Bruce S. Wright

“ Now there is another light, a light that is above even the sun. That is the light of Easter day. The tomb of death is no longer dark, for the resurrection light brightens every corner and shines in radiance through the open doorway. ”

“ I hear one boy say, "It means a big dinner." I think we all agree with him. Who does not welcome and enjoy a good dinner! I hear Mary say, "Thanksgiving means a day off from school." I guess you are right too. School is not such a charming place that girls and boys are unwilling to have an occasional holiday.
Now I am going to ask some of the older people what the day means to them. There is a young woman. She is a stenographer. She says, "Thanksgiving means a day away from the office. I am at the office every day except Sunday, and I do appreciate, now and then, a day that is really my own." ”

“ Yes, we all say there is but one day in December. How readily we agree when we understand one another!
What is the twenty-fifth? It is the pivotal day in the history of the world. It is the day upon which the King of Kings and the Lord of Lords was born. Jesus, son of man and son of God, came into the world as we all come, as a tiny babe. It brings him much nearer to us, does it not, to think that our Saviour was [107] once as we are? He grew up as a child, a boy, a youth, a man. It is the birthday of Christ the Saviour we celebrate on the twenty-fifth of each December. ”

“ In the center of our city is the tall Electric Light Building. On the very tip of the tower is a high power electric light. It is lighted every evening from eight to eleven o'clock. Children, looking out of their windows as they go to bed, think that it is another star in the sky, it is so bright and steady.
[31] More wonderful than any of these lights is the source of all light. It is the light that God provides for all of his children. The sun warms our fields, makes our gardens grow, and causes our harvests to prosper. The sun never fails us. ”

“ He, the loving Father of all people, makes blessed provision for the care and nurture of his children. He reminds us each year, in seedtime and harvest, of his boundless love. His love never fails. There have been many hundreds of years in the history of the world, yet each year has had its spring, its seedtime, and its Resurrection. ”

“ As you came to church this morning you saw all along the streets and avenues hundreds of trees like this branch, sending forth their first buds. What do these buds tell us?
First of all they tell us of God. I do not see how any one can live through the awakening spring season and not think daily thoughts of God. Most people remember the Creator. Only one person has ever denied God. "The fool hath said in his heart, there is no God." ”

“ 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." ”

“ A door is made of wood. What beautiful wood is in these church doors! The doors of life are made of our will. By the exercise of our will we open and close whatsoever doors of life we choose.
The doors of our houses swing on hinges. Heavy doors seem as light as a feather because they are so delicately hung upon hinges. The [95] hinges of the doors of life are made not of brass or iron, but of love.
When, in a little while, you leave this church you will take hold of a knob and pull open the door. The doors of life have knobs. ”

“ Now I am thinking of another big store, a truly big store, the great big store of Life. We have to visit at this store whether we want to or not. It is not a matter of choice but of necessity. Every morning you visit the big store of Life. Every evening you return home with what you have bought. ”

“ The Postman. Who is the man who is most eagerly looked for as he comes down the street? The Postman. Who receives, at every door where he stops, a most cordial welcome? The Postman. I wonder if the thrill of getting a letter will ever pass away. When you come home from school the first thing you do is to look on the hall table to see if the Postman has brought you a letter. It is the same when we grow up. No matter how many letters we may receive we never get over the keen delight at having the Postman bring us letters.
Last Sunday afternoon you wrote your grandmother. ”

“ I hope you sleep well every night. God's best gift to his children is sleep. You think there are some better gifts, do you? Name them. Ah, I thought you were mistaken. The more you think about it the more you will agree with me that sleep, the Father's loving provision for tired people, is a most blessed gift.
Now God gives sleep not only to girls and boys but to all of his creatures. Do you know how some of those creatures sleep? I will tell you. Elephants and horses commonly sleep standing up. ”

“ 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. ”

“ One by one the nails were pounded into the door, until it was literally filled with nails. The boy did not like the looks of the door, the thought of it began to trouble his conscience. So he spoke to his father about it. "Well," said his father, "I'll tell you what we will do. Every time you are obedient, every time you do a good deed rather than a wrong one, we will pull a nail out." ”

“ God. He, in his infinite love and wisdom, has provided, through the unfailing laws of nature, for the growth, sweetness, coloring and beautifying of all the products of the fields. This apple is but one of many kinds of fruits.
Praise, then, is the great meaning of Thanksgiving. God, our heavenly Father, sends us every good gift. From his bountiful hand come our daily and nightly mercies. We should praise him every day. But the day for the united chorus of praise is Thanksgiving.
MEMORY VERSE, Psalm 150: 6
"Let everything that hath breath praise the Lord. ”

“ If you will lift your eyes just a little you will see the flowers on the table, but lift them higher than the flowers, higher than this pulpit, higher than the pipes of the organ, above the lights, above the arch, you will see the most beautiful thing in the world. ”

