WEEK OF PRAYER—CHRISTMAS OFFERINGS.
By Editor
WHEN this paper reaches many of our readers, the week of prayer among our people will have been well begun. We hope, under God, that it may be a season of great profit. This is the season when the world is turning aside to the selfish gratification of the lust of the flesh and the lust of the eyes, to sensuous pleasures, feasting and frolic, gluttony and drunkenness, dishonoring Him after whom the chief day of the festivities is named. This is their chief enjoyment; they know not any better. But not so with the Christian. He has access to the great storehouse of God's grace. Of God's goodness he has tasted, knowing it to be God's. He has drunk at the Fountain. How foolish it is for him to turn aside to the silly pleasures of the world! Of course, those who know not Christ will think it strange that we run not with them to the same excess of riot, and so speak evil of us; but let the time past of our life suffice for that (1 Peter 4:3, 4); we have tasted of better things. Let us spend the "Christmas-tide" of the world to God's glory. 1. We need God's blessing. We are surrounded by such subtle wickedness and deception as the world never before knew. Of ourselves we have no power to meet this tide of evil, all the stronger at such seasons. It can only be met by Christ's power, and the power of Christ's grace is given to earnest seekers by faith. 2. We have many friends in the world who are being engulfed in its seething vortex of pleasures, dissipations, deceptions, and overwhelming ambitions. Will we not use this week in seeking God for them? To some extent we are responsible. Will not parents seek God for their children, children for their parents, husbands for their wives, wives for their husbands, and brothers and sisters for each other? Let us plead with God for ourselves, and, forgetting ourselves by giving ourselves to God, plead for them. Heaven is open and God is waiting to hear such prayers, that he may answer. 3. And then there is the great "beyond," the dark, dying world of sin, to whom we are also related, and to whom also we are debtors, because Christ redeemed us, and they also are the purchase of his blood. What a blessed thing it would be if all Christians were then earnestly seeking God for those who are lost! What wonderful blessings would descend upon his church! 4. The privilege of communion with Christ should be a joyous and mighty incentive in deciding us to turn these days of feasting and levity into a season of specially seeking God. He offers us as a Christmas wine, the pure, sweet water of life. He spreads his table with all the delectable things of his heavenly storehouse. Come, then, eat and drink, without money and without price. 5. As to our Christmas donations and presents, let us give them to the needy cause of God. Let the rewards, the obligation, the eternal consequences appear as they are, as they will in the judgment of God. Welcome the privileges of giving for Christ, sacrificing for Christ, working with Christ, partaking of the joy of Christ. Let the words of Christ rule at this season: "Lay not up for yourselves treasures upon earth, where moth and rust doth corrupt, and where thieves break through and steal; but lay up for yourselves treasures in heaven, where neither moth nor rust doth corrupt, and where thieves do not break through nor steal; for where your treasure is, there will your heart be also."