go out among men, how selfishness would perish out of our dealings with them! What love would be in our homes! What changes would be wrought in human society! Now giving food to the needy, clothes to the naked, a toy to a child, opportunity for work to the unemployed, a good book to one who will prize it as the thirsty do water—in such simple ways will streams be made to flow through life’s deserts, and cups of comfort come to famishing lips.1 [Note: G. M. Meacham, in The Homiletic Review, xx. 527.]

IV

The Reward

Some people tell us that it is defective morality in Christianity to bribe men to be good by promising them heaven, and that he who is actuated by such a motive is selfish. Now that fantastic and overstrained objection may be very simply answered by two considerations: self-regard is not selfishness, and Christianity does not propose the future reward as the motive for goodness. The motive for goodness is love to Jesus Christ; and if ever there was a man who did acts of Christian goodness only for the sake of what he would get by them, the acts were not Christian, because the motive was wrong. But it is a piece of fastidiousness to forbid us to reinforce the great Christian motive, which is love to Jesus Christ, by the thought of the recompense of reward. It is a stimulus and an encouragement, not the motive for goodness. This text shows us that it is a subordinate motive, for it says that the reception of a prophet, or of a righteous man, or of “one of these little ones,” which is rewardable, is the reception “in the name of” a prophet, a disciple, and so on; or, in other words, recognizing the prophet, or the righteousness, or the disciple for what he is, and because he is that, and not because of the reward, receiving him with sympathy and solace and help.

1. What is the reward of heaven? “Eternal life,” people say. Yes! “Blessedness.” Yes! But where does the life come from, and where does the blessedness come from? They are both derived, they come from God in Christ; and in the deepest sense, and in the only true sense, God is heaven, and God is the reward of heaven. “I am thy shield” so long as dangers need to be guarded against, and thereafter “thy exceeding great reward.” It is the possession of God that makes all the heaven of heaven, the immortal life which His children receive, and the blessedness with which they are enraptured. We are heirs of immortality, we are heirs of life, we are heirs of blessedness, because, and in the measure in which, we become heirs of God.

“You forgot to mention where heaven is,” said the good lady to her pastor after a sermon on the better land. “On yonder hill-top stands a cottage, madam,” replied the man of God; “a widow lives there in want; she has no bread, no fuel, no medicine, and her child is at the point of death. If you will carry to her this afternoon some little cup of cold water in the name of Him who went about doing good, you will find the answer to your inquiry.”1 [Note: M. J. McLeod, Heavenly Harmonies for Earthly Living, 38.]

2. In heaven as on earth men will get just as much of God as they can hold; and in heaven as on earth capacity for receiving God is determined by character. The gift is one, the reward is one, and yet the reward is infinitely various. It is the same light which glows in all the stars, but “star differeth from star in glory.” It is the same wine, the new wine of the Kingdom, that is poured into all the vessels, but the vessels are of divers magnitudes, though each be full to the brim.

3. The reward is both present and future.

(1) There is present compensation for doing good. It is impossible to do good with a loving heart to Christ without growing good. Every act of kindness done in the name of a disciple, and every work engaged in and prosecuted for His sake, and every gift conscientiously made and bestowed for the advancement of His glory, expands the heart, enlarges the sympathies, and deepens the sources of its joy. There is no such pleasure to the heart as that which proceeds from a deed of Christian benevolence and kindness, done from love to the Saviour and His cause. Besides, the heart’s true pleasure is increased in the proportion that it is opened by the expanding power of true Christian love through acts of Christian kindness done for the Saviour’s sake. The deed reacts in blessing on the doer. Every lesson of Christian truth which a Sabbath-school teacher imparts makes more precious to him the water of life as he fills up his cup with blessing for the souls of others. Every word we utter for Christ, every deed we perform, every gift we bestow, is even now in its reactive influence a present reward.

