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FELLOWSHIP WITH THE FATHER

There is a story of a young man who, having some financial scheme which required a large amount of capital, called on a very wealthy banker to interest him in the enterprise. He declined to advance the funds that were needed for the undertaking, but promised to put him in a way to get them; and so, taking his arm they walked once or twice up and down the Exchange, conversing with him as they went. When they returned, he told him he could go among the bankers and get what he wanted. The young man found that the statement was true. The very fact of his being seen with that wealthy man gave him all the credit he wanted.

It is thus when men walk with men. The world is quick to see and draw inferences from our associations. But what must it be for a man to walk with God?

What do angels say when they see a weak, helpless, sinful, fallen, mortal taken into fellowship with their Master, and walking with him along earth’s desert way? So Enoch walked with God many hundred years ago. Men knew him as one who lived a hidden, secret life, whose mystery they could not penetrate; the demons of darkness knew him as one clothed in armor which they could not pierce, and defended by One into whose presence they dared not intrude; but the angels knew him as a man who walked with God, and were not surprised when at last “he was not, for God took him.”

To such fellowship and intimacy as this, Christians are called. We are invited to draw nigh to God, and have fellowship with him, to maintain such intimacy that the world shall know that we have been with Jesus.—Selected.

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THE times are critical, not here alone, but all over the world. Prospering in purely material interests, as I fully believe the people at large have never done before, the elements to bring on the gravest moral changes are simultaneously at work everywhere. The problems now lavishly presented for agitation touch the very foundation of religious faith, of moral philosophy, of civil government, and even of human society. New forms of power are developing themselves, seriously menacing the solidity of all established institutions. Even that great conviction, ever cherished as the apple of your eye, and which really is the rock upon which our political edifice rests, the durability of representative government, bids fair to be, sooner or later, drawn into question on solid grounds. The collision between the forces of associated capital and those of associated labor is likely to make itself felt throughout the wide extent of human civilization.—Charles Francis Adams.

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“WE would laugh at a man who should suppose his field of grain to be cut simply because he had whetted his scythe. No less absurd is it for a man to think that he can do his whole duty by merely praying.”

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— July, 1884 —