MEMORY HYMN [678]

    "By cool Siloam’s shady rill."

ONE BY ONE

Here is this great church building.  It is a beautiful structure, is it not?  It is so substantial, it has stood here so many years, we take it so for granted that it seems as though it had always been here.  But there was a day when the ground upon which this building stands was vacant ground.  Then men came with picks and shovels, wagons and plows, and set to work.  They laid the foundations, stone upon stone.  Then the walls rose, stone upon stone.  Then the spire, stone upon stone, until the very peak was reached, for our church is stone from the foundation to the top of the spire.  How were these thousands of stones put in place?  One by one.

Think also of the roof of our church.  It is a tile roof.  How in the world did they get all those tiles up on the roof and fitted in place?  Did some man who was very strong stand back and throw a handful of tile at the roof?  No, it was done one by one.

To-day it is snowing outside.  Some one has figured that in a square mile one foot of snow would weigh 65,000 tons.  If you should take sleds and horses, and put a ton of snow on each sled, and arrange the horses and sleds in a procession, the sleds carrying the snow from that square mile of territory would reach from Philadelphia to New York, and beyond New York, straight up the Hudson, almost to Albany.  That is only one square mile, and there are thousands of square miles every winter covered with snow.  How does this snow come?  In tiny flakes, one by one.

It is the same with life.  God gives us many days, but he sends them one at a time.  He also sends us many duties, but they do not come en masse.  He is good and sends them one by one.

MEMORY VERSE, Matthew 6:  34

    “Take therefore no thought for the morrow, for the morrow shall
    take thought for the things of itself.  Sufficient unto the day is
    the evil thereof.”

MEMORY HYMN [419]

    "One more day’s work for Jesus."

COME

There is not a girl or boy here this morning who does not feel within the desire to do good.  The drawing power of good—­in other words, the drawing power of God.  He it is who says to you, “Come.”

I want to illustrate this by a few things which I have here.  The first is this magnet.  And here are some small nails.  These tiny nails represent girls and boys of about eleven or twelve years of age.  I apply the magnet to these nails and I lift up—­can you see me—­twenty-five or thirty nails.  You see it is a great deal easier to respond to the drawing power of good, to answer the great “Come,” in girlhood and boyhood.

Now here are some nails that are a little larger.  I can lift up only five or six of these larger nails.  They represent young people of eighteen or nineteen.  As one gets older he does not hear as readily, at least he does not answer, Christ’s blessed “Come.”