Expositors of sacred Scripture have spoken diversely concerning these rewards. For some say that all of them refer to the future bliss: as Ambrose, on Luke. But Augustine says that they pertain to the present life. Whereas Chrysostom says in his Homilies that some of them pertain to the future life, but some to the present. For the elucidation of which we are to consider that the hope of future bliss may exist in us in virtue of two things: first, in virtue of a certain preparation or qualification for future bliss, which comes through merit; and secondly, by virtue of a certain imperfect beginning of future bliss in holy men, even in this life. For the promise of fruit in a tree is there in one fashion when it throws out its green foliage; but in another fashion when the first formation of the fruit begins to appear. And thus the merits spoken of in the Beatitudes are of the nature of preparations or qualifications for blessedness, whether perfect or incipient. Whereas the rewards set forth may be either the perfect bliss itself, in which case they pertain to the future life: or a certain beginning of bliss, as found in perfect men, and in that case they pertain to the present life. For as soon as a man begins to make progress in the acts appropriate to the virtues and (spiritual) gifts, there may be good hope of him that he shall come to the perfection alike of the pilgrimage [of earth] and of the fatherland [of heaven].1 [Note: St. Thomas Aquinas, Summa Theologica, Prima Secundæ, lxix. § 2.]

In helping others we benefit ourselves; we heal our own wounds in binding up those of others.2 [Note: St. Ambrose.]

(2) The highest reward will come hereafter. The present life is only the seed-plot of eternity. “Nothing human ever dies.” All our deeds drag after them inevitable consequences; but if you will put your trust in Jesus Christ He will not deal with you according to your sins, nor reward you according to your iniquities; and the darkest features of the recompense of your evil will all be taken away by the forgiveness which we have in His blood. If you will trust yourselves to Him you will have that eternal life which is not wages, but a gift; which is not reward, but a free bestowment of God’s love. And then, built upon that foundation on which alone men can build their hopes, their thoughts, their characters, their lives, however feeble may be our efforts, however narrow may be our sphere,—though we be neither prophets nor sons of prophets, and though our righteousness may be all stained and imperfect, yet, to our own amazement and to God’s glory, we shall find, when the fire is kindled which reveals and tests our works, that, by the might of humble faith in Christ, we have built upon that foundation, gold and silver and precious stones; and shall receive the reward given to every man whose work abides that trial by fire.

“My day has all gone”—’twas a woman who spoke,

As she turned her face to the sunset glow—

“And I have been busy the whole day long;

Yet for my work there is nothing to show.”

No painting nor sculpture her hand had wrought;

No laurel of fame her labour had won.

What was she doing in all the long day,

With nothing to show at set of sun?

Humbly and quietly all the long day

Had her sweet service for others been done;

Yet for the labours of heart and of hand

What could she show at set of sun?

Ah, she forgot that our Father in heaven

Ever is watching the work that we do,

And records He keeps of all we forget,

Then judges our work with judgment that’s true;

For an angel writes down in a volume of gold

The beautiful deeds that all do below.

Though nothing she had at set of the sun,

The angel above had something to show.

The Ministry of Small Things

Literature

Austin (G. B.), The Beauty of Goodness, 81.

Binney (T.), Money, 220.

Broughton (L. G.), Christianity and the Commonplace, 41.

Burrell (D. J.), The Unaccountable Man, 214.

Carter (T. T.), Meditations on the Public Life of Our Lord, i. 256.

Jeffrey (G.), The Believer’s Privilege, 73.

Jones (J. M.), The Cup of Cold Water, 3.

Maclaren (A.), A Year’s Ministry, ii. 331.

Maclaren (A.), Expositions: St. Matthew ix.–xvii., 110.

Parker (J.), The Cavendish Pulpit, i., No. 10.

Smellie (A.), In the Hour of Silence, 201.

Wiseman (N.), Children’s Sermons, 136.

Christian World Pulpit, lxxx. 122 (J. C. Owen).

Examiner, April 27, 1905 (J. H. Jowett).

Homiletic Review, New Ser., xx. 526 (G. M. Meacham).