One day last week I saw a huge pair of bobs, heavily loaded with coal, being pulled up the street by two big, fine-looking horses.  There were two men on the load.  Their faces were black, but it was the dirt of honest toil, it was coal dust.  They stopped the horses in front of the house directly across the street from me.  I watched them with interest.  The first thing one of the men did was to get down, take a board, go around to the front of the horses, lift up the heavy wagon tongue, place the board underneath it as a brace that the necks of the horses might be relieved of the strain of the wagon tongue.  At the same time the other man took two warm blankets and covered the horses with them, tucking in the corners beneath the harness to make them tight and warm.  Then the men set to work to carry the coal, basket by basket, into the cellar.  That was kindness, was it not, to see that the horses were so well cared for on a cold winter day!

To my mind one of the finest acts of our city government is the way we are taught kindness to dumb animals and birds, by permitting them to make their homes and nests in the public park.  What a delight it is to walk through the park and have the squirrels come running up so close, to eat from one’s hand!  That is kindness.

How about kindness to people?  Have you ever seen an older person walking along the street with a little child of three or four years of age, the child reaching up as far as he could to take the hand of the older person, the older one jerking, pulling, yanking, all the while saying, “Come now, hurry up, hurry up.”  That is not kindness, is it?

    “Howe’er it be, it seems to me
      ’Tis only noble to be good;
    Kind hearts are more than coronets,
      And simple faith than Norman blood.”

Memory verse, Ephesians 4:  32

    “Be ye kind to one another.”

Memory hymn [554]

    "How sweet, how heavenly is the sight!"

GOD’S CALL

God calls each one of you.  He asks you to give your life to him.  He has a special work for you to do.  You have heard of Wendell Phillips who did so much to make slavery unlawful in America!  Once, when Wendell was a boy fourteen years of age, he heard Lyman Beecher preach.  In the course of his sermon the preacher said, “You belong to God.”  The boy Wendell thought that the preacher looked straight at him when he said that.  He went to his home at the close of the service, climbed the stairs to his room, shut the door, knelt in prayer, saying, “O God, I belong to thee, take what is thine own.”  He heard and answered God’s call.