“ You go down to the drug store and buy a bottle of perfume. A good perfume will cost not less than a dollar a bottle. The air we breathe is infinitely purer and better than the costliest perfume.
Second, the water we drink. Do you like ice cream soda? I am sure you do. If you do not you are not a normal girl or boy. How much do you have to pay for a good ice cream soda? That depends; some places it is ten cents and some fifteen cents. You think you might like to have ice cream soda every meal, but you would soon tire of it. The water you drink is necessary, and it costs you nothing. ”

“ The most delicate, sensitive portion of your body is the eye. When I consider how tender [63] and open to harm the eye is I wonder that so many of us go through life with our eyes unhurt. But God has provided a sleepless protection for our eyes. There is a guard, always on duty. Whenever danger comes near, that guard, our eyelid, closes and effectively wards off impending trouble. ”

“ The financial secretary of your church is just as willing to keep the records of young people who give but five cents in each side of the envelope as he is to keep the account of the man or woman who places five dollars in each side of the envelope every Sunday. You see we want you to grow up systematic and orderly in all your religious life. Our Master is pleased when we do our religious duties "decently and in order."
MEMORY VERSE, I Corinthians 16: 2
"Upon the first day of the week let every one of you lay by him in store, as God hath prospered him." ”

“ There are also measures of weight, ounces, pounds and tons. Now these different measures are the same all over the United States. A pound of butter in New York is the same as a pound of butter in California. There are other countries that do not have measures like ours. France, for example, has the metric system. Should you go into a dry goods store in Paris you would not ask for a yard of cloth, but for a meter.
God's measures are the same. God has a measure for girls and boys, and that measure is the same in Ohio, Mexico, England or Spain. ”

“ We started with the lowest form of life, an inanimate nut. Now we come to the highest, the soul of man. For in each one of you there is something eternal, something akin to God himself. The name we give that eternal spirit is the soul. For the protection of our soul God gives us faith, a sense of right and wrong, conscience, the still small voice. He surrounds us with Christian homes, the Church, helpful fellowship, the means of grace. All these things are a protection for the soul.
MEMORY VERSE, Matthew 6: 28, 29
"Consider the lilies of the field, how they grow ”

“ But there is a clock surpassing all others. I call it God's clock. It is the Sun. Since time began God's clock has kept time. It is the central clock of our universe. It regulates all others. It does not have to be wound. God has seen to that. How can we help worshiping the God who has made such a clock!
MEMORY VERSE, Psalm 74: 16
"The day is thine, the night also is thine; thou hast prepared the light and the sun."
MEMORY HYMN [47]
"Sun of my soul, thou Saviour dear." ”

“ 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. ”

“ In the window of the store was a clock which regulated the coming and going of nearly all the inhabitants. You see the children on their way to school had to pass this store, and they always glanced in the window to see if they were on time. People going away had to pass this store to get to the depot; they too looked at the jeweler's clock to see if they had plenty of time to make their train. The men who worked in the main factory of the town went by this corner; each man as he passed would pull out his watch and set it by the jeweler's clock. ”

“ We are all human clocks. We set the time for others. Your example, girls and boys, has much to do with the way other young people, your companions, act. If you, Mary, fail to get your lessons, some of your friends are going to say, "Mary doesn't study much and I'm not going to either." Robert, if you indulge in some bad habit your chum is going to say, "Robert does this and I guess I can too." Is your life clock running true? Are you on time?
MEMORY VERSE, I Peter 2: 21 ”

“ They are thus made to feel that they are wanted, and have a part in the Church which all too often is looked upon as a Church solely for the grownups. No part of my ministry has given me greater delight and satisfaction than the thought that I am helping to establish in the lives of many boys and girls that habit so indispensable to a steady Christian experience, namely—the habit of Sunday morning worship. ”

“ 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 ”

“ Out in Colorado, high up the side of a mountain, where the snow never melts in the crevices, may be seen two long ravines, one straight up and down, the other straight across. The snow [29] is packed into those ravines all through the year, and lifting the eyes one may see upon the lofty mountain side the Holy Cross.
In the summer seas, one of the things that mariners are guided by and that tourists look for, is the Southern Cross. There it is, fashioned by the position of the stars in the clear skies of the tropics.
There are many men who wear a cross as a watch fob. ”

“ People took their treasures and jewels and hid them in a vessel, or dug a hole in the earth and covered their valuable possessions with dirt. But now one of the most prominent institutions of any community is the bank.
What does this bank stand for? In the first place it means Strength. It is made of very heavy, hard material. There is money in this bank. It does not belong to me, it is the property of our Beginners' Department. Each Sunday they put their birthday money in here, then at the end of the year they open it and the contents is given to our Sunday School Missionary Society. ”