MEMORY VERSE, Matthew 6:  21

    “For where your treasure is there will your heart be also.”

MEMORY HYMN [208]

    "I love thy kingdom, Lord."

WORK

This morning I want to talk to you about work.  “All work and no play makes Jack a dull boy.”  We are sorry for girls and boys who are compelled to work, who have little or no time for play.  Now that is one side.  How about the other side?  All play and no work makes Jack—­what?  There are many words we can use here.  I have thought about this a long time and I have decided that the best word to put in here is useless.  All play and no work makes Jack a useless boy, and of all creatures in the world who have no place in the scheme of things it is one who is useless.

Now the men who are useful, we shall find, are the men who, as boys, worked as well as played.  A few days ago I sat at a public dinner next to one of the best-known men in this city, and a useful man he is.  We were talking about some of the things boys could busy themselves with and earn a little money.  I said, “I carried papers when I was a boy.”  He replied, “I carried papers on the streets of New York City when I was a boy.”  I do not doubt that if we could have gone to all the men who sat at that dinner each of the one hundred and fifty would have answered, “Yes, I worked when I was a boy.”

I have here an illustration of work.  Here are four nuts, a brazil nut, an almond, a walnut and a pecan.  Each morning as you go to school you pass through the park.  There in the park the squirrels are always to be seen, and to you they seem to be ever at play.  There are days, warm spring days, lovely autumn days, when you do not like to go to school, and I hear you say, “I wish I could be like these squirrels, playing around all day long.”  But the squirrels do not play around all day long.  They are at work, gathering nuts and storing them away for winter use.  If I should give these nuts to the squirrels they would have to work to open them.  All that is good in life comes through work.  God wants us to work as well as play, and play as well as work.

MEMORY VERSE, Matthew 21:  18

“Son, go work to-day in my vineyard.”

MEMORY HYMN [422]

    "Work, for the night is coming."

THE BIG STORE

Many of the girls and boys who read this little book live in or near one of the great cities where they have huge department stores.  I love to visit a big store.  I have spent hours, more likely days, if I should count up all the time, in Wanamaker’s in New York and Philadelphia, Marshall Field’s in Chicago, Hengerer’s in Buffalo, and Eaton’s in Toronto.  Any season of the year, and almost any hour of the day, these stores are thronged with people, for people like to go to the big store.